Top 3 secrets to successful franchise marketing revealed!

If you are a franchisee, you have probably had your share of challenges in the process of marketing your franchise business. Sure, there’s the corporate brand supporting you, but sometimes that just doesn’t seem enough. Your franchise marketing strategies have to be such that you are able to differentiate your franchise from the others and create an identity for yourself. Here’s how you can go about doing that…

Build a local fan following

You need to build a strong base of customers who are loyal to your business—not just your franchise. You can do this by giving your franchise business a local feel. Start a Facebook fan page for your business, get it listed on Google places and start tweeting about any special deals that are specific to your store. While corporate websites may be great, creating landing pages or microsites dedicated to your franchise business can work wonders. For example, if you are a franchisee of Pizza Kitchen in Pittsburgh, then it makes sense to host your own website such as Pittsburgh.pizzakitchen.com—which would focus on offers and deals specific to your eatery. Plus, the chances of your eatery showing up on web searches for pizza joints in Pittsburgh automatically increases. So, remember, the more local your franchise marketing, more footfall your business would get.

Get Personal

This process is in fact a part of step #1. If you need to give a ‘local feel’ to your franchise business, you need to add a personal touch to it. You need to lend a degree of personalization to the relationship you share with your customers. For example, suppose you are a franchisee of a Pizza outlet, it would be a great idea to personalize your marketing flyer at the time of important sport events or cultural festivals that happen in your town. On the same note, you could work towards creating a solid database of your customers with their names, date of birth, anniversary etc. and use this data to send them special discount coupons around the time of their birthdays or anniversaries.

Marketing automation can help

As a franchisee it can get a little overwhelming if you have to do all the marketing on your own. You play multiple roles as a franchise owner and that means being the CEO, VP of sales and marketing, all at once. Why not use some help in the marketing department? Investing in a marketing automation software that provides basic services such as e-mail marketing, social media marketing, landing pages creation, campaign automation etc. would be of immense value.  That would allow you to focus on the more strategic aspects of your franchise business, while the marketing would pretty much take care of itself.

All said and done, one golden rule to franchise marketing success is to keep at it consistently and never let your franchise marketing efforts diminish. Because, local marketing is all about building relationship with your customers and relationships are built only when you stay in constant touch!