If you are a franchise, you need to market your services. Enter franchise marketing: the practice of incorporating any marketing strategy that will help your franchise grow so you can gain more customers. However, before starting, you need a franchise marketing plan.
Building a strong plan isn’t easy. That’s why we’ve compiled a guide to help you build a solid franchise marketing plan and make your business grow.
The Complete Guide to Building a Franchise Marketing Plan
Create a Strict Budget
For every business initiative you try, you need a budget. This is especially true for financing marketing. Some marketing strategies are free, while others will cost you—though some strategies are cheaper than others.
What are your goals and how do you achieve them?
Answering this question will help you identify the kinds of strategies you need and then create a suitable budget around them.
Determine Marketing Strategies To Implement
Who is your target audience? If you don’t know the audience you are trying to reach, it will be much harder implementing effective strategies. Basically, pinpoint the demographic(s) you want to reach and target strategies that will support you most in those niches.
Here is a list of typical strategies to use:
- Website: Every company needs to have an updated, easy-to-navigate site.
- Social Media: Target Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Is there a certain age group you are trying to reach? Younger generations tend to be more on Instagram and Twitter. Likewise, Pinterest is image-heavy. Use these specifics to your advantage.
- Email Marketing: Though working with an email marketing company can cost you money, this is a great way to advertise your franchise in a personal way.
- SEO: Search Engine Optimization will help you rank higher on Google without paying for a spot on the first page. This is done through keyword research and backlinking.
- Paid Advertising: In contrast to SEO, you can pay for a spot on Google. This can be costly and isn’t as sustainable as SEO, but ultimately is a good way to get traffic fast.
- Print Marketing: Print newsletters, brochures, flyers, and/or business cards. The Print Authority offers high-end printing at affordable prices.
Don’t limit yourself to just a few things on this list! It’s important you use as many avenues of marketing as possible.
Ensure Brand Consistency
Brand consistency is one of the most important parts of franchise marketing. Because you are marketing on various social media platforms, emails, advertisements, and more, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent brand throughout. However, an inconsistent brand can be detrimental to your business.
If your company doesn’t have a strong identity, your target demographic won’t have much to hold on to. You want to make your company memorable, and you want it to come across strong enough that no matter where potential customers learn about you, they are left with a strong impression.
Print marketing is one of the easiest ways to ensure brand consistency across franchises. Fulfillment services, for example, enable businesses to print a steady flow of materials and ship them to many locations. In this case, your printed marketing materials will be consistent across every location. While brand consistency is easy with The Print Authority’s fulfillment printing, maintaining this consistency can be a lot harder with social media.
Identify Potential Setbacks
Lastly, not every franchise marketing strategy will work, so plan for failure. What does that mean?
Identify any problems you foresee might happen with the strategies you choose to implement and ask yourself: how can I overcome those setbacks or even prevent them from happening?
Lastly, keep in mind the goals you set at the beginning of the plan and make that your focus, rather than becoming sidetracked by minor issues.
Start Your Franchise Marketing Journey Today!
Growing your franchise starts with a plan, so start your journey as soon as possible and start creating your franchise marketing plan today! You never know how big your business can grow. The Print Authority can help you with your franchise marketing with our franchise printing services.
