Taking on a franchise is a thrilling business opportunity that comes with many wins and challenges along the way. One part of running your business that can be one of the most enjoyable, and one of the hardest to stay on top of, is your marketing. In this modern world of social media and high tech, it’s so important to use the means at your disposal to successfully market your business to the right people and always stay front of mind to your target market. In this article, we’ll explore some top tips on how you can do just that.
Know your audience
Before you even start calculating your marketing budget, you need to take a step back and think about who you’re selling to. Draw up a typical customer profile and try to get into the head of your ideal consumer. Start with the small e.g. their age and location and build up to the bigger considerations. What are they interested in besides your brand, where do they visit regularly, what websites do they view, what social media apps do they use. What about other potential customers from different audience segments? How do they behave differently and how does that affect how you could reach them?
This is an exercise that will help you work out where to start and also help shape your assumptions and hypotheses that you can test along the way to find out how your business works with or against common marketing trends.
Visibility is key
As franchises are localised, this gives you a great opportunity to make the most of getting out in the community and being seen and recognised as a local business. Putting marketing spend into the digital space is a great investment in the modern age but it is not the be-all-and-end-all, many customers still see brands that advertise in the local area using traditional marketing methods as more reliable.
One of the key benefits of being part of a franchise is working within an established brand that will often already have some recognition for your customers. Whilst this is great for you, this doesn’t mean your ideal customer will know they have a local branch of the business unless you spend on your local marketing to be seen in the local area.
Go digital
Whilst traditional marketing shouldn’t fall to the wayside, working out the best ways to utilise the digital sphere for your business is still hugely important. There are many digital options to make use of with more and more online opportunities popping up all the time. But, things move fast in this digital age, keep up to date with marketing trends and lean on your franchiser for support to navigate the digital space.
Make sure you’re looking out for ad space online, Google and Meta have been key providers of online advertising for some time and with good reason. Much like with your traditional marketing, don’t forget the classics and keep an eye on your return on ad spend to judge if your budget is going in the right places for you.
Use reviews to your advantage
Word of mouth and positive testimonials might just be the oldest marketing tools at your disposal but, still to this day, there is no stronger marketing tool than being recommended. This is where you need to have full faith in your business and the service or product it’s providing and ask your customers for reviews. This can open you up to some negativity but if you’re a recognised and trustworthy local business, you will likely build up a loyal customer base who will be happy to support you with some positive words. Having positive reviews not only makes your business seem more trustworthy, it also bolsters your online presence so make sure you really do use reviews to their fullest advantage.
The biggest consideration about marketing your franchise business is that there is no one way to do it and no one size fits all situations. For every business, it’s key to take a trial and error approach, test different platforms, opportunities and areas in your marketing efforts and track what works for you.
This article comes courtesy of Stagecoach Performing Arts, we provide singing, dancing and acting classes for children aged 4-18.
