The following passage is taken from Mark Siebert’s book, “Franchise Your Business.” To effectively convey a strong message, it is crucial to have an audience to receive that message. Franchise sales rarely occur by chance. While occasional prospects may stumble upon your business, most franchises are sold because franchisors execute well-designed marketing plans to attract potential buyers.
Our affiliate, Franchise Dynamics, has successfully sold hundreds of franchises year after year in various industries such as restaurants (Newk Restaurant), weight loss (Medifast), shelf modernization (shelfgenius), home renovation (101 Mobility), and indoor trampoline parks (Sky Zone). The key to their success lies in their marketing strategies. Over the past few years, Franchise Dynamics has processed over 100,000 franchise leads. These leads didn’t simply occur randomly.
To increase your chances of success, there are seven important factors to consider when generating leads:
1. Budget: Start by setting a budget for your franchise marketing plan. Balancing your objectives with available resources is crucial. Many business owners overlook the importance of goal-setting and respond with vague aspirations. It’s essential to define long-term goals and work backward to specific short-term goals.
2. Geographic markets for expansion: Avoid the mistake of launching a national franchise without careful consideration. Franchisors who fail to seek professional advice often have scattered locations, demonstrating their opportunistic and unfocused marketing approach. Trust that there is no shortage of prospects in any given market, and focus your lead generation efforts on your target markets.
3. Mix and distribution of corporate locations: Depending on your short-term plans, consider whether to prioritize franchising or corporate expansion. Some franchisors may benefit from putting corporate expansion on hold initially to focus on establishing themselves as a franchisor. Different strategies can be employed, such as reserving nearby markets for corporate locations and franchising in more distant markets.
4. Narrowing your market: Instead of targeting the entire universe of franchise buyers, it’s more effective to limit your profile of potential clients. By actively working to narrow down your buyer profile, you can create a more specific and targeted marketing message. Intuition alone is not sufficient; conducting primary research can enhance your marketing efforts.
5. It’s a numbers game: Remember that franchise sales, like any form of sales, involve numbers. The more you invest in franchise marketing, the more franchises you are likely to sell. Marketing dollars generate leads, which convert into applications, meetings, and eventually franchise sales.
6. Timing: Consider the role of timing in your franchise marketing plan. For franchisors with no significant seasonality challenges, optimizing advertising budget by spending more aggressively at certain times of the year can be advantageous. Avoid marketing heavily in November and December or during the peak of summer when potential franchisees are more preoccupied.
7. Combination of strategies and metrics: Marketing planning requires effective allocation of limited resources. However, it can be overwhelming to decide which lead generation methods to use when faced with conflicting information from public relations professionals, sellers of printed materials, internet experts, and brokers. The best marketing plans take into account historical performance, franchisee profiles, investment size, franchise value proposition, growth goals, and budget.
If you’re ready to grow your business, franchising may be the way to go. Consulting with expert franchise consultants can guide you through the process.
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The following excerpt is from franchise expert Mark Siebert’s book. Franchise your business. buy It Now.
while I have a strong message is important, it’s meaningless unless you have an audience you can get the message across to. Franchise sales rarely it happens by accident. And while the occasional serious prospect may walk through your door, most franchises sell because the franchisor executes a marketing plan designed to attract that prospect.
Our affiliate, Franchise dynamicsliterally sells hundreds of franchises a year, year after year, for concepts that have included restaurants (Newk Restaurant), weight loss (Medifast), shelf modernization (shelfgenius), home renovation (101 Mobility) and even indoor trampoline parks (sky zone).
In each case, the success of your sales efforts it was directly related to their marketing plans. Selling some 1,500 franchises in the past few years, Franchise Dynamics had to process more than 100,000 franchise leads, and those leads didn’t just happen.
To give you a foundation for the best chance of success, keep these seven factors in mind when generating leads.
1. Budget
The first step in creating your franchise marketing plan involves set a budget. Defining an adequate budget is almost always a balancing act between the objectives and the available resources.
However, when I ask my clients about their goals, I find that many business owners simply haven’t given it much thought. They often respond with vague platitudes about “Aggressive growth without sacrificing quality.” or suggest that they would like to open a certain number of units without having considered all the factors that go into making that decision.
The best way to develop your growth strategy is to set a long-term goal (exit, business value, cash flow, etc.) and a time frame (five years), translate that goal into a hypothetical business that can achieve it (100 franchises paying $30,000 a year in royalties, for example). example) and work backwards to a more specific short-term goal (sell 12 franchises in the first year).
After creating growth targets using these types of measures, the franchise marketing budget can be developed based on industry averages. The annual franchise marketing budget can be arrived at simply by multiplying the desired number of franchises to be sold by the assumed marketing cost per franchise.
2. Geographic markets for expansion
One mistake we see time and time again involves new franchisors starting their process with a national franchise launch. Often their initial expansion is fortuitous: they receive an important lead from Timbuktu and decide to follow it. Frankly, it’s easy to spot a franchisor who hasn’t benefited from professional advice. just watching in your placement strategy. If they have locations all over the map, chances are they are being opportunistic and unfocused in their marketing efforts.
