As a business owner who has already gone through the legalities and steps of franchising your business, your next step will be to find franchisees. The purpose of this is the ultimate goal of any franchise business – to grow and scale up. However, this territorial expansion can only take place through franchisees. But not just anyone will do.
This is why you need to find the best way to market your franchise so that you can achieve several goals at the same time: revenue expansion, geographical growth, business development and more.
In this article, we’ve looked at marketing for franchises through several angles and offer you some great tips and suggestions on how to approach your business expansion efforts. Let’s dive right in.
Table of contents:
Things to consider when marketing your franchise
Before you begin marketing your franchise, there are several things you need to be fully aware of.
Marketing strategy
One of the first things is that you need a marketing strategy that consists of multiple touchpoints. The opposite, or limiting your marketing channels, will mean excluding vast numbers of people who could be your prospective franchisee partners. As a result, ensure that your strategy is multi-pronged and consistent throughout.
Infrastructure
It’s also crucial to ensure that you get your infrastructure in order before you start. For new franchisors, you may think you need over 10 new franchisees to help you boost your expansion efforts quickly. However, you may not have the scope and resources required for the initial training and ongoing support.
As a result, it’s essential to ask yourself (realistically speaking) whether you can support new franchisees and how many.
Content
A third consideration is the content that populates across all the platforms and channels on which you have a presence. Here, you should consider whether your message is being expressed in a consistent way and whether you’re speaking consistently using your brand’s tone of voice.
Consumers and especially potential franchisees are very savvy these days and any discrepancies can be picked upon between your home page and your social media profiles, for example. So, be sure to aim for brand consistency wherever possible.
Prospects and leads
Next up, there is the “who” behind your marketing efforts. This “who” refers to your prospective franchisees. However, have you considered marketing your franchise opportunity to your brand’s customers first?
While current franchisees may feel odd about advertising new franchise opportunities in their own retail outlet, for instance, it’s a great way for them to gain more exposure and build up their business by marketing to customers. It doesn’t have to be glaring marketing either. Subtle works just as well. As long as you consider that your customers could be prospective franchisees as fans and ambassadors of your brand.
Budget
Finally, you need to outline the budget that you can work with and then ensure that you use the right metrics to measure the data and the success of your marketing efforts.
Ways to market your franchise business
With all of the above in mind, you can now start considering the various options you have at your disposal to market your franchise business to prospective franchisees.
However, it’s crucial to use a multi-pronged approach with multiple touchpoints instead of only using one marketing channel and hoping for the best.
This is why advertising, social media, franchising exhibitions, membership of the bfa, sales and more should be done in one thorough go as opposed to only picking one of these options.
Advertising
Franchise advertising is one of the first avenues that you’re likely to explore. But do you know where to start in order to advertise a franchise? Your starting point should be business opportunities in relevant newspapers and magazines or even franchise marketing websites and directories.
Find your next franchise opportunity.
Browse our extensive franchising portal and find the perfect business opportunity for you. Pick your choice of industry, location and/or investment.
Social media
Social media is another excellent way to target prospective franchisees. Here, your copy and value proposition needs to be on-point as should your unique selling points. Emphasise what makes your franchise business stand out from your competitors and what you offer that they do not.
Social media marketing is also a great way to communicate and connect with prospective franchisees because they can ask you direct questions to find out more.
Franchising exhibitions
Exhibitions for franchise opportunities are the third available method you have for marketing your franchise business. These are uniquely targeted events and you need to ensure you have brochures and information packs ready on-hand to hand out to your potential franchises.
Membership of the British Franchise Association
Membership of the British Franchise Association (bfa) is a great selling point because it offers your franchise opportunity much more credibility in an industry that remains legally unregulated. Becoming a member of the bfa will stand you in good stead with prospective franchisees due to the authority the organisation has.
Sales
Discovery Days are a common feature of franchises and these are an opportunity for franchisors to market their business offering to interested clients.
As a result, you need to have an in-house team that will be able to make and receive calls and answer questions from prospective franchisees. This team should be responsible for creating systems and procedures for prospective franchisees to follow in an easy way.
In addition, investing in a customer relationship management (CRM) system is a great way of keeping track of leads generated as well as their current status. Reaching out to new franchisees through direct calls and emails may seem old-fashioned but it remains an effective marketing tool that you should be taking advantage of.
Promotions
You may not immediately associate promotions with franchise marketing but, when combined with other media outlets and channels, these can help bring your franchise opportunity to the fore by offering discounted rates for a limited time. Using new technologies in combination with traditional promotional techniques is a surefire way of achieving success.
Public relations
The traditional foray of print media, public relations has evolved today to encompass much more than press releases. In fact, today, public relations can mean reaching out to other websites to promote your franchising opportunity, being featured in blogs or even using your own blog to promote the business offering. In addition, these methods are measurable so you’ll be able to quantify the results of your efforts quite easily.
How to market your franchise opportunity: The steps involved
Now that you are aware of all the options you have at your disposal to market your franchise opportunity, it’s time to look at the steps involved in the process.
- Prepare the groundwork
Ensure you’re capable of taking on new franchisees in terms of capacity, training, support, etc.
Create marketing materials with a consistent tone of voice: this will mean identifying your brand voice, USPs and value proposition and communicating it in different ways. - Build your online presence
This means using your social media channels consistently, as well as optimising your home page, and special landing pages you create for your marketing efforts.
- Launch your marketing strategy
Whether it’s going to franchising exhibitions, marketing your franchise in directories, becoming a member of the bfa or more, be sure you have an extensive reach and cohesive presence.
Final remarks
In our digital world, franchise marketing is adapting and evolving to the needs of prospective franchisees. If you find all this overwhelming, why not use the professional franchise marketing services of Franchise Fame?
We not only offer a comprehensive franchise directory but also ensure that you get the right levels of visibility for your brand by generating quality leads that you can put to good use in your expansion efforts. It’s simply a matter of reaching out to us! We’re just an email away and ready to help.
