How To Market And Grow Your Franchise

Marketing and growing a franchise is different than marketing and growing an independent business, here are some ways to do it.

How To Market And Grow Your Franchise

If you have a franchise, how you market and grow it is going to be different than how you’d market and grow an independently owned business. Let’s take a look at how to market and grow your franchise. 

• Brand - Part of the benefit of buying into a franchise is that the franchisor has already spent a lot of time and money on building a brand. When you become a franchisee, you instantly benefit from all the awareness that’s already been built. It comes along with an existing customer base and brand awareness that can be difficult for a new, small, independent business to quickly develop. For example, Subway and Mcdonald's both have well-established brands. If you become a Subway or Mcdonald's franchisee, you won’t need to build awareness, it’s already been done and people know about these brands. With a franchise, the target audience is already established, and active, and they know what to expect, so the decision to do business with you takes less time and it takes you less time to start generating profits. The first thing a franchisee should do is work with the franchisor to leverage their expertise to help them build awareness at the local level. Beyond customers, existing brand recognition will also make it easier for you to attract the employees and talent you’ll need to run your franchise.
• Network - When you become a franchise owner, you automatically become a member of the network of franchise owners. As a franchisee, it’s critical that you take advantage of the network of franchisees. You’ll be able to benefit from the experience of other owners and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes they made. For example, if you are starting a new Subway, you should talk with other Subway owners about what has worked for them, what doesn't, tips, tricks, etc. Having access to this deep store of knowledge and experience gives you a huge advantage because you are able to put to work tried and tested business models and methods instead of having to go through the process of trial and error. Being a franchisee gives you access to a network of people just like you who you can ask for advice so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or fall into some of the common traps that others have before you.
• Tools - You don’t need to be a marketing genius to be a franchise owner. Franchises will have established tools for you to use to market your business. Everything from logos and signage, to scripts and email templates, are usually available from the franchisor. Having access to these pre-existing tools can make the marketing of your new franchise fairly easy but you’ll want to be careful to customize those materials to your local market. Marketing that’s customized to your local community is going to be much more effective than more general marketing pieces that are oriented for regional, statewide, or national audiences. When using these marketing tools, customize and localize the messages as much as possible for the best results. 
• Local Marketing - Local marketing is key to your success as a franchise owner but there’s a good chance it’s something that the franchisor won’t be able to help you with that much. There’s no question that you’ll get some immediate benefits when you become a franchisee working with a well-known brand, but you’ll still be serving the local community, and every locality is unique. To be successful as a franchisee, you’re going to need to understand the local community that you’re serving, the dynamics, the demographics, etc. Once you understand the local community that you serve, you’re going to need to use that insight to fine-tune your marketing so that it resonates with the people in the local market and attracts them to your franchise. In most cases, understanding the people that make up the local community isn’t something that the franchisor will be able to help you with because they typically look at things from the broader perspective of the national or regional level. They can't or don’t zoom in down to the city/block level to see what’s happening in order to really help the franchisee understand the local marketplace.

If you want to know more about marketing, read our article, “Here’s Why Every Small Business Needs A Strong Marketing Team”, or contact us.

Tags: marketing, franchise