With the advent of countless digital platforms, enterprises are forced to invest in digital marketing to maintain consistent growth. As all franchise owners understand that operating an enterprise business is one thing, but duplicating the company’s success across demographics is entirely another challenge.
As the franchise landscape is getting more competitive, enterprise business owners must create coherent franchise marketing tactics to convey a unified brand message effectively across locations and connect with the target audience.
What is franchise marketing?
Franchise marketing refers to the tactics and marketing strategies franchisees and franchisors use to attract new customers or clients to increase brand awareness and drive significant revenue to their franchise organization.
How to do franchise marketing?
1. Create campaign goals
Clearly define the goals so later you can measure the campaign’s performance and effectiveness in accordance with goals.
2. Concentrate on brand standardization
Brand consistency is paramount when it comes to franchise marketing. You must have a comprehensive brand book and a unified brand message that franchisees can follow.
3. Segment audience
Marketers must consider the service and product’s best features, which channels can catch the potential customer’s attention, how the audience came across the website or location, and why they didn’t choose the competitor. Answering these questions will help marketers make the campaigns more personalized.
4. Leverage multiple marketing channels
Marketers must determine which channels will work best for the franchise. Then, prioritize the channels and allocate sufficient budget and time to reach as many customers as possible.
5. Measure the campaign’s results
Analyze how many leads came from which franchise location. Track how the audience behaves when they reach a specific page. Measure these results and improve the future campaigns accordingly.
What are the key metrics to measure franchise acquisition costs for the franchisor?
1. Franchisee acquisition cost’s marketing percent
This metric uses the new franchisee’s total cost to distill what part of the cost is mainly coming from marketing. If this percentage increases too much over time, tweaking the strategy should be a top priority of marketers. To calculate this, add together total sales and marketing costs and divide by the number of new franchisees.
2. The percentage of new franchises acquired from marketing
This metric shows how many new customers the marketing team is driving by determining the number of new customers acquired from marketing. To calculate this, divide the number of franchisees who started as marketing leads by the number of new franchisees.
3. The percentage of new franchises influenced by marketing
This metric allows marketers to illustrate the ability of marketing’s influence on potential leads during the franchise sales process. To measure this, divide the number of new franchisees by the number of franchisees who interacted with the marketing team.
What are the top ways to do franchise marketing for the franchisor and franchisee?
1. Website
The first platform brands and marketers utilize for franchise marketing is the website since it helps potential franchisees discover the franchise, learn about the brand and become paying customers.
2. Social media
Marketers must leverage multiple social media platforms, especially Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, to interact with the potential audience in a non-sales-focused way to help build the franchisee pipeline.
3. PPC advertising
PPC advertising allows marketers to connect with the potential audience in front of competitors at the right time and will enable them to transform the PPC campaign into a lead generation machine.
4. Direct mail
Like any marketing channel, direct mail can be utilized to grow the franchise effectively. However, it should be planned meticulously and tracked closely. Therefore, marketers should use a laser-focused approach to target potential franchisees rather than implement a shotgun pray and spray strategy.
5. Associations
Partnering up with associations like International Franchise Association or Franchise.org will allow the enterprise to gain credibility and provide professional development resources, including seminars, webinars, and conferences.
6. Trade shows
By attending trade shows, whether they’re industry-specific events or franchise-focused trade shows, business owners can connect with numerous people in which few may end up being potential future franchisees.
7. Franchise portals
Franchise portals are websites having a directory of multiple franchise opportunities based on several factors such as location, investment size, and sector.
8. Brokers
Working with franchise brokers like Franchise Broker Association is an excellent way to expand reach quickly when acquiring new franchisees.
9. Sponsorships
Sponsorships can help with both franchise marketing and operational marketing. In addition, marketers can target entrepreneurial and business-focused sponsorship opportunities in areas they want the business to expand into.
10. Marketing automation
It’s one of the robust marketing tactics that marketers must use in franchise marketing strategy. With the proper execution, it allows marketers to nurture potential franchisees by offering them with personalized touchpoints at scale.
Moreover, the franchisor-franchise relationship is unique in the business arena. The franchise model needs unity while encouraging autonomy, which leads to a complicated environment to maintain. Coordinating franchise marketing initiatives within that model can also be challenging. But to achieve success, franchisees must maintain the appropriate balance in executing key strategies given by the headquarters franchisor marketing department.
Additionally, franchisors must provide a brand style guide to all franchisees for content publication along with strategic guidance. Cooperation between franchisees and franchisers is critical to success. However, not all strategies are created equal. Franchise marketing is multi-faceted and needs multiple skill-sets. National campaigns should be a prime focus for franchisors that require large budgets and digital enterprise. Local campaigns should be the prime focus of franchisees that needs area knowledge and personalization. Ultimately, it will result in a highly coordinated enterprise plan.
What are some of the best examples of franchise marketing?
Subway
Subway announced a marketing campaign named “make it what you want.” The campaign utilized live-action and fan-generated content during the Olympic Games on February 15 to showcase people living their best lives. The purpose of the campaign was to encourage individuality and customization.
Jiffy Lube
Jiffy Lube launched an advertising campaign named “In. Out. On your way.” That campaign aimed to promote the company’s convenient and fast vehicle services. The campaign was created in 10 seconds segments to respect the viewer’s time by featuring preventive vehicle maintenance and drive-in, drive-out service.
College Hunks Hauling Junk
The franchisees once uploaded a simple video online showing their workday. Few people recorded the crew working, where they went, etc. It turned out to be an excellent marketing initiative, and then all employees were advised to upload that video on their Facebook page.
IHOP
IHOP was considered one of the best breakfast destinations for its pancakes. Then, it launched a teaser campaign to replace the brand name with IHOb, which generated a huge buzz on social media. The purpose of that campaign was to promote the brand’s new line of burgers, specifically designed to lure in people during lunchtime and the campaign was a huge success.
Why it’s high time to leverage franchise marketing to level up your business
Franchise marketing is crucial whether you are a marketer or a franchise owner. Franchise marketing utilizes many of the same tactics as traditional small business marketing. However, there’re some key differences:
- Franchisees get guides from parent companies in their marketing efforts.
- Sometimes franchisees have limited access to some marketing channels.
- Marketing at one location impacts sales at others.
One of the key benefits of well-organized franchise marketing is that it maximizes lead generation. Besides that, it offers critical analytics to help marketers analyze the strengths and weaknesses and adopt strategies accordingly. Furthermore, it’s crucial to adapt to changing situations. For instance, if a franchise is using SEO only to generate potential leads and traffic, it will be tricky to appear on top results on search engines once you fall behind on the updated algorithm patterns. For example, Google constantly updates its strategies and SEO rules. Therefore, it’s essential to keep up with these changes. An experienced marketer will know how to tackle these situations effectively to ensure to get all potential leads.
Conclusion
Understanding the role of franchisee’s individual marketing efforts in relation to the parent enterprise is crucial in improving the campaign’s quality and generating valuable conversions.
Creating a franchise marketing strategy based on service offerings, entity’s budget, seasonality, and competition level will help business owners to get the most value from their franchise marketing investment.
Growing a franchise is challenging; however, you’ll find success by being ROI-centric, leveraging those channels, like SEO, that drive the most profitable results, and constantly testing and improving.
Milestone increases acquisition by enhancing digital experience and increasing content visibility. Contact us at [email protected] or call us at 408-200-2211.
