What Makes A Fantastic Franchise Marketing Strategy?

1. What Makes A Fantastic Franchise Marketing Strategy? Franchise Business A franchise business is one that expands to multiple locations gradually from an initial pilot project. The idea is to build upon the popularity of the other units while entering a new market. Rather than establishing itself slowly, a franchise unit within a business is expected to pull customers at a fast rate based on its initial success in other locations. Due to this reason marketing strategy for franchise becomes one of the most important factors for a franchise business to become successful. In this business, marketing is done at a national level so a marketing strategy has to be developed carefully. In this era of location-specific businesses, it becomes quite tricky to address the entire nation and establish a connection with the customers on a local basis at the same time. On the other hand, given the vast diversity of demographics in India, catering to marketing needs at a local level can turn into a disaster. The message delivered has to be consistent otherwise brand identity gets eroded. Sending mixed messages to the market creates an impression of the absence of a uniform standard and thus, the product or service is deemed to be of poor quality. www.frantastic.in 1

2. It is the job of marketing to create brand value and at the same time not to miss the chance of pulling in customers at a local level. It seems confusing but there are ways to do it if the marketing team does not ignore this need at the time of conceptualizing a marketing strategy for the entire nation. Brand and audience: It is the job of marketing to create awareness about the brand and ensure that it gets associated with certain intrinsic values of the product or service provided. It seems like a very obvious point that for applying the marketing strategy, there has to be an audience that you can engage and there has to be a brand to talk about. A product or service is not enough because the message to be delivered is about brand attributes. The first requirement is to build a brand identity with special attributes in a product or service. The brand identity has to be strong enough to stand out from a hundred similar products. Next is to maintain branding in such a way that customers recognize it easily and make an emotional connection with the brand values. The third requirement is that there has to be a ready audience that you can address. One has to build an audience much before actually delivering the message. While it is easier to get an audience at a national level through mass media, it requires a specific effort to put together a local audience. Budget: It would be a wise idea to allocate a budget for marketing at a national level as well as at a local level. Though it seems relatively simple, for a franchise business that aims to expand fast, it can be a difficult task. On one hand, it needs to allocate funds to address customers; on the other hand, funds are needed to direct marketing efforts towards getting new franchisees too. For this, detailed planning is needed to ensure that funds do not fall short for either of the two tasks. Brand consistency: When a plan does not include the need to market at a local level, franchisees may make their own effort at it. The risk in this lies in the projection that differs from the original branding. Customers are quick to notice such discrepancies and lose trust. www.frantastic.in 2

3. In order to avoid this situation, the franchisor must ensure that these issues are clarified at the start itself through proper training. Options for addressing local trends and events can be worked out by building microsites for each location within the main site. There can be promotional material that can be availed at any time with minimal customization by a franchisee. The marketing team has to develop its services accordingly. Such solutions are already being provided and should be availed of by a business. This will ensure the consistency of the message delivered by marketing. Word of mouth marketing: With the advent of different types of media, the word of mouth is often neglected. It is still one of the most effective ways of attracting customers to try a product. To ensure that a good word spreads, ensure a good product and try to accommodate as many local attributes as possible. Take care to be in the good books of the influencers that are relevant to the business. Employees in the business will be inevitably asked about the product or service to ensure that the employees are happy and understand the best aspects of the product or service. E-mail strategy: Marketing through e-mail is still effective because it is a direct mode of communication with the customers. A campaign can be run at any time if one has a database of local customers. A franchise unit should continuously update its database through forms to be filled up by customers for feedback or for memberships that enable certain benefits. www.frantastic.in 3

4. Franchise Business Social media: Undoubtedly, social media can be used effectively to market a franchise at the local level. It is very useful to tap local trends and build a connection with the local market. Franchisees can be trained about the use of social media for marketing. Proper training should include the possible negatives such as dilution of branding by moving away from the predefined brand values. They should also be trained in ways to deal with trolling or misuse of the social media platform and cyber safety norms. www.frantastic.in 4

5. Nowadays, ratings on food delivery apps and online communities command the brand value of a product or service. In order to maintain the image that customers are valued by a business, managers should be encouraged to give timely and appropriate responses to reviews. Content: With big appetites for content, it is becoming increasingly imperative that the right content is fed into the system. The content has to be in keeping with the brand. It should be a good mix of blogs, videos, and images. Again, location-specific content is gaining the upper hand in reaching out to customers that matter. This is due to evolving search engines and also the search trends. There can be a policy of submitting localized content by each unit on a regular basis. This can be reviewed by the marketing team and released through the central website. It can ensure that the message is right and the customer is usually delighted to be addressed at a local level from a central source. Simple things like providing a map marked with the correct geo-location help in raising the chances of business by customers looking for a business placed close to them. Any business that hopes to increase its customer base and revenues through more and more franchise outlets should begin by setting its goals. Next, the budget for acquiring a new franchisee or addressing a potential market through marketing should be drawn out. The strategy should miss neither the wider audience nor ignore local trends. Frantastic is a franchise consultant service that can help you with marketing your franchise with the twin objectives of selling your franchise as well as building a customer base to sell your products. It will help you to refine your business model to make it easily replicable. It will also help you to reach out to people who are interested in the franchise through search engine optimization and content. www.frantastic.in 5