The franchising industry is growing. In fact, there are about 300 companies that opt to franchise annually. This industry is responsible for giving jobs to over eight million people.
In this sense, the competition for customers in this sector can be cut-throat, making it difficult to grow the franchise.
However, if you want to stand out from the crowd and maximize your return on investment, you need a powerful digital marketing strategy that consists of a strong franchise marketing plan.
Learn all about it in this blog post.
What is Franchise Marketing?
Simply put, franchise marketing is any form of activity that you engage in that actively grows your business.
This may include anything from digital marketing to public relations.
The goal of franchise marketing is to increase brand awareness and drive revenue among your franchisees.
Basically, franchise marketing can be broken into two separate sections:
Operational Franchise Marketing
This is the marketing activity that you and your franchisees do in an effort to acquire new customers and attain them. Some examples include:
Franchise Development Marketing
This is the marketing activity that you (the franchisor) perform in an effort to sell additional franchise locations to prospective franchisees and grow your overall franchise business.
While franchise marketing can indeed be broken down into categories, the truth of the matter is there will be some overlap. After all, the goal is the same: to grow your franchise business.
What are the Essential Elements of a Franchise Marketing Strategy?
Your franchise marketing strategy is an important part of taking your brand to the next level.
Here are just a few elements that your franchise marketing strategy plan should incorporate.
Identify Your Buyer
Before you can dive too deep into a franchise marketing plan, you must know your audience.
You can have the greatest franchise in the world, but it won’t do you any good if you don’t know who your target buyer is.
Successful franchise marketing truly boils down to knowing and narrowing your audience. After all, doing this will help to maximize your ROI on your marketing efforts.
If you’re new to the game, you can get some of your insights from identifying who the target customer is of similar franchises.
Check out the profiles of commenters on their blogs. The goal is to gain as much information as you can into who your customers may be and then refine all of that data so you’re able to create content based on your buyer persona profiles.
Understanding Online Marketing Platforms
Regardless of whether you are a franchisor or franchisee, it is imperative that you familiarize yourself with the various digital marketing channels available to you.
You have everything from search engine marketing to social media marketing.
You must determine which channels are best suited to your particular brand. It is a waste of time to simply get on all platforms, as they may not all be beneficial to you.
For example, if you own a bakery franchise, social media may be a great platform for you. However, it may be the most ideal for a cloud computing franchise.
Consider what you’re selling and your target audience when determining the main channel you should market on.
Establish a Budget
If you fail to set a budget, you may find yourself spending more than you can afford on your marketing efforts.
Ideally, your goal is going to rely heavily on your available resources and your end goals.
Unfortunately, you likely won’t have a large enough budget to tackle everything at once. Therefore, you must strategize.
One thing you don’t want to do is limit your marketing budget to promotional materials, advertisements, etc. Don’t forget about market research, product development, and public relations.
Be Consistent
Consistency is truly key in franchise marketing.
While you may use different approaches based on the platform you’re using, such as only text on Twitter and more videos on Facebook, you must be consistent in all branding.
This is true for both franchisors and franchisees.
Focus on maintaining consistency with your logos, colors, fonts, and tone.
This may mean creating a brand manual that can go out to everyone involved in the franchise to help ensure everyone is on the same page.
Consistency will help you build a strong brand identity, which is necessary for increased brand and customer awareness and overall credibility.
How to Create a Franchise Marketing Plan
When it comes time to create a franchise marketing plan, don’t forget that this strategy is for you, your franchisees, and your overall business.
Therefore, you want to consider how your plan will bring your overall goals to light.
Here are six steps to creating a successful franchise marketing plan for your business.
1. Create Clear Brand Guidelines
In order for your franchise marketing plan to work well, you must identify brand guidelines that are clear and easy to understand.
These guidelines will be part of your brand/franchise manual.
Your guidelines should feature different sections, including a brand overview that gives your franchisees a good picture of the franchise’s brand identity.
With that being said, your history, vision, and values should all be incorporated into this section.
Further, you should never have brand guidelines that do not include a mission statement, appearance guidelines, and operational instructions.
In order for consistency to be created among all of your franchises, your franchisees must have access to everything that makes your brand.
2. Know Your Target Audience
As a franchise, there is a good chance that you will have different categories of customers with varying demographics and personas.
However, you don’t want to just spend your marketing dollars advertising to everyone — even those who are less likely to be interested in your brand.
Therefore, to create a successful franchise marketing plan, you must know your target audience.
Keep in mind, though, you aren’t only marketing to customers; you are also marketing to entrepreneurs and business professionals who may be interested in starting their own business.
Because of your varying target audience, you may need to alter your messaging a bit when targeting a certain part of your audience.
3. Make Use of Local SEO
Local marketing is crucial to the success of your franchises.
While this is part of your basic marketing strategy, it is imperative that you provide your franchisees with the materials and resources necessary to succeed locally.
Each franchise location should have its own local-based landing page and local business listings. In addition, the web content and blogs should be optimized to that franchise’s particular locale.
While the franchise brand may be established well, the truth of the matter is that you must do the work to establish the individual location on a local level.
4. Direct Mail Isn’t Dead
Digital marketing will serve as the backbone of your overall success and will take considerable time and effort, but you also need to consider the potential of direct mail.
It is still a very powerful marketing tool that can prove to be beneficial for certain industries.
One of the most important reasons to utilize direct mail for local franchises is because it can help you target your customer base.
Don’t assume everyone is online. Some people still prefer and appreciate offline marketing and communication.
5. Personalize and Automate Your Marketing Efforts
The user experience can make or break your success.
So personalized marketing is a great way to capture the attention of prospective customers. People like to know they are valued, and personalization can do that.
To make your marketing efforts easier, automate them.
This does not mean that your marketing will become impersonal or robotic. Instead, it simply allows you the chance to focus on your target audience and provide them with personalized content.
6. Get Your Story Out There
One of the most effective marketing tools that you can have at your side is impeccable storytelling.
It aids in showing your audience that you are authentic and transparent. This can help to build both brand awareness and trust among your customer base.
While offering low prices is great, you don’t want that to be the reason why your customers choose you.
Instead, you want to be able to say that your customers choose to do business with you because of your story — the why behind what you do.
Ideally, you need to tell your story so that customers can relate to it and develop a connection.
Therefore, you want to avoid coming off salesly. In addition, your story should be part of all of your marketing materials in one way or another, especially your website and social media platforms.
Wrap Up
All in all, creating a successful franchise marketing plan will start and end with your ideal customer.
You need to take the time and do the research to learn who your ideal customer is, where they can be found, and how you can make a connection to them.
After that, you have the capability of creating a strong brand identity that can not only help you improve brand cognition but also generate profits by keeping your marketing channels and budget in mind.
Moving forward, conversions will play a huge role in your overall success.
How is your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? Find out ways to improve your CRO.
