Effective marketing towards franchisees

Maximise your pulling potential: Effective marketing towards franchisees

SELL: Franchisee recruitment is on the tip of every franchisor’s tongue. What is the best strategy? Which are the best websites? What magazines or newspapers bring the highest return and how do you get the balance of marketing activities right for your franchise?

In our second marketing feature, marketing specialist, Sarah Dyer, explains the essential areas a franchisor should consider when marketing towards prospective franchisees
Without doubt, franchisee recruitment is continually one of main concerns for any franchisor. Unlike conventional recruitment, franchisee recruitment depends, not only on finding the right person for the job, but also having someone willing to invest a large sum of money in your franchise. Your marketing technique, therefore, needs to convince your potential franchisee that you really are the one for them. They need to feel happy and secure about investing in you. It is a great challenge, but here is how you can begin to tackle franchisee recruitment, both confidently and convincingly.

First step: Establish your objectives

One of the best ways to begin is to decide realistically about what you want to achieve over the next 12 months. Ensure your plans are specific, measurable and timed. Once they have been set, a plan to achieve them can be considered. There are many different strategies that can be used and work well. By creating a plan, you will then be able to book your advertising and organise your PR, which can save you money by enabling you to get better deals and opportunities.

Different methods of marketing

Online or Offline?
A solid mix of online and offline advertising is one of the best ways to build a strong foundation for your franchisee recruitment campaign.

As there are many different websites to choose from; always look at how they are currently performing against each other. The top performing website six months ago may not still be the best choice for your recruitment campaign now. Ideally, use at least one recruitment website for a minimum of three months to maximise your impact.

The beauty with online advertising is that it can be easily measured. You can track click throughs and, budget permitting, you can gather data from users who click through onto your site. By assessing your online marketing campaign in this way you can monitor how effective it is in helping you achieve your objectives.

Offline opportunities also depend on the budget available and amount of franchisees required. National magazines targeting entrepreneurs are great for brand building and raising awareness of your campaign. National newspapers cover franchising comprehensively and often have sections dedicated to franchising.

Exhibitions

Exhibitions offer a captive audience for franchisors looking to recruit franchisees. This is an ideal opportunity to use your franchise network by inviting a current franchisee to represent the network at the exhibition. Prospective franchisees are usually more receptive when they have an opportunity to talk to someone actually running their own franchise.

Top tips:

•    Staff:
o    Friendly faces are the best way to attract people to your stand so select key staff carefully. It sounds a bit boring but ensure all stand staff have matching uniforms
o    Ensure that everyone on the stand is fresh and enthusiastic and in order to maintain this and allow regular breaks. More than 3 hours at a time without a break is not recommended
o    It is also good to employ a policy of no mobile phones, eating, drinking or sitting down while on the stand to maximise focus and opportunities to talk to the visitors

•    Fun and games:
o    Interactive games and competitions on your stand help draw people to you. Ensure your stand is inviting. You can really get creative with this!

•    Literature:
o    Don’t give too much out. Most visitors will go home with bagfuls of information and it is doubtful if your information will stand out

•    Visitor data:
o    Do ensure that you leave the exhibition with prospect data. At the very least a name, telephone number, email and postal address. You can send them info after the show.
o    Once you have left the show, you’ve done about 30% of the work. Ensure your dedicated lead handler follows up all the leads carefully and immediately

•    Stand out:
o    Use the exhibition as an opportunity to create a PR buzz around your franchise. Ensure you take a press pack and display it in the PR office at the exhibition
o    Lastly, investigate other options to make the most of your exposure at any exhibition, such as sponsorship opportunities

Direct mail
If you do exhibit at a franchise show, you can obtain visitor data, which is a list of attendees who have agreed to being contacted. This is extremely valuable information so ensure you use it to its full capacity within the applied restrictions.

If you have chosen not to exhibit yet, then there are also many different companies that have great lists that you can buy or pay to use. This is always worth considering, especially if your franchise is heavily geared towards a specific consumer type.

Telemarketing can work very effectively to back up direct mail or as a primary means of contact. Not only are the results with these methods relatively easy to measure, constructive feedback can also be gathered to streamline your campaign and marketing messages. Many of these techniques, traditionally used with direct mail, are known as vertical-marketing strategies.

Handling your leads

Your lead handling process can dramatically increase your success. While a dedicated lead handler is essential, so is a structured lead handling process. It is important to remember that each and every prospect that enquires about your franchise has made contact with you first. Therefore always get back to them promptly with a telephone call. Sounds simple? In reality it doesn’t always happen as it can be too easy to just reply to an email or send out a prospectus when short on time and they do not answer their phone. Our experience shows that chances of success increase when every single enquiry is followed up with a telephone conversation.

Marketing collateral

As discussed in the previous marketing feature, your existing franchisees are your most valuable resource. Ensure you keep a bank of case studies and testimonials from your franchisees and aim to cover different market segments and groups, for example, women in franchising, couples, ex-armed forces, etc. If you can relate to different target groups with a more personalised and targeted message, you will have a higher success rate.

And finally

Remember, as with all marketing campaigns, the messages that are communicated must be kept consistent and reflect the brand values of the company.  

Always check you are on the right track by placing yourself in the shoes of a person, perhaps recently made redundant, who may well buy a magazine, carry out online searches, visit an exhibition and request several franchise prospectuses before they make an informed choice. The franchisor that is best represented across the various marketing channels and communicates the benefits of the franchise package effectively will win this franchisee.

Marketing today has become a game of differentiation: make your company stand out, accurately target and reach the most suitable franchisees and you will undoubtedly succeed.

For further information, please contact Sarah at sarah@coconutcreatives.co.uk. Alternatively, you can visit Coconut Creatives at The Franchise Marketing Conference on 11 September and book a place on one of our free marketing workshops.