3 Keys To Attracting Qualified Candidates to Your Franchise Development Process

Editor’s Note: In these post-pandemic days of accelerated change and uncertainty, some things remain constant. One of them is the critical role recruiting top-quality franchisees plays in a franchise system’s success. This article by FranConnect from 2 years ago (April 2021) focuses on three things franchisors can (and must) do to grow both today and over the longer term. As someone once said, “Good taste is timeless.” So are best practices.

Whether you are a growing franchise or managing a multi-brand, large corporation, you need to spend your time on what matters. You know technology can help you be more efficient and effective, but there also are old-school principles that are important to master.

For example, one of the best things you can do for your franchise development team is to build a franchise recruitment website that is a high-functioning sales tool. Candidates who land on your website should be able to quickly identify if your brand appeals to them through engaging content, easy navigation, and discoverable information before guiding them to complete an inquiry with full transparency of their next steps.

Assuming you have taken those measures, the next step is getting the right candidates to your website in the first place. Whether you are working with a marketing team or on your own, evaluate the following three areas for improvement.

1. Define your target prospect

It’s very difficult to be specific about who fits with your brand. Each brand is unique in its culture and operational processes, and therefore the type of candidates who have success.
Evaluate franchisees who are successful and create a candidate persona. By specifying who you want to attract, you can create content that attracts those candidates to your site, which helps qualify them before they even enter your funnel. To develop a persona for your target prospects, ask these types of questions:

• What type of job or career have they pursued?
• What is/was their income level?
• What do they do in their free time? What do they read?

You get the idea. The point is to put yourself in their shoes and really figure out who your ideal candidates are. You can even go so far as to identify your persona with a name, age, gender, and marital status. By doing so, you will unlock insights that will help you attract those candidates to your concept.

2. Get comfortable with website analytics

With your website as your leading source of leads—including qualified leads—it’s important to understand the analytics behind your website so you can focus on the things that work. Don’t publish a development website and never return to it. It’s important to continually evaluate which pages are generating qualified inquiries so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Even if you work with a marketing team that focuses on website analytics, it’s important you have insight as well. Make it a monthly habit to obsess about these leading indicators:

• Conversion rate of pages
• Time on site and bounce rate (monthly average)
• Number of inbound linking domains
• Total new leads/form submissions (per month)
• Time on top-performing pages
• Number of visits/unique visitors (monthly average)
• Top-performing keywords (in terms of rank, traffic, and lead generation)

The last bullet point cannot be emphasized enough. Conduct a full SEO audit, as this is the number-one tool in your arsenal that guarantees you will attract the right audience.

3. Develop your marketing plan

This topic is a full book on its own. Regardless, the message here is that if you execute on #1 and #2 above and create an in-depth guide for the marketing team, it will be much easier to target the right audience, create an effective content marketing plan, and identify the best places to allocate your marketing budget.

In turn, measuring the results of channels, such as franchise portals, digital ad spend, events, and referrals, will be based on how many of your leads match the persona you have developed. If the leads are not matching the persona, reevaluate the channel or how you are using it.

Mastering the above principles will help ensure not just that you are getting the right people in the door to grow your franchise, but that your investments are being directed toward attracting the right people.

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.