I was reminded again the other day that great marketing is one of the foundations of a great franchise.
I don’t mean just the advertising component of marketing but those first steps most businesses often overlook – working out exactly who wants your product, exactly what the product is they really desire and exactly who your customer is – the nitty gritty of the demographics of your perfect customer. This is the marketing strategy and it is essential to get this bit right from the beginning.
One of my clients in the building maintenance industry, who shall remain nameless, contacted me after a break (he simply disappeared half way through the program) to let me know that he had not gone missing in action. He was just not able to continue building his franchised business in the short term because his business had taken off as a result of the work he had done refining his marketing strategy. He was too busy looking after new clients and working out how to leverage himself out of the day to day so he could return to building his franchise business. His turnover has increased from $700,000 to $1,200,000 over seven months!
What a great problem to have when marketing a franchise business.
And I have to say he is not the only one of my clients who has reported such results. Another example this year is a family-owned training business that has had to recruit extra staff to handle the growing workload. This all took time of course, but finally they contacted me this week to urgently arrange the franchise agreements as they have started advertising in a new location and just couldn’t handle the increased demand. They quickly decided that the only solution was to make this new location their first franchise territory, establish their first franchisee and use this new business as a pilot outlet.
A good marketing strategy is such an important foundation to any franchised business. Not only does it often lead to significant increases in sales, it also provides a critical foundation to the franchise structure.
- It ensures you get your market segment right so that you can brand and promote your product to the right people in a way that ticks their sales buttons.
- It ensures you can make every outlet look and feel the same, deliver the same great, proven product and level of service, and in fact behave like a franchise.
- It provides the demographics that underpin the budgets and cash-flows you need to do to ensure that every outlet can cover its own expenses (including those essential fees and payments to you the franchisor) and make a profit.
- It provides the demographics which underpin the decisions you need to make about the size and distribution of each territory or the rules which govern how non-territory based outlets will relate to each other.
Get the marketing strategy right, know your product and your customer and you will have a fantastic start to the franchise business you dream of.