A franchisors national marketing campaign has two major uses; to raise awareness of the branded franchise offering and to support existing franchisees.
Showing them Value for Money
As most franchisors take a royalty from franchisees. It is important to show value for money. By demonstrating to your franchisees that their hard earned cash is being spent on promoting the brand nationally, it only helps to benefit them as more people will be aware of their business and what it offers.
Using your Franchisees as Case Studies
Testimonials are just about the best way of gaining prospects confidence, so use your existing advocates for your brand to help sell your franchise package. The other bonus to this is that everyone loves to talk about themselves and in this instance, give your best franchisees the opportunity to do this by interviewing them. You never know when you might be able to use the material that you collect from them within marketing and promotions all over the country. This material is great for inspiring other people to take the plunge into franchising and get in contact with you to find out more.
National Exhibitions
It just wouldn’t be right not to mention exhibitions in this feature, especially as we see the National Franchise Show at the NEC, Birmingham opening at the end of this week. Some franchisors find great success in taking a couple of existing franchisees along to the show to help promote the franchise. As well as being a good way of showing prospective franchisees what a ‘real live franchisee’ looks like and discuss how they are getting on, it is an effective way of engaging your franchisees and refreshing them of the brand and what it stands for. Select who you take carefully and this method will work well for you.
PR
In my previous feature on the relationship franchising has with PR I went into quite a bit of detail on how to make the most of the media. PR is also very important when creating a solid national strategy as there will always be specific regional areas which are your ‘ideal’ new franchisee zones. In most cases these are the areas surrounding your head office, so the new franchisee editions to the family will be easier to manage as they will be close by. With this in mind, concentrate on creating pockets of media coverage in areas that you really want exposure and then you’ll be more likely to get awareness, interest and eventually enquiries from the types of locations that you really want. An example of this working well is in the Yorkshire region where a new jewellery franchise called The Wharf has recently launched. Their PR campaign is going well and the enquiries are coming in from a targeted localised region which is ideal for their launch.
Affiliates
Use your head office to trial national affiliate campaigns. For example, one of the companies I work with has recently trialled a joint promotion with Subway. The trial is going well in the south region and it if continues to go well, it may be offered nationally as a promotion that all the franchisees can get involved in. So look for companies that are national but operate locally and make sure you carry out a thorough trial. If you regularly offer good promotions to help support your franchisees, you’ll be keeping them happy, profitable and ultimately lengthen the relationship.
If you have any questions about any of my features and want to know what I think of your franchise, please contact me at sarah@coconutcreatives.co.uk.