The New Year is one of the most important times of year to focus on franchise recruitment. Use this time to take stock of where you are now and where you’d like to be this time next year!
To help you on your way to a super successful 2016, watch our video to see our team’s top tips for the year ahead…
Setting the right objectives is the first step to creating a successful franchise recruitment marketing strategy, says Paul Clegg, Director at Coconut Creatives.
The first step when devising a marketing strategy is to identify your objectives. These need to pinpoint where the business is now, what you would like to achieve and within what time frame. Be clear and direct in your aims about what you’d like to achieve for the year ahead.
I recommend using SMART objectives as part of your marketing strategy, these are specific, measurable, realistic and timely giving you specific goals which have a much greater chance of being completed or achieved than more general goals. It is important to consider the following six questions when setting your objectives.
By answering each of these questions, you make sure that your objectives are more specific and anyone who reads them will know exactly what it is that you are trying to achieve. Your objectives for recruitment determine everything. They determine how much money you should be spending, what routes to market you have available to you and how many leads you need to meet those objectives.
‘I want to increase the number of franchisees in my network’ is an example of a non-smart objective. It doesn’t state how many franchisees you are aiming to recruit, a time frame or a benchmark. An example of a SMART objective would be ‘I want to increase the number of franchisees from 25 to 35 in the next 12 months’ because it states where the business is now and in what time frame you want to achieve the goal. This objective is clear and will ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to your franchise recruitment marketing plan.
Identifying whether or not you can achieve this goal is just as important as setting it. According to the latest NatWest/bfa survey, the average ratio from prospect enquiry to fully operational franchisee is one in approx 86 for larger systems (20+ franchisees) and one in 77 for smaller franchises (<20 franchisees). Looking at larger systems, that’s one new franchisee for every 86 leads that you generate. This can help you to look at your objectives and work backwards from there.
The SMART objective provided above aims to recruit 10 new franchisees over the course of 12 months so that means you would need to generate a minimum of 860 leads (if using NatWest/bfa survey stats) in order to achieve this objective. Whether this is achievable or not depends on your resources and budget.
Look for Part 2 on how to turn your objectives into an integrated marketing plan
Want to know more about franchise recruitment in 2020? Contact us today to book a strategy meeting so that we can talk through your goals and help you achieve them!