As the quietest period of the franchising year, summer is the best season to prepare your franchise recruitment marketing for the busy autumn period, says Sarah Carlile, Founding Director of Coconut Creatives.
As mentioned in my previous blog, enquiries during the summer slowdown rapidly as most people go on holiday or have their children at home to look after. The quiet summer months are the perfect time for you to review your marketing material and create some up-to-date case studies to use once the busy autumn recruitment season starts. With fewer enquiries to follow up, you should be left with a little extra time to really focus on refreshing your marketing material.
Case studies
Case studies are a great tool to use in attracting new franchisees. They amplify word-of-mouth about your brand and describe how your business or products have benefitted either one of your customers or an existing franchisee and will portray your company in a good light to prospective franchisees who may not have come across your business before.
I recommend updating your bank of case studies on a regular basis. This will help you to showcase the continued success of your brand and will give you a great selection of latest stories to use in your collateral over the busy autumn period.
The key to writing the best case studies is to pick an existing franchisee who has faced a problem, found a solution with your help and has benefitted from being part of your franchise network since they joined. The problems they face can be anything from recovering from illness, overcoming redundancy by buying your franchise, producing great sales during a recession, to wanting a better work-life balance and more family time.
If you don’t have a bank of franchisees to write about, ask one of your customers that you have helped to resolve a problem instead. This shows prospects how committed you are and that your business concept actually works.
When you have found the franchisees or customers you want to write about, you need to make sure you are asking them the right questions in order to produce an interesting and compelling case study. I recommend creating a survey to send out with questions such as:
Where did you hear about us?
Why did you decide to join/work with us?
How have you found the training/support?
What have you particularly enjoyed about working with us?
Asking personal questions about hobbies and their family situation will give your case study a more personal touch and allow prospects to identify with your case study – reaching the “if it worked for them, it could work for me” stage.
For further advise on what you can do to boost your recruitment marketing over the summer please contact us, we’d love to hear from you!
If you missed Part 1 click here! Also don’t forget to view our free resources which are designed to help you improve your marketing!
During the summer, many franchisors find that their recruitment is fairly quiet whilst many people are off on holiday and not thinking about changing their career for the foreseeable future. This makes the summer an ideal time to review many aspects of your recruitment marketing that may not be working as well as they could be.
When you’re reviewing your franchise marketing collateral you should look at the messages you want to put across and make sure that they’re consistent throughout everything you offer to potential franchisees. I recommend writing a ‘Perfect Pitch’ as it is the best way to inform a prospect about your franchise in a simple and concise way. By creating a perfect pitch and ensuring that your whole team has a copy of it or knows about it, you can ensure that your message remains the same and everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.
Your perfect pitch should follow this formula:
Clarity
Credibility
Relevance
Believability
This format provides a simple way to let prospective franchisees know who you are, what you do, and why you’re the best in your industry. It’s also an opportunity to let them know how being part of your franchise network will benefit them and it is also a good idea to include evidence of your success, this could be in the form of facts and figures around your network or even testimonials from current franchisees. Spending time on your perfect pitch can make a great difference to your marketing collateral and how prospects respond to it. When a prospect first gets in contact with you or any of your franchise team, the first thing they will want to know is what you do.
Often, the prospect is provided with a mixture of product and service information which is too detailed and doesn’t actually tell them very much about the franchise. Each team member will also give a different version because you haven’t regulated the response. The result of this is an unclear and inconsistent introduction to your company and, if your competitors have already sorted their perfect pitch, could lose you a potential franchisee. Once you have perfected your perfect pitch, make sure your team are all trained to deliver a consistent and clear message when someone contacts you to enquire further about your franchise opportunity. Your perfect pitch will also help you to provide a consistent message across all of your marketing collateral.
The process of rewriting your marketing collateral can be quite long because you have to send everything off to be reprinted so the quiet time in the summer is the ideal time to do it. This will ensure that you have fresh material and all of your franchise team are clued up when recruitment starts to pick up again in the autumn.
As the franchisor, it is easy to become bogged down in industry terminology because you are very close to the product or service you’re providing and understand it well. However, jargon and terminology can be extremely confusing to a prospect who knows nothing about the industry. This is why I recommend carrying out research through a third party to help you work out the difference between what you think works and what actually works. Taking a survey of existing franchisees and past prospects to find out which different stages of enquiry they reached is a great way to find out how effective your messages at each stage were and which messages work best at each stage.
Click here to read Part 2! Also don’t forget to view our free resources which are designed to help you improve your marketing!
June is a busy month for the team at Coconut Creatives! We’re travelling all over the world to help franchisors and franchisees alike with all their franchise marketing needs. If you want to come and visit us at any of this month’s events, just drop us an email we’ll catch up with you – wherever in the world we may be!
Mail Boxes Etc. Franchisee Conference “Marketing to grow your business” 14th June
The British Franchise Exhibition, EventCity, Manchester 19-20th June
British Franchise Association (bfa) Annual Conference, 25-26th June – we’re the sliver sponsors of the event!
Bfa HSBC Franchisor of the Year Awards supported by Express newspapers, 25th June
If you’re travelling across the pond this summer, we’ll also be speaking and attending the International Franchise Expo, New York on 18-20th June. We’re honoured to have been invited to speak at this event and Coconut director Sally Anne Butters will be imparting some of our specialist UK franchising knowledge at the show. Sally will also be representing the UK on their Women in Franchising panel on Thursday 18th June. For more information click here
More recognition for the Coconut team
After Sally took on the role of MC for a fantastic EWIF awards ceremony last month, our very own Founding Director, Sarah Carlile, has been shortlisted as a finalist for a Venus Award. Watch this space to find out if she wins later in the month!
