You’ve got an awesome brand back by an awesome business strategy. The next step? How will you be able to find franchisees? What measures should you take to expand your business system? Here’s what marketing experts have to say.
How To Attract Franchisees
1. Targeted Research
Have you heard of targeted marketing? How social media advertisements are backed with algorithms that allow them to be seen by customers who are most likely to buy a specific product? The same concept can be applied to attracting franchisees.
Do some targeted-researching. The web has made it so easy for entrepreneurs to customize settings on advertising and/or social media platforms (among a slew of website categories).
You can narrow down or widen the audience demographic, search within particular locations, hire a content strategy team who will create content and publish them with frontend and backend workings for your brand to be found more conveniently online.
You might be asking, “Okay. This is good. We got this. But how and where can we find people who are looking to work under the umbrella of a business franchise?”
2. By Checking The Right Mediating Platforms
There are many reputed online platforms such as Franchise Search Engine that list down a number of franchise opportunities. You can start there. You can focus on those who are inquiring about the same industry or line of business your brand belongs to.
But if you want to widen the net further and include others who are asking about franchises not-at-all related to yours, that’ll be totally up to you. As long as effort and resources won’t be wasted.
3. Brand Visibility
People will not jump on board your franchise if they don’t know you. If they don’t recognize your brand. If they haven’t seen it, nor any of your enterprise’s products online. Hence, number 3 is all about brand visibility. And it’s so much easier to do, now more than ever before.
Social media advertising, whether paid or unpaid, ranking on Search Engine through PPC (pay-per-click) or through organic traffic. The “means” to the goal is at the offing. You simply need to… (see number 4)
4. …Be Proactive And Do Your Due Diligence
You’re going to have to be proactive in working with your team to formulate an ad campaign that will make your brand distinct from its competitors. Hire a team of web content and design experts who can revamp your website and update it with fresh content regularly. Pay for advertising online. At the same time, make use of organic search marketing. Cover all of your bases.
5. Engagement
Many businesses do not realize it yet but engagement is key to conversion. From a “view” to a “click” to an actual purchase, you’ll need to be a businessperson/franchise-owner who is willing to communicate with potential clients.
Customers do not want to be handed out with a bunch of information about what your franchise is about. At least, not just that. They want to know the idea behind it, why it runs, and why they should have a slice of the cake, too.
Send email updates (don’t bombard them, though), reply to inquiries in a timely manner and as quickly as possible (set up a chat portal with your web team), respond to feedback positively, listen to potential clients’ suggestions and make an effort to show them that they are heard.
All of these work together to pave the way towards gaining an audience for your business franchise and have the best franchisees sign the contract under your enterprise’s brand.