Many of these franchisors suffer from the misconception that there are limited number of franchisees in any given market and if they don’t take advantage of every opportunity, it will never happen again. Unfortunately, that strategy will most likely come back to haunt them.
The truth is that the prospects of franchisees are no shortage. When you’re ready to enter a new market, they’ll be there, as long as you know how to find them. If a franchisor takes a reactive approach to isolated candidates lead in remote markets, they are also unlikely to be looking for the best candidates in that market. Focused lead generation within target markets will generate more leads that the franchisor can qualify to determine the candidates who will best represent your brand.
3. Mix and distribution of corporate locations
Another factor to consider will be your combination of franchise to corporate locations. For many new franchisors, the best course of action is to put more development of corporate locations on hold as you establish yourself as a franchisor. This approach allows you to learn the business of franchising and focus all your resources and efforts on this new business. Of course, if your short-term plans They involve both franchising and corporate expansion.you should take this into account in your marketing planning, especially when it comes to your placement strategy.
There are several placement strategies you can employ if you go this route:
- The Home-Sweet-Home strategy. One would be to reserve “nearby” markets for corporate locations and franchise in more distant markets.
- The finishing strategy. An upscaling strategy involves opening locations in distant markets that will serve as a showcase for future franchise efforts and a support center.
- The strategy of “picking cherries”. If you opted for a selective selection strategy, the main markets or the main locations within those markets would be reserved for you.
- The “reverse cherry picking” strategy. While we haven’t seen this often, the reverse selection strategy is employed when a franchisor is asked to accept high-risk locations as part of a package that includes prime locations.
4. Narrowing your market
One of the most effective ways of Improve the marketing of your franchise. is to limit the profile of your potential client. If your franchise target audience comprises the entire universe of franchise buyers, you will be forced to use a very general message to attract them. More importantly, you will likely need to advertise in general business or franchise publications, where you will compete with many additional franchise opportunities. The franchisor must actively work to limit the profile of the buyer as much as possible. While intuition alone can give you a starting point, the best marketers complement their intuition with primary research.
Related: How to determine your franchise KPIs and achieve profitability
5. It’s a numbers game
While almost cliché, it bears repeating here. Sales, and in this case, franchise sales, It’s a numbers game. The more money you spend on franchise marketing, the more franchises you will sell. Franchise Marketing Money Generates Leads. A percentage of those leads complete applications. A percentage of them will come to the meetings. And a percentage of those meetings will turn into franchise sales.
6. Moment
When developing your franchise marketing plan, you should keep in mind that moment will play an important role. For franchisors who do not have bigger problems With seasonality, the franchise’s marketing budget can be optimized by spending advertising dollars more aggressively at certain times of the year.
Generally speaking, franchise buyers go into hibernation in November and December. At that time of year, most of us are preoccupied with the holidays and less concerned with making life-changing decisions. Similarly, there is a period of stagnation in the height of summer, when prospective franchisees are more concentrated on family time and vacations than buying a business.
The most complicated situation, of course, occurs when a franchise is sold that is highly seasonal. Some businesses—lawn care, tax preparation, mall retail, holiday lighting, driveway restoration, and mosquito control, to name just a few—have their own busy seasons. Seasonal Franchisor Recommended account of this moment when developing your franchise marketing plan.
Related: Why it is important to market your franchise
7. The best plans are a combination of strategies and metrics.
marketing planning it is, more than anything, the art of effectively allocating scarce resources through unlimited uses for those resources. And when you begin your efforts in franchise lead generationyou are likely to be faced with a lot of conflicting information.
public relations professionals Promote public relations. Sellers of printed material will promote your publications. Internet professionals will talk about the sheer volume of leads they can generate. Brokers will tell you rightly about how well qualified their tracks will be As the saying goes: “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
What’s more, all these people will be right. And, to the extent that they sell exclusive use of their particular lead generation vehicle, they will all be wrong.
The best marketing plans take several factors into account when allocating media dollars, including:
- Historical performance of similar franchise concepts
- Historical performance of franchises of similar investment size
- Historical performance of your franchise marketing efforts
- The franchisee profile
- The message
- The size of the investment.
- The franchise value proposition
- The complexity of the franchise (for example, the need for more story)
- The speed of growth desired by the franchisor.
- The franchisor’s budget.
- seasonality
- Franchisor Growth Goals
Related: These are the top 200 global franchise brands in 2023
Franchise your business
Ready to grow your business? Franchising may be for you.
Expert franchise consultant Mark Siebert offers the ultimate how-to guide to employing the greatest franchise growth strategy. Siebert tells you what to expect, how to move forward, and avoid costly mistakes as he imparts decades of experience, knowledge, and practical advice to help you grow your business exponentially through franchising.
Learn how:
- Evaluate the franchiseability of your existing businesses.
- Identify the advantages and disadvantages of franchising.
- Develop a business plan for growth on steroids.
- Assess legal risk, obtain the necessary documents and protect intellectual property.
- Create marketing plans, generate leads, and build brands for a new franchise.
- Cultivate the franchisee-franchisor relationship.
Evaluate if this is the right step for you and find out how to get started with the help of Franchise your business.
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