Franchise Marketing for Business Growth
Wisetail | 3 min read
Operational franchise marketing is any type of marketing activity performed to find and retain a customer base for your franchise locations. Marketing is a challenge, but it is key to success in any business. Increasing competition, innovation, and a rapidly shifting market create a dynamic environment in which marketing must be memorable, effective, and agile to remain relevant.
Luckily, a franchise comes with a known brand — and a national brand name brings customer awareness before a location even opens its doors. Building brand awareness creates a strong foundation for your company’s franchise marketing strategy.
Brand Awareness
Why is brand awareness important? Effective branding raises public awareness and creates expectations in a customer’s mind about what your business provides. Meeting or exceeding those expectations helps a franchise stand out and attract market share.
Franchise companies typically provide training and marketing programs for their franchisees. Brand awareness is vital to the success of these franchise marketing strategies for several reasons, including:
- Brand awareness fosters trust. Today’s consumers research products and services, read reviews, and seek opinions before making a purchase. But once a customer discovers your brand’s unique benefits, they are more likely to make repeat purchases. Trust and loyalty are built on customers successfully identifying and interacting with your brand’s story at every franchise location.
- Brand awareness increases product association. We have all grabbed a Band-Aid or a Kleenex when we needed it, even if we are aware those common terms are brand names for bandages and tissues. Brand awareness associates particular actions and products with particular brands.
- Brand awareness builds brand equity. Brand equity is the product of overall perception and the customer experience your brand provides. It can be positive or negative, but positive brand equity leads to increases in perceived value, stock prices, opportunities for expansion, and social impact.
- Brand awareness establishes consistency. For a franchise business model, consistency of product quality and delivery is essential to building a well-known, easily recognized brand. Brand awareness creates customer expectations, which are reinforced every time they match a customer’s experience.
Steps to Success
To create marketing solutions for your franchise company, consider these first steps to a successful marketing strategy:
- Content marketing. Franchise companies are expected to provide marketing content for franchisee use. Content creation can be a challenge, so it’s critical to have a comprehensive and adjustable content strategy in place, so your franchise locations can keep up with corporate messaging and adapt it to their local market when appropriate.
- Social media marketing. Building and maintaining an effective social media marketing program requires time and effort, but the payoffs are considerable. As with content marketing, provide ready-to-upload brand management materials your local franchises can adapt to suit individual locations and their local community needs. Social media has a substantial reach. To create a deeper relationship with customers, share stories about local events and community causes from your franchise locations.
- Email marketing. Email is a tried-and-true method for generating and increasing brand awareness. Create an ongoing email marketing plan to advertise promotions and keep your business in front of your customer base. A weekly or monthly email, with regular updates about pricing and sales, reminds customers your brand is available to meet their needs wherever they are.
To enhance marketing for your franchise brand, create content your franchisees can adapt to their local needs, share community stories from your franchises, and use your company’s learning management system (LMS) or learning experience platform (LXP) to train and engage employees in both corporate and local marketing strategies.
