FRANCHISE MARKETING SYSTEM
Looking for opportunities to expand your business? Turning your small business into a franchise might be of great help.
Franchising your small business can be an exceptional way to expand without investing considerable amounts of capital or entering unfamiliar and unexplored markets.
Franchising should be done rather carefully, using a stable business plan, with carefully picked franchise owners and strong management controls.
Keeping franchisees moving in the same management and keeping them motivated can be challenging but is essential to ensure the success of your growing business.
Franchise endowments have been seen to grow by 1.9 percent in recent years. The gross domestic product of the sector is forecast to increase by 6.1 percent reaching $451 billion. Franchise business output will also increase by 6.2 percent to $757 billion.
Franchise Brand Marketing
Before advancing towards the task of developing a franchise marketing plan, it is important to lay the appropriate preliminaries to ensure the functioning and success of the final pan. This involves the task of building the business wholesome in itself to the point that it runs well, functions efficiently, and generates sufficient revenue to establish and carry off a wide-scale marketing initiative.
The first step is to systemize and standardize the products and operating procedures in use at all the existing franchise locations. Doing so will create the kind of flexibility and adaptability required to establish a brand image, which is a crucial part of any successful franchise marketing plan.
You can begin by precisely giving an account of and defining the products and services that will be a part of the franchise's integrity. It should include a handbook that includes step-by-step guidance to ensure that every single location will provide a well-defined, repeatable experience to the customers. A perfect example may be found in Starbucks's beverage manual, which includes step-by-step procedures and instructions on how to prepare every single product the chain offers.
It assures to maintain the authenticity down to the smallest detail, such as topping patterns and the proper way to add whipped cream to a beverage. In this way, it becomes possible to provide a similar experience to every customer, at every time, and in every location.
Once standards have been set, the next step is to make sure that the employees entrusted with the task of maintaining those standards know how to work collectively to sustain those standards in all the facets of operations. It is necessary to provide rigorous training for all front-line staff, as well as building a practice of collaboration that encourages teamwork and a cooperative effort to sustain excellence.
These efforts will also help form the basis of a franchisee training system, which will help to mend successful new owners that can efficiently run new locations that maintain the same high standards as the original.
Franchise Marketing system success tips
Once the business is in a state to support a large marketing effort, it is time to begin sketching a franchise marketing plan. It is important to remember that a franchise marketing plan is meant to serve dual purposes:
To promote the brand in the mind of the consumer.
To attract potential franchisees.
Those two simultaneous goals can be accomplished by adhering to the following important systems.
Brand standardization is paramount
When it comes to franchise marketing, all major efforts will revolve around describing your brand to the consumer to establish a brand identity and encourage consumer engagement. To maximize the effects of these efforts, consumers must have a uniform experience at every touchpoint regardless of the franchise location. This is the reason operational consistency is identified as being of great importance.
In marketing disciplines, the same holds good. Presenting a consolidated brand message means creating a comprehensive brand book that franchisees can follow. This helps to discourage individual franchisees from going off message in an attempt to differentiate their location and making any differentiation. It also means securing a process whereby individual franchisees can participate in preparing marketing initiatives at the corporate level. That will help ensure buy-in and allow them access to a path to brand innovation that will keep things fresh and lively.
Social media is an elemental marketing channel
For franchises, social media offers a direct line of communications to targeted audiences. It helps the franchise to establish a brand temperament and create a two-way dialogue with consumers that provide relevant feedback and an opportunity for personalized messaging. Franchises must emphasize their social media presence so they can make the most out of what is now a primary marketing channel.
A franchisee's marketing effort proves an established relationship with consumers. It can help them overcome countless other market challenges, and allow a franchise to penetrate deep into the marketall while increasing its exposure and market share.
Location-specific personalized marketing
Although it is significant to maintain brand standardization across the entire franchise system, that doesn't mean that the franchise marketing plan shouldn't have the opportunity for personalization. One of the best ways to incorporate personalization is to give franchisees the mechanisms and knowledge they need to run their own, location-specific email marketing operations and direct customer outreach development. In most cases, it is best accomplished by selecting and rendering a turnkey CRM system that will help individual locations track and engage their customers.
When selecting the platform to build around, it is important to acknowledge the fact that the implemented systems will need to operate in consent with one another as well as function independently. In addition, it's crucial to encourage franchisees to embrace the maximum amount of marketing mechanization possible to keep the total cost of ownership of each location economical and attractive. It is necessary to maintain a high degree of marketing workflow automation while simultaneously providing back-end business assistance and data analysis functionality. Taken together, the features included in the system act as a force multiplier for each location, helping them to increase the ROI of their marketing expense.
Marketing must provide definite ROI for franchisees
When creating a franchise marketing plan, it's necessary to realize that the market plan serves multiple purposes.
The first purpose is to promote the brand and establish a reputable market positioning.
The second purpose is to deliver consistent and conclusive ROI to franchisees, who will be the primary underwriters of the marketing effort through a monthly fee structure.
Most franchisees will build an ongoing marketing fee into their franchise financing plans, the ongoing value of the marketing plan must be definite and quantifiable.
To demonstrate the ROI of the primary marketing efforts, it is important to establish a clear coding composition that allows for the tracking of overall results. A franchise-wide sales and any coupons associated with them should contain an embedded tracking report to permit a thorough review of results. In that way, the business can provide monthly data to franchisees that show them exactly where their marketing fees are used and how it is affecting their bottom line.
Conclusion
Any business owner who makes sure to build the proper foundations for their franchise and constructs a franchise marketing plan that satisfies the principles mentioned here will persist a good chance of establishing their brand in the minds of consumers while simultaneously creating an attractive opportunity for potential franchisees.
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