{{byline}}
Top franchise marketing executives from 54 franchise organizations responded to a recent survey conducted by Franchise Update Media Group about marketing strategy, execution, and outlook for their franchise organizations. Respondents represented food, retail food, retail non-food, and service sectors with 70 percent of the total group achieving annual systemwide revenue over $20 million. Although 87% of franchisor respondents indicated they are more optimistic about the U.S. economy compared to last year, only 58% described current business at the unit level as good. 33% indicated current business conditions at the unit level were neutral and 9% poor.
1) The most pressing consumer marketing challenges for franchisors involve the performance of their advertising budgets, strategies, customer profiling, media selection, tracking, and ROI. Another area of primary concern: their brand awareness, representation, consistency, differentiation, and protection.
2) Franchisors believe the three most important factors for building consumer marketing success within their franchise systems are 1) the acquisition of customer knowledge, 2) consistent messaging in brand awareness efforts, and 3) franchisee buy-in, engagement, and execution of local marketing efforts. Franchisors reported that only 30 percent of franchisees spend the local advertising fees required in the franchise agreement.
3) Print is still a major force in generating new customers. The top four most-effective media that franchisees use to generate new customers in their local markets (in order of most effective):
4) Franchisors are experimenting with social media, continuously seeking knowledge on how to use it best. They are diligently working to get their arms around all aspects of social media, with a growing emphasis on protecting their brands through reputation management.
View Original for Full Data Table
Franchisors ranked, in order of greatest important, the factors that determine the success of a marketing program.
Franchisors ranked their customers' top priorities over the next 12 months: (Rank 1 is most important)
View Original for Full Data Table
Forms of social media franchise system respondents are currently using:
View Original for Full Data Table
Franchisors use social media for the following reasons:
View Original for Full Data Table
Franchisors ranked the top 3 most useful applications of social media. They are:
Franchisors use the following metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of social media:
View Original for Full Data Table
73% have social media policies for their franchisees