Marketing advise
From prospect to profitable franchisee
Sarah Cook reveals how and why franchisors should build an integrated marketing plan to boost recruitment
Research shows that prospective franchisees go through a long decision-making process when choosing to buy a franchise. Franchisors can do a lot to help their prospects along the way from prospect to franchisee by utilising various marketing activities.
Marketing on EVERY level
I often get asked: What can I do to boost franchise enquiries? Which is the best magazine? Which is the best recruitment website? Which is the best franchise show? Should I look outside the franchise industry to attract prospects? The answer is always the same: you can effectively market your business if you follow an integrated marketing plan, set solid objectives and measure your results, tweak and repeat.
However, many fail on the fundamentals of any good marketing: setting objectives. All objectives should be SMART: Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed. In basic terms this means that you have a plan you can look back on and see if you achieved what you set out to do.
Setting objectives
I tend to look at the next six to 12 months when planning franchisee recruitment. We all work within such a changing and growing dynamic business environment, which has made five year plans too vague to be of real value. By focusing on the short to medium term, you can set some realistic objectives and make changes within your business that make a real difference to your bottom line.
Most franchisors' objectives tend to focus on franchise recruitment figures, and want more franchisees. By setting SMART objectives you change this objective to ‘I want to grow my franchise network from 20 to 30 in the next 12 months'. This then means you work back from this point. On average, a franchisor needs to attract 100 enquiries to find one to two good franchisees, therefore (taking the above SMART objective example) up to 1,000 enquiries need to be generated within the 12-month period. These can be broken down by month and then by specific activity. When planning your marketing this breaks it up into bite-sized chunks easy to analyse and digest. It also helps you make hard decisions over where to spend your budget.
Start with a consistent message
Once you have made the decision to build an integrated marketing plan, you need to start by aligning all your communications through making sure your ‘marketing collateral' is spot on, or as I like to put it ‘marketing house keeping'! These include:
- Online recruitment profile (listings on websites).
- Any promotional franchise literature, such as a four-page franchise overview flyer.
- Your franchise prospectus.
- Your own website information.
- Your franchise case studies.
Across all your communications and within your marketing collateral, you should have a consistent message. This means the right (current and most up to date) facts, figures and statistics about your franchise, recent and/or relevant case studies and information about your franchise.
There is nothing worse for someone searching for a franchise, than to come across different profiles with different images and out of date statistics. Afterall, they are looking for a company they can trust with their hard earned money and mentor them through their business development towards a profitable future. So make sure you set a time to review all your marketing collateral and ensure it is reviewed on a six to 12 month basis.
Build a communication plan
If you fail to plan to communicate with your prospects you fail to communicate effectively at all. Corporate communication requires planning and how you do this is largely up to you as long as what you decide to do sits within a communications plan framework. For example, you may choose to break your communications down into groups containing new franchise prospects and existing franchise prospects. The messages you give to these two groups will be different because they have reached a different stage in their decision-making process.
Existing prospects
This group of people need to be kept ‘warm'. I always recommend implementing some sort of regular ‘keep warm' activity into your integrated marketing plan. This means that on a monthly basis, your prospect database hears from you in some way. It may be that you choose to invite them to an event, call them for a progress check or simply send out an e-newsletter. Communication with this group needs to be aligned with your recruitment process (ie, how you plan to move them from enquiry to franchisee).
New prospects
New contacts need to have a great experience. They will usually be contacting other franchisors at the same time, so those who respond quickly in a friendly informative manner will win the prospects confidence and start to build a relationship.
High level decisions should be made as to when prospects receive your prospectus, how they are engaged with, when they are invited to a discovery day and what key qualifying questions should be asked at what time.
You should always start by defining the profile of your ideal franchisee. Start by looking at your existing franchise network: what are their backgrounds, skills, interests, ages and how did they find out about you. This will help you understand who you should be targeting and what sort of messages they will respond best to.
Marketing plan
In my previous feature, I touched upon ways to deliver an integrated marketing plan. We like to host ours online in a spreadsheet format that takes the viewer through the company's marketing activities, month by month. This enables the user to drill down into weekly tasks yet still see the larger picture through the 12-month strategy (and its SMART objectives).
Overall, it makes sense that anyone would invest time and energy into making a decision about buying a franchised business. With so many available on the market, so many price points, revenue streams, brands within different sectors and markets to choose from, it requires careful planning and marketing to attract the right people to your franchise for mutual long-term profitable growth.
Request your template copy of Coconut Creatives free Integrated Marketing Plan, by emailing Sarah Cook:
sarah@coconutcreatives.co.uk
or call 01963 360896.
Qualification criteria apply.
