When you buy into a franchise, you are also buying marketing support. But what form should this support take? Here we look at how a franchisor and franchisee need to work together.
For franchise buyers who are not marketing-savvy, a franchisor’s product or service might not be the main attraction. What is sold is sometimes eclipsed by the vital ingredients of great marketing:
- brand, identity and consumer trust
- umbrella marketing, and tools and support for local efforts
- indepth research to inform marketing
Buying into a franchise should pay for these three marketing assets, according to Joel Bason, manager of client services with Fuse Partners which creates platforms for compliant, targeted local marketing.
“You can’t really buy identity and trust any other way than in franchising,” says Bason.
Ongoing centralised marketing should offer tools and strategies for both attracting and retaining local customers. This should be informed by thorough market research on products, services and customers and, Bason says, franchisees should have access to the data.
“Franchisees contribute up to five percent of revenue to a franchisor for marketing,” says Bason, “so they want to be sure a franchisor doesn’t blindly put out initiatives” he says.
“The Internet and its forums make it easy these days to find out if a brand is well liked or not.”
Fuse Partners advises joining a franchisor that supports local marketing and traditional, multi-channel forms of marketing.
“Five years ago, the message was ‘this is what we’re doing. You can localise it and fend for yourselves’. Now franchisees are more savvy and pay for marketing so they demand head office [have financial] input to local marketing.”
Incentives might match franchisees’ local marketing dollar-for-dollar. Or a franchisor can offer, say, an electronic direct mail campaign in return for a letter-box drop.
“Consumers now look for a bespoke, individual feel about what they buy and where they shop. So they engage well with more traditional marketing.”
“When digital was all the rage, people took money out of traditional local marketing but this trend is reversing,” suggests Bason.
Franchisees need to work with brands marketing in what Bason sees as the top four channels – letterbox, press ads, electronic direct mail and SMS. Social media and web sites follow and then presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. Separate franchisee Internet presence is just too risky.
Then again, it’s not just about money. Even the best campaigns can go awry without support: expert advice on advertisement specifications, placement, what wins consumer buy-in and customisation.
“But franchisees must not go to market till they’ve been approved by head office – it’s essential quality control.”
Components of a campaign and advice around it should be easy to access. Logging on to a franchisor’s site should give franchisees everything needed for their own promotions.
Franchisees need brand guidelines, and these should be frequently updated across the network.
“If they can’t access brand guidelines, franchisees need good access to head office experts,” suggests Bason.
The icing on the cake is when franchisors are adventurous marketers. “It’s good to work with brands doing things you’ve not seen before – such as [our client] Crust Gourmet Pizza which this summer has run pop-up restaurants at events such as the races and the Australian Open. They’ve built restaurants into shipping containers and take them on semi-trailers to the crowds.”