Franchise marketing is big part of what makes the business model work. While it is generally a partnership between franchisor and franchisee, there’s plenty you can do to get the most of any campaign and increase your chances of success.

Marketing makes up an essential component of any business. Get it right, and you’ll have a strong brand compared to your competitors and an ongoing stream of customer enquiries. Get it wrong, and you’ll be scratching your head wondering why the phone isn’t ringing.

Franchise marketing basics

In most franchise systems, franchisees contribute a percentage of their turnover to what’s called the national marketing fund. Every single franchisee in the network will benefit from this fund. For the most part, this fund is invested in national campaigns the franchisor will decide such as TV, radio, national promotions or digital campaigns.

Franchise partners are also expected to develop their own marketing plans and programs within their selected territories and this commonly is known as LAM or local area marketing.

Local area marketing is essential to the growth and success of the franchisee within their community and aids in building brand awareness, developing relationships and creating leads that will ultimately result in sales.

Successful marketing in any industry or segment comes down to understanding your target market, defining your objective, planning and consistency. But what does a good plan look like?

Here’s five essential processes to help you nail franchise marketing and supercharge sales.

1. Concept

What’s the objective of the campaign? How and why is this campaign going to benefit you and your business?

Understanding not only your campaign objectives but also why this form of franchise marketing will appeal to your target market will better help you to formulate your approach.

2. Education

How are you going to educate your customers and prospects on this campaign? This stage is your planning framework, keeping it aligned to the campaign objectives and marketing channels to execute the campaign as effectively as possible.

This stage will take time and thought.

3. Implement

It’s time to launch! Always stay on top of the campaign, making tweaks if required and if possible.

This aspect of the process can often be the most daunting, however, if you have completed the proper planning and set yourself some key goals there is nothing to fear.

Remember, marketing is a lot of trial and error. Be sure you continually assess the success of your campaign so that you can make changes where possible. This also leads into the next crucial step.

4. Evaluate

This is really important, even if the results exceeded your expectations. Feedback is critical in small business and this is your chance to understand how you can improve for next time.

Talk it out with your staff, your franchisor, your customers and most importantly yourself. Conduct a deep evaluation of the campaign and think about what worked, what didn’t and how you would do things different next time.

5. Leverage

Go back to the objective. Did you achieve your goal? Depending on the objective, the results usually look like content, customer leads, customer data, phone enquires or sales.

If your business was featured in local press, social media or other channels you can repurpose this by sharing it within your local database, instore, digitally or through your own social networking. This gives your business credibility. These days content is king so share, share and share some more! Most of the time you can repurpose this content into a Facebook ad campaign.

If leads came rolling in, be sure to follow up within 24 to 48 hours. Include their details in your sales funnel and use to remarket. Always keep in mind that a prospect does not turn into a paid customer straight away. Think of every lead as a way to build new relationships – these always take time and consistency.

Even if you didn’t get the results you expected from your marketing campaign, try not to let it get you down. Find out why the campaign didn’t work through your evaluation and feedback process and go again. Most importantly, never give up.