5 Things Your Franchise Needs to Market Locally and Maintain Brand Control

Transcription

1 5 Things Your Franchise Needs to Market Locally and Maintain Brand Control 2014 Copyright Constant Contact, Inc. FRANCHISE

2 As a franchise, you know how important it is to provide your franchisees with the tools they need to be successful. When it comes to helping franchisees build their business on a local level, few tools can match the power of marketing. You re probably already using marketing on a corporate level. You may have even helped manage marketing programs on behalf of some of your best performing franchisees. But if you re like a lot of franchise owners, you may feel that your program has room for improvement. You may have also faced certain challenges that have slowed you down and made it difficult to put a program in place that delivers the type of results you re looking for. Here at Constant Contact, we launched our Franchise Partner Program to help franchises overcome their marketing challenges by providing tools and support designed specifically for franchise businesses. Through helping over 750 corporate brands succeed, we ve learned a lot about what it takes to create an marketing program that delivers measurable results for you and your franchisees. In this guide, we will walk you through a 5-point checklist to help you measure the success of your marketing strategy. Then, we ll offer easy-to-follow advice for putting your program into action. 2

3 Local Reach Whether your company has five locations, 50, or 500, you need to make sure your franchisees have a way to connect with potential customers in their area. While there are certain marketing tasks you can manage from a corporate level, when it comes to marketing, you need to make sure franchisees are empowered to make these connections locally where they re happening naturally every day. Your franchisees know their local area better than anyone. They re building new customer relationships every single day. It s that local touch that keeps customers coming back, and will be the secret to creating an marketing strategy that delivers results. Ask yourself: Am I making it easy for my franchisees to run their own marketing programs? Am I giving them the tools they need to connect with customers on a local level? Do I have a clear view into what my franchisees need to improve their marketing results? 3

4 Brand Control One of the biggest reasons franchises are unwilling, or often unable, to hand over control of their localized marketing programs is that they aren t able to maintain consistent branding of the messages that are sent out by franchisees. Branding can be a challenge for a business with one location. When you add multiple locations each with their own information they need to send out it can feel impossible to maintain a consistent, professional look and feel across your franchise network. This was a challenge Polly Mulvaney, director of marketing services for Kampgrounds of America faced when joining the Constant Contact Franchise Program in With more than 475 franchisees across the US and Canada, brand control was a top priority for KOA. It s crucial to us that we re able to protect the integrity of our brand while also offering our franchisees the flexibility to speak to their audience, says Polly. As part of the Constant Contact Franchise Program, KOA was able to work with Constant Contact to add professionally-designed templates to each franchisee s account. This allows members to communicate with their local audience and give a personal touch, while still staying consistent with the company s brand. For us, the templates are a way to not only control our brand, but also to make it as easy as possible for people to create and send s, Polly explains. 4

5 List-Building Tools By giving more control to your franchisees, you ll be empowering them to succeed on a local level. A big part of that success formula will be making sure they have the tools they need to grow their list. For most franchisees, actively growing an engaged list will involve both online and offline list building tools. Something as simple as a paper sign-up sheet on the counter of every franchise location can go a long way to help members grow their local audience. But there are also methods that are a bit more advanced that you can help introduce. At Constant Contact, we ve developed online sign-up tools to help our small business and franchise customers grow their list in all the places customers are interacting with them online. Franchisees can easily add sign-up forms to their website or Facebook Page. They can also add a link to sign up in every they send out, making it easy to grow their list when existing customers forward their s or share them on social media. Our trusted partners offer apps and integrations that sync with your Constant Contact account, and provide even more ways to capture new contacts. Along with tools for your franchisees to grow their list, they will also need tools to effectively manage their growing lists. Contact management will be important for your franchisees, and will allow you to stay organized on the corporate level as well. 5

6 Localized Reporting Access to tracking and analytics is important on both a local and a corporate level. As a franchise, it s important that you have the insights you need to see how your different marketing campaigns are performing. This can help you identify opportunities for growth and avoid any setbacks in future campaigns. You ll also have a clear view of how your marketing strategy is working across your entire franchise network. On a local level, it s important that your franchisees have the insights they need to track the results of their campaigns. Tracking metrics like opens and click rates will help them determine how people are responding to the messages they are sending out. They can also generate reports to identify their most engaged subscribers, and even segment their audience based on the content they are engaging with. For a franchise like Rainbow International, a restoration and cleaning service with more than 300 locations across the country, access to detailed campaign reports has resulted in higher open rates and better engagement with the s they send out. Through the Constant Contact Franchise Program, Rainbow International is able to create content and easily distribute it to franchisees to send to their local audiences. One of the best things about Constant Contact is that we can really make things easier for our franchisees, explains Heather McLeod, marketing manager for Rainbow International. They don t have to spend the time making templates or coming up with content for their audiences; we can just send it to them. 6

7 Support and Coaching If you ve tried introducing an marketing program on your own, you re probably familiar with the time-commitment that can come with either managing on behalf of your franchisees or supporting those franchisees that may be executing on their own. If your franchisees are new to online marketing, they may need training on how to set up their account and use the tools they have available. Even after getting set up, when questions come up they will rely on you to provide the support they need to keep things running smoothly. This was a major pain point we hoped to solve when we first launched our Franchise Partner Program. One of the ways that we solve this problem is with our dedicated Account Managers at the partner level, and our award-winning 24/7 support for both partners and their networks of franchisees. We ve also expanded our program to offer hands-on training workshops for all of our franchise partners. However you decide to manage your marketing, it s important to have support and educational resources available to your franchisees. 7

8 The Right Partner for Your Franchise If your franchise is ready for a better marketing solution, Constant Contact has the tools to help. Constant Contact has helped over 750 corporate brands, just like yours, engage their networks and drive new and repeat business on a local level. Franchises trust us because we ve made small business success our top priority. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION PROGRAM For more info on the Franchise Program, call our experts at or visit us at ConstantContact.com/franchise 8