A focused, well-structured franchise marketing plan can significantly save time and money. A franchise marketing plan tailored towards maximising the potential in each sector of your business is key. It sounds easy but it is challenging when it comes to executing an effective marketing plan template.
Table of contents:
How to write a marketing plan template
Brand consistency across the business franchise: Time taken to re-evaluate and update the effectiveness of your franchise marketing plan ensures you are on top of your game plan. A story worth telling and having a unique brand identity are the tools that form the basis of the plan.
Developing goals: Identifying the aims you wish to achieve earlier on in the process can help you; understand where you are, decide where you wish to be in a specific time frame and explore different ways of reaching your set goals.
Working with franchisees: The marketing plan for franchises needs to be a plan applicable for different franchisees. As the franchisor, it is important to revolve your marketing plan around the success of your franchisees. This is done by: planning training programmes for franchisees and taking time to listen to their ideas. Following this approach will attract potential franchisees. The partnership between franchisors and franchisees is key to success in your business.
The content used helps to grow your local franchises: Creating top-notch marketing content is the gateway to ranking in the top 10 on major search engines. Certain things need to be considered when writing content: one should aim to choose the most appropriate keywords wisely in each local market, create effective headlines to articles that reach out to your target audience and produce content in different, effective forms rather than using the same format to keep your audience interested and engaged through audio, written and video content.
Emphasise word of mouth marketing: This is a traditional method of promoting your business that tends to be neglected and the more modern marketing methods that are opted for tend to not be as effective. Word of mouth marketing is a powerful tool that can help your business take off in the local market. This is why establishing a strong brand identity such as: brand packaging, services offered and client satisfaction from day one should be optimised and will allow you to count on only positive comments and feedback to be shared. One should also be open to criticism and take it on a board rather than personally and be willing to make adjustments and changes within your business to make it more effective.
Solidify your position on social media: The power of social media is often underestimated. Put simply, social media is a gateway to local marketing. Investing time and effort to maintain a brand on social media, taking interest in selecting appropriate marketing channels and producing content to targeted audiences is worth it in the long run. It will help you create a strong online presence and allow you to grow a network.
Measure, monitor and respond: It Is important to see how effective the marketing plan is working and if further changes need to be made. Involving each department within your business in tracking their performance is important and will become second nature to them once it becomes an ingrained habit. Reviewing and quickly responding to needs or concerns is important for improvement. Identifying the root cause of your mistakes is vital and will allow you to focus your budget on channels that do help give the best value rather than wasting your time and money on those channels that are obviously not working.
Creating an action plan and implementing a schedule: Knowing your potential customers will help you produce effective and engaging content customised to your target audience. Studying the marketing methods used by other competitors is important to help you avoid common pitfalls. Identifying and prioritising channels at an early stage that work best for your business and avoiding using those that don’t work is key to success.
To summarise, the best advice that can be given is to plan but to do so effectively. In general, a rule of thumb is to aim to follow a set of effective rules when writing your marketing plan template.
What should you aim to do and not do when you write a marketing plan for franchises? Read on to find out.
Dos:
- Aim to set multiple smaller goals that are achievable and realistic and can easily be achieved.
- Share a successful strategy that has proven to be cost-effective by one franchisee with the others. At the end of the day, you are all in the same boat and are all contributing to the growth and expansion of the business.
- Reach out and listen to your target audience.
- Don’t be afraid to try out new things and discover what works and what necessarily doesn’t.
- Explore new channels to market your franchise and establish a cross-platform marketing strategy.
- Create engaging and effective content for your target audience and aim to make a long-lasting impression, which will encourage them to revisit and review your content.
- Distribute your content in a wise way.
- Measure cost per acquisition
- Represent the brand in a professional way and aim to build a reputation in the business world.
- Time should be taken to evaluate and monitor your progress and see how effective your marketing plan is.
Don’ts
- Miss out details within the marketing plan, which can completely hinder its purpose.
- To be in the frame of mind that the marketing guidelines used in the previous years can be implemented this year and still actually work. Circumstances may change and this is why it is important to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing plan.
- Ignore enquiries and not listen to feedback or criticism that can, in the long run, aid with the improvement of your business.
- Not be open minded to other ways and be afraid of trying out new things.
- Solely focus on a single platform or channel to promote your business.
- Publish content without a specific purpose behind it and focus on quantity rather than the quality of the message you are delivering to your target audience.
- Only talk about the idea of improvements that can be made to your products or services rather than implementing these thoughts into actions.
- The use of only basic metrics
- Rely solely on rankings in major search engines: Google etc.
- Focus on the success of your competitors rather than investing your time and effort in making progress within your own business.
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