November is the time when most people start winding down for the Christmas break and start getting into the holiday spirit. Not at Coconut Creatives! Throughout November, we’re busier than ever with hosting our own events and supporting our clients at their annual events and conferences. Don’t miss your last chances to meet us this year at the below events. We’d love to see you and you know we’re never too busy to stop and talk about all your franchise recruitment marketing needs!
Industry Events
4th November: Our Coconut Workshop ‘Practical Social media skills’
We still have places available so please contact us if you would like to come along!
4th November: The Franchise Supplier showcase
Come and meet us there to find out how we can help you with your franchise recruitment marketing needs.
12th November: EWIF North Regional Meeting
EWIF has 3 regional meetings in November! The South region is meeting on the 3rd November and both the North and South-West regions are meeting on the 12th November. Details on the meetings can be found here. We’ll be attending the North meeting, hope to see you there!
27th November: Smith & Henderson Conference
Our Founder, Sarah Carlile, will be delivering her talk on ‘The 5 ½ Marketing Mistakes Made by Franchisors. Don’t miss the event, book your place now and chat to Sarah and the team at the event.
Client Events
We’re also supporting our clients at the following events. We like to make sure our clients’ events run smoothly so we often go along to offer our support and advice on the day as well as providing their franchisees with a little extra marketing support!
Discovery days can really increase your lead conversion rates because they allow prospective franchisees to get a flavour of your business before they commit and give you a great opportunity to meet a group of serious prospects face-to-face, explains Helen Thresh, Client Account Manager at Coconut Creatives.
Organising a discovery day
You should always make sure that your discovery days are well planned and organised with no more than 10 serious franchise prospects attending. Here are four questions (and the answers!) we get asked by many franchisors in relation to discovery day organisation:
Who should be involved?
Get key people from your business and recruitment team involved. Prospective franchisees want to put names to faces and it will also make your team appear more approachable, which can be a key factor in the decision-making process and franchisees often buy into the support of a proven business concept. It is a good idea to get successful franchisees involved, giving you the opportunity to create a template franchise which you could showcase as part of your discovery day.
Should I have a dedicated space for the discovery day available?
If you don’t have a suitable conference or meeting room with adequate refreshment facilities available then it might be worthwhile booking a hotel or meeting room nearby. Ideally this should be within a short walk of your head office or the template franchise that you plan to show later on.
What time should I start the discovery day?
It is advisable to start your discovery day in the late morning/early afternoon to give people time to get to you. Starting your discovery day in the afternoon means that it needs to be well structured to ensure everybody gets the most out of the day. It is also important to be mindful that some people may have travelled quite a distance to get to you so make sure that you don’t finish too late.
Should I have my discovery day at the weekend or during the week?
Although having your discovery day on a weekday can be inconvenient because most people attending will need to book a day off work, this shows their level of interest in the franchise and will help you separate the wheat from the chaff. Holding your discovery day on a weekday also allows you to showcase your office or the template franchise during actual working hours, which increases the credibility by highlighting that your business works.
Marketing your discovery days
Make sure you market your discovery day through as many channels as you can so that you get the most out of it. By advertising your discovery day, you are also giving prospects an additional reason to get in contact with you. Make sure you advertise a few months in advance to give prospects time to book.
During the day
Organise a “behind the scenes” tour, allow your prospects to speak to members of staff and look around within a supervised group. Encourage them to ask questions so they can find out as much as possible about your business, helping them to make the right franchise choice. Some franchisors insist on attendees signing a confidentiality agreement on arrival. This depends on your business model but it is something you might wish to consider. You should also have the franchise agreement ready and printed in case a prospect would like to have a look at it.
Post discovery day
Follow up on the individuals who have attended and select those you think would make good franchisees to progress to the next stage in your recruitment process. At the end of the day it’s not only about the prospects liking you but also about you liking the prospects. You can also utilise your successful discovery day within your press releases and on your website.
For further advice on how to organise successful Discovery Days, please contact us, we’d love to help you! Or join us on our ‘How to build an effective discovery day programme’ workshop! Click here to see when the next one is coming up on our events calendar.
As you may know, we attended the National Franchise Exhibition at the Birmingham N.E.C at the beginning of this month. We even exhibited for the very first time!
The show was a great success for us with three speaking slots, lots of meetings and a busy stand. We’re looking forward to making contact and working with everyone we met at the show over the weekend. It’s been an exciting time at Coconut Creatives with our new, revamped team and we’re offering even more services than ever before. We’re excited to be back in the office and working our magic for our clients. We look forward to taking on even more clients soon.
We were invited to speak on one of our expert topics, Social Media on the first day of the show and we were so pleased with the results. During our Social Media seminar, our hashtag #ishouldcoco was seen by over 7,500 people!
If you missed us at the show, or if you did attend and want to find out more, why not come along to our Social Media Skills workshop on 4th November to learn more!
One of Coconut Creatives’ clients, New Horizons, recently held their International conference in Orlando, Florida. The conference was a huge success with over 400 centre personnel, exhibitors and corporate staff from around the world converging to learn, share ideas and best practices, and maximise opportunities.
The conference consisted of a variety of Breakout Sessions, General Sessions, networking opportunities and much more. Attendees were provided with strategies, tools and resources to be used upon their return to their training centres.
New Horizons is the world’s largest independent IT training company. They provide a wide range of computer training and complementary programmes for many small, medium and large organisations as well as individuals improving their careers. Franchisees operate their own dedicated learning centres and quickly become the single source of IT training for their customers.
The International conference is just one of the many means of support that New Horizons offer to their franchise network. It gives franchisees the opportunity to meet together and improve their businesses by sharing ideas and advice with each other and by hearing from the experts at Head Office. Not only that but top performing franchisees are awarded and recognised for their achievements over the last 12 months. The “Excellence in Training” awards also recognise the top Applications and Technical Instructors in New Horizons’ worldwide network.
“Our International conference is a success every year. It’s great to see the franchisees meeting together and sharing their ideas. As such a vast network, we do not often get the chance to meet face-to-face so our conference gives franchisees a means of touching base with their support networks. They glean so much from the day and go home and implement everything they have learnt once they return to their businesses,” explains Scott McDaniel, International Development Director.
Founded in 1982, New Horizons have over 30 years’ experience in the IT and training industry. The New Horizons franchise network boasts over 300 centres in 70 countries worldwide (and counting!) each supported by a team of experts in all essential business disciplines. New Horizons are Microsoft’s largest training provider, delivering more than 33% of all authorised Microsoft training worldwide and our franchisees enjoy the benefits of global supplier partnerships with Cisco, VMware and CompTIA to name but a few.
If you’d like to take advantage of being part of this global brand, you can find out more about the New Horizons franchise by visiting www.newhorizonsfranchise.co.uk
This press release has created wide spread coverage on franchise related websites and social media. It will also be included in upcoming print publications. To find out how Coconut Creatives can help you generate great PR why not contact us
In the world of marketing, we’re constantly told that content is King. Although content is extremely important, context is essential when it comes to social media. Adam Knight, Head of Technology & Systems at Coconut Creatives explains more about the effective use of social media for marketing your business. Watch our video here.
Want to know more about the use of social media for your business? Our next workshop ‘Practical Social Media Skills’ on 4th November. On the day, you will learn about social media tools you can learn to use, hone and brand up. Book your place on our workshop here.
