In 2022, over 790,000 franchise establishments with an economic output of $827 billion employed a whopping 8.5 million people in the United States. Franchising is undoubtedly one of the driving forces of the growth of the US economy. It is a crowded space and the competition is fierce which means both the franchisors and the franchisees need to have a strong franchise marketing plan to cut through the noise and stay ahead in the game.
Today, nearly 42% of franchise marketers are investing in digital marketing channels over traditional ones to market their business. If you’re a franchisor looking for effective marketing strategies to drive revenue and business growth, we hear you. With so many franchise brands to choose from, getting the right franchisee to fuel your franchise brand growth requires a well thought out strategy.
But before diving deeper into marketing strategies, let’s first demystify the term ‘Franchise Marketing’.
What is Franchise Marketing?
Franchise marketing broadly refers to the strategies and tactics a franchise owner undertakes to promote their business across different locations, attract new franchisees, and maximize sales. While the ultimate objective of franchise marketing is to increase brand awareness and generate profits, it’s divided into two different sections: Operational Franchise Marketing and Franchise Development Marketing.
- Operational franchise marketing: This includes any marketing activity that both a franchisor and franchisees perform to attract, engage, and retain customers.
- Franchise development marketing: This includes marketing efforts a franchisor puts to acquire and retain more franchisees in new locations.
In this blog, we will focus on franchise development marketing strategies that will help you as a franchisor to find quality prospective franchisees to further expand your franchise business. Let’s dive right in.
5 Franchise Marketing Strategies to Maximize Returns
Marketing a franchise is no easy feat. If done right, it offers many benefits that the entire franchise and the individual local franchisee can reap. But one wrong move and all your efforts can go in vain. To help you maximize your business’ ROI and make your business thrive, below is a list of 5 franchise marketing strategies:
1. Maintain consistency in brand communication
When it comes to franchise businesses, consistency is the key to success. According to a survey conducted by Lucidpress, brand consistency can increase revenue by 10-20%. While the approaches may vary based on the platform, it’s vital that the branding, i.e your logo, color, fonts, tone of voice, and mission statement is consistent in communication.
For example, Coca-Cola, a cold beverage brand always uses the same fonts and design elements in all their campaigns or posts. Also, the brand always uses the same tone of voice that creates congruent brand identity. If you look at their Instagram handle, all their posts express the feeling of excitement.
Maintaining consistency in your brand image will help you build a strong brand identity for your franchise business. For this to happen, you should have a clearly stated brand guideline manual that includes brand imagery and can be accessed by all your franchisees.
2. Build a strong social media presence
As per the latest report by Statista, there are over 3.6 million people active on social media, and it’s expected to increase to 4.41 billion by 2025. These numbers clearly indicate that marketing on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. play an integral part in a business’ success.
Social media marketing activities helped businesses drive 60% more sales and 50% more business partnerships. This means not only does it allow you to engage with existing customers and convert prospective customers, it also helps you build a strong online presence that’s essential for building brand awareness and attracting high-quality franchisees.
3. Make use of SEO to find potential franchisees
Keeping all facets of your franchise business’ web strategy up to date is critical in finding ideal franchisees. As this goes beyond just branding and corporate identity, it’s important that you spread the word about franchise opportunities your business offers. One of the best ways to do this is curating a strong web presence by developing a SEO friendly website. SEO (Search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing web pages with the right keywords to make the website rank higher on search engines like Google. This will make it easier for your potential franchisees to discover you and find the right information about your business. Furthermore, it will enable you to drive more visitors to your website that are looking to become a franchisee in your industry, generate qualified leads, and convert them.
4. Use existing franchisees as brand advocates
A network of existing franchisees can be the biggest brand evangelists and a great source of lead generation. Needless to say, a business’ existing customers are its biggest influencers. Therefore, advocate marketing refers to a process that enables franchise owners to turn their most happy franchisees into brand advocates. When it comes to attracting new franchisees, it’s important for you to ensure that your existing franchisees are happy with your franchise business. Having a strong relationship with every individual franchisee is critical to create brand loyalty and this can only be achieved by letting them know how invaluable they’re for your business. Not only will they enable you to attract more franchisees, but it will also enable you to boost brand awareness.
5. Grow your business with paid digital marketing
There are many options you can choose from to market your franchise business using paid digital marketing. One such option is email marketing for businesses to target their customer base. Not just that, it has been found to be 40x more effective at generating traffic than social media marketing. Running paid advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, or Google are also some of the highly effective ways that would help you reach your target audience, create brand awareness about your franchise business, drive conversions, and generate revenue across different locations.
To Wrap Up
Whether it’s operational marketing or franchise development marketing, it’s tough to grow a business. But by maintaining brand consistency throughout locations and channels, building a strong presence on social media, and letting potential franchisees know about the franchise opportunities a business offers enables franchise businesses onboard ideal partners, expand their business, and maximize their returns.
So now when you know that there are many digital marketing strategies you can use to market your franchise business, wait no further! Put above-mentioned strategies into action and get ready to set your business up for success.
