Creating a Successful Franchise Marketing Strategy

One of the most important jobs of franchisors is to create and maintain a successful marketing strategy. A well though marketing plan may mean the difference between a prosperous business and bankruptcy. Developing a good marketing plan doesn’t necessarily require a lot of money. You may need some professional advice and guidance (BIA/Kelsey advisers may be a good help) especially if you do not have any previous experience in creating full marketing plans, but you can still get most of the work done yourself.

Issues to address when preparing a franchise marketing plan

The first thing that you need to keep in mind when creating your marketing plan is your goal. Knowing and picturing what you would like to achieve in one, two of five years will give you the clue of how to write a good marketing plan. Are you looking to establish your franchise locally or you are looking for nationwide or overseas expansion?

Identifying who your potential franchisees are is also vital. Knowing who your customers are will help you target your marketing activities into reaching the optimum number of sales. It will also help you establish reasonable franchise fees and royalties. You can research other franchise businesses offering similar products and services and see who their franchisees are.

Your marketing plan should include a great advertising strategy as well. There is a significant difference between advertising a franchise and advertising any other consumer targeted business. Often DYI franchisors fail to prepare good advertising plan just because they do not have the knowledge and the experience. You can either hire a professional franchise advertising consultant company. There are also some legal requirements that must be met in order to stay out of trouble.

Set a budget and stick to it. Working within strictly defined financial borders may be crucial for success of your business. Many franchises fail because they try to compete directly with large and well established businesses offering similar products or services. I fact you do not need to match your marketing budget with their in order to achieve great results. Work on product differentiation instead and try to find unique ways to promote your franchise.

Once you launch your business, try to gather as much information as possible from your franchisees. This will give you plenty of ideas how to develop your marketing strategy further.

How to Market Your Franchise Business

A franchise business cannot become successful or grow rapidly unless it is marketed well. No matter how good your products or services are, no matter how good operational systems you have in place, no matter how devoted your management team is, you will never succeed if you do not employ a good marketing strategy.

There are many ways to market a franchise business. The strategy that you are going to implement should suit your business type, match your goals and reach your prospective franchisees. Here are some tips that can help you reach these objectives.

Franchise marketing tips.

• Determine who your prospective franchisees are. Similar to determining who the prospective buyers of a product or a service are, you need to determine who is likely to be interested in your franchise. There are many different types of franchise buyers and you cannot target them all. Segmenting the market and finding your marketing niche will help you a lot when you start preparing your marketing plan. Do this well in advance so that you can be 100% ready when you launch your franchise.

• Work on your credibility. Regardless of how good your marketing strategy is, it will not bring you a lot of franchisees if you do not manage to make your business credible. There are many factors influencing business credibility – how long you have been into business, how large your company is, what the quality of your products or services is, do you have superb customer service practice and so on. Make sure these are reflected in every single part of your marketing strategy and advertising materials.

• Do not underestimate the power of advertising. There are many different channels of advertising. You can promote your franchise by distributing brochures, attending industry exhibitions, posting magazine and newspaper ads, creating advertising for television and radio, advertise online. You should not ignore even a single marketing channel. Of course this doesn’t mean that you should use all possible advertising channels or at least not at the same time. Which marketing strategy you will employ will depend on your prospective franchisees, your goals and your marketing budget. You should also research how your direct competitors are advertising and see if you can do better.

• Internet. Internet is presenting franchisors with unlimited marketing opportunities, often costing just a fraction of traditional advertising. Put some effort into exploring these opportunities – create a nice company websites, contribute content to industry related web portals or advertise online.

• Word of mouth. Definitely one of the most powerful marketing tools is word of mouth. A happy and successful franchisee is worth thousands of dollars into advertising. Try to keep positive and good relationship with your unit owners and you will quickly see a lot of applications for new franchises. You should also be able to supervise closely how your franchisees are running their units to make sure each one is keeping up to the standards of your name.

Marketing Your Franchise Based System

Until you have sold your first franchise you won’t know the cause and effect of your marketing efforts. As soon as the first franchise is sold and all the paperwork has been signed and the check is in your hand, business starts to make its mark and rear its capitalist head. Funny statement, but nonetheless true.
Think of the process by which you made that first franchise sale. You began with some advertising either by print, media or word of mouth. Still the message you had something for sale made its way to the right person. Often the first buyer is an employee of your newly franchised business. Now the fun begins. With the sale come the after-effects of making sure it is flowing in the proper direction – towards profit.
With franchising, most franchisors won’t see a return until they have sold a number of franchises and this takes some advertising. When it comes to advertising nothing is more effective than doing so in a large enough group. With 10 or more franchises comes a lower ROI when it comes to advertising dollars. If all 10 franchises were putting in a fair portion of advertising costs it then lowers the cost for all members yet increases the market share.

All franchises should have some form of Advertising Agreement and are typically the rules by which to follow when forming an advertising coalition or small media group between franchisees. You as the franchisor grant the right to the franchisees to form an advertising group and use their advertising dollars as they see fit. All of this and more should be in that contract and will often determine final say on verbiage and design. Check your marketing contract contained within your FDD, it speaks volumes on how a franchisor operates and control paperwork.