Not only will we be attending each of these events, as a team we continue to develop through our structured CPD programme, feeding the latest marketing techniques into our clients’ marketing campaigns.
Contact us today if you want to catch us at any of these events. We’d love to see you!
Social media is a great way to engage with your customers. However, with great exposure comes great responsibility! Here at Coconut, we like to bring you the most current news on marketing and our contacts at Freeths Solicitors have written this blog on the legalities surrounding social media. Here’s what they think you need to know to keep ahead of intellectual property rights online.
Part 2: Advertising and reputational issues
The normal advertising regulations apply
The Advertising Standards Authority has a remit to investigate and rule on complaints made about marketing communications online, including on social platforms.
Ads must not be misleading or offensive and should enable consumers to make an informed decision about the products or services being promoted.
The character limits imposed on certain platforms can add to the challenge, so you need to think about what type of ad works well and remains compliant on different platforms. Twitter may not be the best place for a complex price comparison ad, but it is perfect for sharing images of your goods, conveying your core messages and running simple promotions.
If you pay a third party (e.g. a celebrity, media outlet or popular blogger) to post on social media and promote your services, you need to ensure that they make it clear that the post is a marketing communication.
Use the hashtags #ad or #spon to keep things clear.
Care needs to be taken with video content on platforms like YouTube too. The ASA very recently upheld a complaint that a video promoting Max Factor make-up by a popular vlogger was misleading because it was not clear that the content was an advertisement, even though the words “sponsored by” and “brought to you by” were used in the video. Ideally consumers should be told about the commercial nature of content before they elect to engage with it.
Moreover, the ASA considered that the words used did not make it clear that the content was in fact an advertisement for Max Factor, as opposed to impartial editorial which was merely financially sponsored by the brand’s owners. This would seem to cut across the ASA’s own recommendation regarding the #spon hashtag on Twitter. What is clear is that advertisers should use different measures on different social media platforms (each with their own particular functionalities and idiosyncrasies) to ensure that marketing communications are identifiable as such.
The internet is an echo chamber – be careful what you say out there
If you engage with customers on social platforms, remember that the only loser in public spats with customers is your reputation. While criticism of your goods or services can be uncomfortable, it is a fact of life and you need a policy for engaging and dealing with it in a professional manner. Don’t be a player in one of those PR disasters that goes viral once in a while.
The fact that social media posts are published for all to see can also give rise to legal issues, particularly with regard to defamation. That said, there may not be a viable legal remedy for you as a business, even if you feel a customer’s comments are unfair or untrue. Unless your business can prove that the customer’s comments were likely to cause serious financial loss (in addition to being untrue), a defamation claim against a disgruntled and vocal customer is unlikely to succeed. And suing customers is probably not high your board’s agenda in any event.
On the other hand, if your social team were to make derogatory statements on your social media accounts about customers (and it does happen), then those customers may have grounds to bring a defamation claim against your business (and would have a lower threshold for proving that they had been seriously harmed). Whether or not such individuals have the resources to bring such a claim is another question, but make sure it is never an issue – the PR fallout from such public spats is arguably as bad as, or worse than, the legal ramifications.
Key Message: Ensure your social team has a code of conduct and give them the skills and training they need to avoid trouble.
This is only a summary of the law in force at the present time and is not exhaustive, nor does it contain definitive advice. Specialist advice should be sought from a member of Freeths Franchise or Intellectual Property and Technology teams in relation to any queries.
Click here to see the original blog post and if you would like further information or advice on this topic please contact:
It is important to maintain constant communication with your prospective franchisees in order to keep your brand in the forefront of their minds when they come to make their decision. Sarah Carlile, Founding Director at Coconut Creatives, explains more about keeping communication channels open during the recruitment process.
David Williams, Director, Franchising at RBS suggests how you can improve your chances of success with your business and the bank
When seeking finance from a bank it is important to demonstrate a good understanding of your franchise business and its future success. The quality and scope of your business plan is crucial.
When approaching a bank it is important to present a robust and detailed business plan outlining your business goals, performance and management experience. Highlight what key personal skills you have:, team skills, leadership, people skills and sales experience are likely to add real value as well as showing a proven track record.
Demonstrate your understanding of the market and highlight your experience. Banks will look at the complete package including financial projections and what plans you have in place should things take a turn.
Financial projections are the cornerstone of any business plan. They provide an insight into how you are going to pay the business bills together with your own requirements. Your financial provider wants to see real life targets that are achievable. Your Franchisor can be a great source of information by clarifying if your projections are realistic and remember to speak to existing franchisees in the network as they have all been in the same position as you.
The ability of the business to pay you an adequate remuneration is often overlooked within the business plan. This is the amount that the franchisee will need to take from the business to meet their living expenses, household bills and spending money. In order to make an accurate assessment of the amount required, a detailed income and expenditure statement should be completed. A detailed breakdown of all loans, credit cards and mortgages, together with other family income, will assist and ensure nothing is missed. The bank will also ask to see these along with copies of your personal bank statements.
Finally, give careful consideration to your local market and details of competition. In-depth research should be undertaken to understand what makes them tick and in what areas you can compete. This can be ascertained by looking on the web or making calls as a prospective customer. In many instances, competition can be a positive factor.
RBS has a network of accredited Franchise Managers, who are based across the UK. The have all completed a training course, have a detailed understanding of franchising and could guide franchisees through the process of raising bank finance.
To find out how RBS can help you, contact Dave Williams on 07770 733376 or e-mail dave.williams@rbs.co.uk
