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!