MARKETINGADVICE
be ready to take the next steps yet but these activities will ensure that you will be in the forefront of their minds should they decide to take the next steps. You wouldn’t want your competitors to get in there fi rst!
“You will make prospects feel valued by showing them you are happy to share your expertise”
Create a detailed communications plan By creating a detailed communications plan, you can re-engage the old leads in your database and help them to progress further down the decision-making process. Before you start your plan, look back on how your current franchisees were communicated with throughout their decision-making process and review the most effective activities. A detailed communications plan should: • Cover a minimum of three months • Cover several communication channels • Include key messages and timings • Monitor your spend
By following these steps, you will ensure that you give your activity plenty of time to take effect. It can take a couple of months for your communications to gain momentum before you see prospects start walking through the door. By covering a wide range of channels, you ensure that you cover a wide base and as many of the leads in your database as possible engage with your communications at least once. Most importantly, you can monitor your spending and fi nd out how much each activity is going to cost you in advance. This way, you can easily stick to your budget.
Top technique to re-engage your database
My top technique for re-engaging your database would be to host a series of two or three ‘exclusive’ seminars. These seminars give you the opportunity to get a small number of prospective franchisees into one room for a day or even just an evening. Holding seminars that are informative and
provide attendees with key information and facts about your franchise and the industry you operate in will ensure that you don’t sound too salesy or pushy and will help you stand out from the competition. To achieve this, you could also invite a guest speaker to break the seminar up so that it doesn’t seem to solely revolve around you and your franchise. Advertising limited spaces and sharing your expert knowledge will make your audience feel valued because you’ve taken the time and effort to share information with them, which sets the standard for how you will act once the people in the room become franchisees. It also generates credibility and trust between you and your prospects, which is essential when they’re investing a large amount of money and could eventually be working alongside you. Setting yourself as the expert during the course of the seminar will also
have this effect and shows that you can walk the walk and talk the talk. Providing prospects with an incentive to attend any event you host will also have a massive impact on attendance levels. Research has shown that offering a goodie bag for attending the event will increase turn-out rates by up to 15-20 per cent. These goodie bags are exclusive to your event and have a high value to prospects who are keen to know more about your business opportunity, all at a low cost to you to deliver. At Coconut Creatives, we helped one of our clients plan and run a programme of three seminars. The aim was not to generate new leads but to re-engage their existing database. In order for the seminars to be as cost effective as possible, we predicted that our client would need: • A minimum of 10 decision makers in the room at each event
• A minimum of two HQ meetings to come out of each event
• A minimum of one sign up to come out of each event
From these events, the client had 41 attendees across all three events, which equates to a 60 per cent turn-out rate and has already had six one-to-one meetings at HQ with more still pending. While these seminars may be of a little extra cost to you, the results are invaluable and all from your existing database!
Following up the communication Whether you decide to put on an event or simply release an expert guide, the work you do to follow that communication up is just as important as the communication itself. To get those all-important conversions, it is essential that you contact those prospects who have shown a strong interest in your communications quickly before they go cold again. Any event you hold should be followed up with a phone call or email to those who have attended – this will help you to pull them further through the recruitment process. n
AUTHOR’S NOTE If you would like to find out more about how you can set a marketing strategy for your franchisee recruitment, contact Coconut Creatives on 01725 511 673
Franchisor News | 29 Franchisor News | 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52