How to Market Your Franchise Business

A franchise business cannot become successful or grow rapidly unless it is marketed well. No matter how good your products or services are, no matter how good operational systems you have in place, no matter how devoted your management team is, you will never succeed if you do not employ a good marketing strategy.

There are many ways to market a franchise business. The strategy that you are going to implement should suit your business type, match your goals and reach your prospective franchisees. Here are some tips that can help you reach these objectives.

Franchise marketing tips.

• Determine who your prospective franchisees are. Similar to determining who the prospective buyers of a product or a service are, you need to determine who is likely to be interested in your franchise. There are many different types of franchise buyers and you cannot target them all. Segmenting the market and finding your marketing niche will help you a lot when you start preparing your marketing plan. Do this well in advance so that you can be 100% ready when you launch your franchise.

• Work on your credibility. Regardless of how good your marketing strategy is, it will not bring you a lot of franchisees if you do not manage to make your business credible. There are many factors influencing business credibility – how long you have been into business, how large your company is, what the quality of your products or services is, do you have superb customer service practice and so on. Make sure these are reflected in every single part of your marketing strategy and advertising materials.

• Do not underestimate the power of advertising. There are many different channels of advertising. You can promote your franchise by distributing brochures, attending industry exhibitions, posting magazine and newspaper ads, creating advertising for television and radio, advertise online. You should not ignore even a single marketing channel. Of course this doesn’t mean that you should use all possible advertising channels or at least not at the same time. Which marketing strategy you will employ will depend on your prospective franchisees, your goals and your marketing budget. You should also research how your direct competitors are advertising and see if you can do better.

• Internet. Internet is presenting franchisors with unlimited marketing opportunities, often costing just a fraction of traditional advertising. Put some effort into exploring these opportunities – create a nice company websites, contribute content to industry related web portals or advertise online.

• Word of mouth. Definitely one of the most powerful marketing tools is word of mouth. A happy and successful franchisee is worth thousands of dollars into advertising. Try to keep positive and good relationship with your unit owners and you will quickly see a lot of applications for new franchises. You should also be able to supervise closely how your franchisees are running their units to make sure each one is keeping up to the standards of your name.