The success or failure of any franchise system depends hugely upon the quality of its franchisee. At the same time, the quality of the franchisee depends on the franchise marketing program and the franchise recruitment exercise. An effective franchise recruitment strategy must have in mind the exact profile of the franchisee it is seeking and must only use mediums that will appeal to these profiles. What’s the point of advertising or marketing the franchise to a mass audience that results in spending of millions of dollars, when you can strategize the reach in such a manner that costs meet results? We have to also bear in mind here the convergence of franchise marketing with brand marketing.
The most crucial thing that a franchisor must have is an effective and solid marketing and advertising plan to achieve success in getting a franchisee. Franchise marketing raises brand awareness and enables the brand to provide a consistent image that consumers can identify with on a national basis and increases brand awareness. This in turn increases profits at franchisee level as it drives footfall to stores. This means that at most times franchisers tend to forget the over-all effect of franchise branding, which leads to overall brand exposure to consumers as well. You could advertise in a franchise magazine, participate in franchise exhibition, use a franchise portal, or use ready lists of entrepreneurs through email marketing and sms marketing or use your existing stores to give out a message that you are soliciting franchise enquiries, use your existing customer or branding ads for additionally seeking franchisees or for that manner, using any of your existing platforms to leverage additional franchise response. In some cases these work and in some they don’t. An intelligent franchise recruitment campaign will marry the overall brand marketing and franchise marketing goals and balance the results intelligently.
The third component of an effective franchise marketing program is marketing the products or services for your business from a localized perspective of an intending franchisee zone. Most franchisees before choosing a franchise, consider the marketing plan, which the franchisor provideswhen they decide to purchase a franchise. In a franchise marketing plan you intend to carry out to interest potential customers and clients in your product and/or service at all levels, meaning international, national, region wise and then local or at the micro level. Further down this persuades the customers to buy the product and/or services you offer. Once an intending franchisee signs a franchise contract with the franchisor, they expect the company to support them with this service. A big reason why franchisors have a higher potential for success in selling the products or services and the franchisee itself, is the marketing plan they execute.
Who makes the franchise marketing plan in your organization? Is it the franchise marketing manager? How is it done? What are the parameters involved, while defining it? How are the results measured? It is seen that large organizations work in a team to define the entire plan. They work with Franchise Consultants and Media companies and then internally finalize the entire plan. The franchise marketing manager becomes the one point contact for this activity and is held responsible for the results that come in.Smaller organizations have their business owners planning the franchise marketing along with senior team members. They also tend to reach out to franchise marketing consultantsand advertisement companies, internet marketing consultants and other franchise marketing facilitators.
Now let’s look at it from a franchisees perspective. It is always important for the franchisee to operate a franchise successfully through a well-oiled franchise marketing strategy along with a proper franchise operations support. As the franchisor takes a fee that they pay for marketing, it is prudent to make sure that you provide a great franchise marketing plan that will help generate business for your franchise. The expenses like TV commercials, print advertisements, and direct mailings to both potential and existing customers should be covered by the marketing plan. Further a good marketing plan also covers fees that you may pay for advertising agencies for in-house marketing and several other digital and other marketing services that you may opt for.
You will need to have advertisement in as many different forms as possible since you want to make sure that you are engaging most potential customers in one form or the other. For instance, in a news paper advertisement only the people who read that certain section of the paper will see your advertisement. Your main aim should be to reach more and more people and to increase awareness about your products or services. Advertising through internet is one of many ways in which you can tremendously increase the volume of sales as you can target the whole world at any given point of time or engage social media to build a community around your brand. Companies are increasingly using effective SEO techniques for franchise marketing. Hence franchisees tend to reject the franchise businesses of franchisors that do not have a complete and effective franchise marketing plan because they can clearly envision that this will limit their franchises success.
Whether the franchisor will listen to marketing suggestions from franchisees about future marketing is another aspect to consider. All of us are aware of where, the Filet O Fish idea, that generated billions of dollars for McDonalds, came from. It came from one of their franchisee. Since this is a way to stay fresh with newfranchise marketing ideas and gain a distinct edge from competition, it leads to the successfor the whole franchise family. Franchisees generally interact with the customers and have the most accurate information of their local markets and at times can come up with very valuable and practical suggestions. I know of most successful franchise brands, listening to their franchisees very regularly through annual franchise meets and in-between feedback meetings. They consider this as a serious knowledge and feedback bank and try to cash in from this important resource, which otherwise is not given too much importance. They know, In order to keep up with them you have to change a little, as time is always changing. What worked a few years ago, may most likely not work now.
A good franchise marketing plan is always designed to keep the entire franchise business successful and the entire franchise family happy.That’s why make sure that you have a plan that suits your brand, franchisees and your customers and always gets you your desired results.