Sep 26, 2007 | Coconut in the Media
Guide your new franchisees through their first few months with step by step enabling tools.
New franchisees often require quite a bit of ‘hand holding’ and it is during these first few months that they go through their real learning curve. Often franchisees require specialist training to be able to run their franchise within the given market sector or industry. Marketing is almost always included as part of the training package through the operations manual. However, there is so much more that can be achieved once new franchisees understand their new business and have a few additional solid enabling tools, focused on marketing techniques, to assist them.
Managing expectations through a marketing orientation
A big part of the process for franchisors is managing the expectations of their new franchisees (who are often eager to establish themselves and create a return on their investment). At this stage, marketing can play a key role to help focus their minds and keep them busy while setting some small achievable targets and objectives for them to aim towards.
Setting your standards through marketing
Every franchisor wants every new franchise sold to become a success. It has been proven that by setting franchisee standards through a specific 2 month launch marketing activity plan, you can significantly increase the chances of success and within a shorter time period. While this can be time consuming for the franchisor to create and implement, it can save a great deal of ‘fire fighting’ time later on.
Dealing with the ups and the downs. Being sturdy, consistent and strong
As I am sure most franchisors have experienced, franchisees often go through a whole host of emotions over the first 6 – 12 months of running their franchise. The mere fact that often they have committed their life savings, changed their lifestyle and working relationships which often causes a shift in family relationships. It can be a very stressful time. Franchisors need to be the parent in the situation and create that focus for the franchisees to concentrate on. They also need to become the understanding agony aunt when things get tough but most of all, franchisors need to reflect (at every opportunity) a consistent and strong disposition during every dealing with any franchisee.
Creating confidence through marketing
When marketing is done well, it creates a great confidence in franchisors from franchisees. Marketing should be used as a focusing tool of franchisors to help them keep control of not only their business and brand, but the whole host of people that have bought into their psyche and believe in the business model.
The Four Steps to new franchisee success
- Invest more time at the beginning in teaching new franchisees key marketing skills
- Provide a tailored and specific two month marketing activity plan to help focus your new franchisee
- Always remain sturdy and strong, giving your franchisees a consistent impression of their ‘leader’
- Offer lots of encouragement and praise at every opportunity to keep new franchisees positively focused
The best possible tools that I have given franchisors is how they can teach their franchisees to look after themselves. In doing this, the franchisor deals with far less problems and far more confident, happy franchisees. By teaching your franchisees to market themselves, you give them the keys to their own success which in turn, also leads to yours.
Next feature; Using PR to Launch Your Franchise (very topical as we approach Octobers National Franchise Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham!).
Sep 4, 2007 | Clients in the Media, Coconut in the Media
Morrisons supermarkets are now proud stockists of Bridport based Jessica’s Farmhouse Cakes in a move to support local quality producers.
Coconut Creatives client, Richard Bowditch from Jessica’s Farmhouse Cakes, was approached by Morrisons a few months ago and now customers can find these freshly hand prepared cakes in Morrisons stores throughout the Wessex region.
“As a local producer, we are delighted to be able to share our cakes with a wider audience and the feedback has been fabulous,” says Jessica Bowditch, who was the original inspiration for Jessica’s Farmhouse Cakes.
Coconut Creatives has been working towards preparing the marketing and in-house systems to allow for a greater demand such as the new Morrison’s contract. The implementation of a customer relationship management system for Richard and his staff to use has made a big difference to the speed of the operation. Coconut Creatives came up with the idea after a gruelling internal audit.
The marketing stance for Jessica’s Farmhouse Cakes has always focused on being local. Hand prepared at Manor Farm near Bridport using local ingredients wherever possible, Jessica’s Farmhouse Cakes has been using traditional recipes and techniques for three generations. If your mouth is watering at the thought of a five inch high chocolate sponge cake, pop to your local Morrisons and pick one up for the whole family to share.
