Hints & Tips: Effective Advertising Tips

Aug 25, 2016 | Blogs

If your advertising isn’t working, stop doing it right now! Many brands lose so much money on ineffective advertising so our Founder, Sarah Carlile, has been sharing her tips to help you make sure that your advertising helps you to get the very best results.

To find out more about how you can use award wins to boost your marketing collateral contact us at info@coconutcreatives.co.uk.

Perfecting your marketing collateral for franchise recruitment

Aug 8, 2016 | Blogs

You should use marketing collateral throughout the recruitment process to support your sales process and tell your prospects more about your brand and how your franchise opportunity can benefit them. Marketing collateral should make your sales process easier and more efficient so ensure that everything you send out has a clear call to action to guide your prospects through to the next stage of your recruitment process.

Throughout the decision making process, your prospects will constantly be comparing you to your competitors so it is essential that you make a good first impression. Your marketing collateral, both online and offline, should be of a high standard because it is usually the first time your prospects will encounter your brand. Your collateral is your chance to wow your prospects with your opportunity and show them how much they could achieve as part of your network.

By the time prospects receive hard copies of your collateral, they will have researched your franchise, visited your website and clicked through to request more information. It is important to think of your website as part of your collateral because it will often be the very first encounter that prospects have with your brand. Make sure it is easy to read and navigate and that your contact details are easy to find so that prospects can easily request more information.

Having a clear, concise and consistent message across all of your collateral will give you the best possible chance of generating good quality leads. It is essential that your collateral displays your franchise in the best possible light to increase your chances of converting those all-important franchisees. To create your messaging, you should research your top performing franchises to help you find out what motivates them and why they decided to buy your franchise. By gaining a clear understanding of your perfect franchisees, you can use this knowledge to recruit more of them. This will also help you to determine the tone of voice and language used throughout your collateral to appeal to your target audience.

In addition to the copy within your collateral, you should also think about the imagery you use because this will affect the way prospects react to your collateral. A picture paints a thousand words so make sure your imagery matches the content on the page and is relevant to help emphasise your messaging.

Your prospects want to know exactly how your franchise opportunity will benefit them so make sure your marketing collateral explains about your franchise opportunity whilst keeping your messaging, brand values and target audience in mind. This will help you to increase the number of franchisees you recruit.

Contact us to find out more about how Coconut Creatives could help you to perfect your marketing collateral on 01725 511 673 or info@coconutcreatives.co.uk.

5 Common Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Aug 5, 2016 | Blogs

At Coconut Creatives, we see so many franchisors making the same mistakes with their marketing time and time again. They spend thousands of pounds per year on their recruitment marketing but find that it just isn’t effective and they’re not recruiting the franchisees they need. Here are just some of the mistakes we see franchisors making on a daily basis and how you can avoid making the same mistakes.

1. Not understanding your target audience

This is one of the top mistakes made by so many franchisors. When we ask them who they’re looking to target with their marketing efforts, they have no idea! They throw money at a variety of marketing campaigns without knowing exactly who they are targeting. The first step in any marketing strategy is to understand who your target franchisees are. Who do you want more of in your network? Spend time profiling your top performing franchisees and collate 2-3 perfect franchisee profiles. Once you have this information, you will have a much better idea about their decision making processes and how they came to join your network. Knowing this will help you to form your marketing messages and where to target.

2. Not planning your marketing strategy

Another huge mistake that many franchisors make is not drawing up a marketing plan or having any sort of strategy in place before they start allocating their budget. Putting together a marketing plan will not only help you to work out a budget for the next 6-12 months, it will save money in the long run. The information you have gained from researching your network will help you to form the marketing plan by forcing you to think about the places you will target, how often and the messaging you want to get across.

Part of forming a marketing strategy is tracking and measuring your return on investment. How will you know if your marketing activity is effective if you do not track and measure it? Tracking could include directing prospects to a landing page so that you know exactly which marketing activity led them to you and will, eventually, help you to determine how many prospects you converted to franchisees in the long run.

3. Seeing marketing as an expense

Marketing should be seen as an investment and not an expense. If you start to believe that every marketing activity you do is an expense, you will start to see it as something that needs to be cut if it doesn’t work and, by doing this, you are setting yourself up to fail. Marketing is a process and it requires regular and consistent investment to help you increase your visibility and make sure that your prospects are finding out about your franchise opportunity. Some marketing activities can take a while to build traction so it is important that you don’t stop them before they’ve had a chance to be effective.

Marketing your franchise is essential if you want to keep recruiting franchisees so make sure that you have a yearly budget set aside for marketing – you will find that it is returned when you recruit those all-important franchisees.

4. Reviewing marketing activity

As part of the above, to ensure that you’re not losing time and money, you should review your marketing activity on a regular basis. Assess what’s working and what isn’t and cut the activity that’s not giving you a return on investment. By cutting out the activity that isn’t working you have more room in your budget to spend on the activities that are bringing in the most prospects. Is there a way to make certain activities more effective before you completely cut them?

5. Lack of content

In marketing, content is King. How can you expect prospects to find out more information about your franchise if they can’t find any information about you? Before they finally decide to contact you, prospects will have researched your franchise thoroughly and compared you to your competitors. If they can’t find anything, they will swiftly cross you off their list and move on to the next franchise. Produce regular PR pieces to shout about your achievements and the benefits of your franchise. Case studies and videos are also great ways to showcase your successful franchisees and ensure that when prospects search for you online, they have plenty of information to back up their decision to call you.

Next time you sit down to start any marketing activity, think about the above factors and make sure you’re not making the same mistakes. If you need help with your marketing strategy, please contact us on 01725 511 673 or info@coconutcreatives.co.uk