When someone decides to buy into a franchise, they aren’t just buying into the successful business model the company has established – they’re also buying into the support the franchise puts behind marketing the brand.
However, the challenge for any franchisor is maintaining the balance between growing the brand into new territories while supporting existing franchisees with their local area marketing.
Marketing can become a strain on company time and resources when every enthusiastic franchisee comes to you with individual marketing ideas for their location. Spending the time to filter through the many requests can detract your attention from overall marketing strategies and business goals. Eventually, you may find your marketing team scrambling to support marketing activities for individual franchisees to the detriment of the overall brand marketing plan.
The only way to grow the franchise brand and gain momentum is the replication of the business model and marketing strategy across all territories, regardless of location or size.
The best way to achieve this is by developing a centralised online marketing hub to ensure both the brand and franchisees are receiving the marketing support they need. Implementing a central system that is administered by your team can supply all the tools you need to support national and local area campaigns while also driving consistency and sales growth that will satisfy both brand and franchisee needs.
The online marketing hub should house customisable artwork templates that give your franchisees 24-hour access to on demand resources such as specials flyers, branded collateral, email newsletters, and promotional assets. All these assets they can personalise for their territory and print or use online to attract customers.
You control the brand
Maintaining brand consistency is crucial for franchisors. After all, the brand represents value in attracting new franchisees and sales. An online marketing hub allows you to offer a range of customisable collateral pieces where you control which elements can be edited. This protects your brand’s elements, regardless of the promotional platform, and still gives your franchisee network the freedom to create localised advertising materials.
National campaign roll out
A centralised online marketing hub that is accessible by all franchisees also makes rolling out national campaigns seamless. By offering customisable marketing collateral national campaigns can quickly proliferate through franchisee territories while maintaining brand consistency. National Campaign Kits can include a range of printed materials alongside digital marketing assets such as e-mail marketing templates and web banners.
Local area marketing activities
The real strength in an online marketing hub is when it can be customised to support a wide range of local area marketing activities without the need to alter templates or overall plans, regardless of the territory.
However, the key to this is building a platform that works for the brand and franchisees through marketing strategies and activities that are scalable and a true template that will fulfil any individual franchisee request. You are not only supporting the innovative franchisees who are always looking for ways to grow their business but also franchisees unsure of where to start with marketing ideas to help their business grow. The main obstacle to building such a robust marketing hub is the time needed upfront for planning and developing the templates. However, spending the time to develop the strategy, templates, and platforms will save money and time down the track when trying to fulfil all the individual franchisee requests.
Having the right online marketing hub in place will minimise administration time for franchisors, giving small teams more time and capacity to grow and innovate.
Joe Papadatos is Managing Director of Icon Visual Marketing, a full service marketing agency that for over twelve years has been equipping businesses with the marketing and sales tools to help them reach their next customer.
Icon Visual Marketing are highly experienced at strategically planning and building robust marketing hubs that help franchisors deliver the right marketing tools and resources to their franchisees grow.
For more information contact Joe on:
T: 1300 138 984
W: www.iconvisual.com.au