For more information about Jessica’s Farmhouse Cakes go to www.jessicasfarmhousecakes.co.uk
Aug 16, 2007 | Coconut in the Media
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.
Aug 16, 2007 | Coconut in the Media
Every day, on the radio, in newspapers and on television, we’re being extolled to go green, reduce carbon emissions, eat more healthy food and use fair-trade suppliers – in fact, just live a better lifestyle. GreenerLiving magazine is there to help make sense of all the conflicting advice, by giving balanced information on each subject, allowing readers to make the right choices for themselves.
More than 30,000 copies are distributed free every two months through supermarkets and point of sale promotions and readers can subscribe and receive a personal copy delivered to their door.
Working with Dorset-based Coconut Creatives marketing house, Greener Living magazine will soon be launching the GreenerLiving Club, a loyalty scheme giving members access to discounts from a wide range of companies offering ‘greener’ products and services, as well as a regular e-newsletter packed with even more club promotions and information on greener solutions.
“We’re really excited about launching the GreenerLiving Club,” said Sarah, Partner of Coconut Creatives. “We’ve been working with Peter Batt, GreenerLiving’s editor for a few months now and the magazine has been really well received so far. We have big plans to for its continued success over the coming months.”
To coincide with the club launch later this year, GreenerLiving is also launching a special corporate Partners and Affiliates programme. With a number of options, ranging from a simple business listing to a high-profile case study, and coupled with website and e-newsletter banner advertising, the programme will offer businesses the opportunity to promote their ‘green’ products and services to consumers who really want to buy.
For more information about GreenerLiving Magazine or to download a back copy go to www.greenerliving.tv
Sep 25, 2006 | Coconut in the Media
Coconut Creatives seems to be attracting clients with a strong ethical stance. Maybe because they can see we really care about making a difference to their business. The Stocks Inn pub in Furzehill, Dorset was no exception…
However, many recent projects have a very serious undertone and we hope that by helping these companies achieve their goals, we’ll also be supporting and advancing awareness of the issues they are so passionate about.
An identified ’people issue’ today surrounds diet and fitness. This is not just due to lack of physical activity, but the increasing temptation to eat naughty foods! Now, everyone knows how nice chocolate can be, or curry on a Saturday night. But for many people, fast food has become more than an occasional treat, what’s more, its hassle free and cheap.
This in tern has damaged many local producers of good quality, natural foods as many have struggled to stay in business under the shadow of empires like McDonalds and KFC and of course the supermarkets convenience and economies of scale.
Coconut Creatives latest marketing adventure took the shape of turning one down trodden, mass microwave, slash, frozen meal pub into an up market, locally respected establishment providing high quality meals using entirely local produce – supporting all the local little suppliers!
By thinking ‘outside the box’ partnerships and friendships were established with small local producers, to enable a magical transformation for The Stocks Inn to become a classy, caring and sharing type place.
If you want to take advantage of their all day Sunday Carvery you’d better book a fortnight in advance and start queuing at 10am! And I can say for sure that their exotic food night is definitely an eye opener!
Jul 20, 2006 | Coconut in the Media
Maybe not coconuts but every business owner has an ultimate goal and ours is to escape to a desert island filled with palm trees!
The reason I have started with this analogy is business owners tend to get bogged down in the daily operation of their company and lose sight of what they are actually doing it all for!
Ask yourself; are you suffering from the common things associated with small independent business:
- Keeping up with new technology
- Growing pains as you expand
- HR issues and red tape
- Loosing site of the customer as the market changes (so does customer needs)
- You know what you want to do but just don’t have enough time to do it
The answer can be simpler than you think!
The owners we work with often know what they need to do to generate more profit, many simply need more time! The reason you are doing what you do is because you are good at it. The forward momentum of the operation tends to be left to grow in an ad-hoc way which is not the best way.
We have one core aim which is to offer the small independent businesses a fair and fighting chance at reaching that aim, whether it is a desert island with palm trees or a luxury motor yacht…
