FINAL WORD
Neighbourhood watch
When it comes to franchisee marketing, think local, advises Lindsay Jones
I
f I could come up with the holy grail of how to attract top-quality franchisees I’d
be a wealthy woman, living a life of luxury somewhere warm and sunny rather than sitting here writing this article!
But what I do know is that, with more and
more franchise opportunities fl ooding the marketplace, good candidates can afford to be picky. It seems that the level of business support provided by the franchisor is a key component in their decision-making process. It is no longer good enough to trot out the old clichéd phrase ‘ongoing support provided’ in recruitment packs, because that’s what everybody says; more detail is needed to back up the claim. I believe that marketing is the one area where franchisors need to up their game. Whilst a prospective franchisee is buying into an existing brand, essentially they are setting up a new business within their own specifi c territory. Unless the new owner has previous marketing experience, they’ll need a lot more help beyond just the initial launch. Once the balloons have gone down and the ‘opening soon’ fl yers have been consigned to waste paper recycling, many franchisees fi nd themselves fl oundering when it comes
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to promoting their business locally on an ongoing basis.
What some franchisors don’t realise is that
there’s a world of difference to promoting a national brand and promoting a local business. Franchisees couldn’t care less if the brand has been mentioned in an industry trade magazine or has a big presence on a franchisee recruitment website. What they want is to get their business in front of customers in their own local area to raise awareness and generate sales. Think local, not national, when it comes to franchisee marketing support– whatever you provide has to work in different regions and engage with each franchisee’s local audience. Before I went into PR I was a journalist on a local newspaper receiving endless media releases from franchisors blatantly fl ogging a new product or service attempting to look as though it had been sent in by the local owner. Sometimes, even, the release still contained the instructions for franchisees on how to personalise it, with the ‘fi ll your name and offi ce address here before printing out’ left in, giving the game away that the release was head offi ce generated content. No one was fooled and nearly all of them went straight into the bin because the content was dull and irrelevant to the readership. On the other hand, franchisors who supplied relevant human interest stories about their local franchisees within our readership area secured valuable editorial coverage.
Adding PR support to your existing package
needn’t cost a fortune. At one end of the scale, you could consider introducing a range of ‘how to’ leafl ets written by experts on subjects such as how to communicate with local newspapers and harnessing the power of social media. If you don’t have a central marketing fund, make a business case to franchisees for introducing one – services like PR can be bought centrally to give members a far more cost-effective way to access professional marketing.
It is worth allocating part of your recruitment budget to PR because at the end of the day happy franchisees give you smiley case studies, which are proven to be the most read content on recruitment websites. So, when you are next scratching your head wondering how to net those elusive grade-a prospects, think marketing. Look for ways to demonstrate how your organisation helps to promote franchisees at a local level, because it could make that vital bit of difference. n
LINDSAY JONES
Lindsay Jones is owner and managing director of LJPR, a PR consultancy with a specialist franchising division. A former journalist, she holds a masters degree in public relations and has been working with clients in the franchising industry for over 10 years.
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