10 Marketing Tips for Franchisors
Franchise development marketing involves growing a company’s sales and business through several activities, such as digital advertising or online marketing. Its purpose is to help companies increase their profits while retaining customers and reaching new audiences.
The importance of franchise marketing cannot be understated. All types of franchise marketing operations are essential to the success of every business, no matter its location. Each franchisor must instill the importance of localized marketing and advertising strategies to their franchisees to increase the success of all businesses and drive people to the company’s products or services.
When choosing the right marketing strategy for franchise businesses, learning from the successes of others is crucial. Many companies increase customer engagement through a personalized experience. Personalized marketing and engagement may include sending a welcoming subscription email, responding to positive online reviews or creating localized SEO strategies. The more time and effort franchisors devote to building strategies to strengthen relationships between franchisees and local customers, the more likely they are to be profitable and successful.
Here are our top tips for franchise marketing.
1) Establish your branding and maintain brand consistency
Franchise units must learn to succeed independently, despite being associated with their parent brand. Maintaining brand consistency through the same colors, logos, and materials helps establish credibility and trust in your business. Even while maintaining brand consistency, franchisors can work with local businesses to set different marketing tactics, tones, and brand images for their specific customer base.
To create brand consistency, create a style guide for your brand. Using this guide across locations ensures that franchisees stick to the rules for marketing and sales operations. Here are a few things you can include in the style guide:
Logos: Include appropriate sizes or color options for using your logo.
Fonts: Include company font styles in bold, italics, and regular formats.
Grammar: When it comes to writing, lay out your style rules and regulations for language mechanics, punctuation, abbreviations, and capitalization.
Image sizes and styles: Include image suggestions for both print and digital materials.
Boilerplate: This section is your company’s mission statement and “about us” section.
Social media practices: Be sure to include regulations for social media tone, voice, and written content by platform.
2) Target local audiences
One of the best strategies for growing your franchise is targeting local audiences. Customers’ interests and needs often vary depending on location, so over-generalizing could quickly lower your business’s sales. Many regions have specific tastes in food, clothing, or services. You may benefit from offering different products or services in different locations. Identify which products and services customers in specific areas are more likely to purchase, and customize marketing strategies. To identify target audiences, examine each location your franchisees have set up a business and analyze local customer preferences.
3) Collect and manage franchisee data
Data management is the process of collecting, organizing, and using different data sets to help you better understand your franchisees. By researching and analyzing franchisee information, such as locations, revenue, and number of franchise units owned by the same entity, you can increase conversion rates in specific areas and encourage more franchisees to sign up with your business. Perhaps you’ll discover new, unique information that can set your franchise apart from competitors, such as how visitors to your website browse through products, or locations where you think a franchise unit would succeed.
4) Stay connected throughout the customer journey
Another excellent franchise marketing strategy is connecting to your customers at every step. Many customers want a personalized user experience throughout their purchasing journey. Try to stay connected to your customers no matter where they are on the purchasing journey. This means strengthening your communication efforts through multiple channels and devices, from social media or online communication to emails and text messages. Building a solid relationship with your customers ensures they understand that you care about their experience.
5) Local marketing
For many franchise brands, local marketing is one of the best ways to increase revenue and grow their business. Discover the best ways to manage local customer data through search engines, social media, online directories, and aggregators. Franchisors should create strategies every franchisee can adjust for their location. Here are a few ways franchisees can keep up with local marketing:
Displays: Create displays based on local customers’ wants and needs.
Video ads: Create localized video ads for customers in their area.
Geofencing: Use geofencing to locate relevant places and customers to keep up with competitors’ locations and promote repeat sales.
6) Stand out from your competition
When it comes to content marketing, your franchise must stand out from the competition. Many franchisors compete with similar businesses that offer food, products, and services that compare with their own. To stand out from the competition, teach your franchisees to use tools such as geotargeting to ensure marketing efforts don’t overlap with other franchisee locations. This provides fair advertising for each store.
7) Make sure your franchisees promote a positive brand image
Ensuring a consistent brand image across franchise units is another excellent strategy for growing your business. Creating consistency saves franchisees from spending time and money coming up with new advertising materials or brand logos and colors. Customers also benefit from consistent branding across franchise units, as similar information and logos help companies retain customers and encourage brand recognition.
Start by enforcing consistent messaging and advertisements across all locations to ensure your franchisees promote a positive brand image. While franchisees may advertise different products depending on their location, the colors, images, and logos will be the same. Encourage positive brand images through good storytelling in advertising, emails, or social media platforms.
8) Encourage customer reviews and respond to them
As a franchisor, have your franchisees monitor online reviews and encourage customers to respond to products and services. Check out Facebook, Yelp, or Google for positive and negative reviews and reply accordingly. By showing that your company can engage with customer reviews, your franchisees are more likely to succeed.
9) Track the impact of your marketing efforts
To track your marketing efforts, keep a log of how much you spend on advertising or your social media connections. You can also track inquiries, specialized outcomes, or customer purchases. Some franchisors may also record subjective areas related to local businesses.
10) Choose the right marketing tools and CRM for your business
A reliable CRM system allows franchises to manage their company’s connections, strengthen existing client relationships, and search for potential customers. Improving your brand’s relationship with franchisees and their local communities can help you grow and enhance your sales and marketing initiatives. A CRM system organizes your customer information from across the country and enables you to manage and view customer data throughout their purchasing decisions.
This article originally appeared on FranConnect’s website and is used here with permission.
FranConnect is a leading franchise management and multi-location management software provider. The FranConnect platform has served as the sales, operations, and marketing backbone for more than 1,500 brands in 18 countries over the past 20 years. Customers, who span all sizes, growth phases, and industries, have been shown to grow 44% faster on average than the broader franchising market. For more information, visit franconnect.com.
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