Who Can Help Me Create a Franchise Marketing Plan?

We don’t need to tell you how difficult it is to establish a successful business. From putting together enough startup capital to get the ball rolling to working with marketing agencies to make a name for your new company amidst a sea of competitors, the early days of a new business are fraught with challenges. However, once you’ve achieved success, many of those challenges don’t go away. Indeed, some of them grow along with your business, becoming ever more complex. Developing a successful marketing plan is definitely one of these.

As you begin to consider increasing the reach of your product by transforming your endeavor into a global franchise, you will need to focus more than ever on coherent branding. To that end, you’ll need to create a franchise marketing plan, which will help to ensure your business grows in value as it grows in size.

Creating a successful franchise marketing plan is a challenge in its own right, which is why you will need an experienced marketing agency like InnoVision Global Marketing to help guide you through the process. Here are a few of the things we’ll focus on to help you create a solid marketing plan:

Brand Consistency

Take a moment to think about your favorite fast-food franchise. What is it that makes it so successful? Well, if it’s your favorite, it’s hopefully because the food is good, but the fact that, no matter which location you visit, you can expect the same product probably plays a part too. Different locations, no matter how far removed they are from one another, will also have the same branding and the same overall marketing voice so you know exactly what kind of experience you are in for.

Whether or not your business has begun to expand into a franchise, you will need to ensure that your brand remains consistent wherever a potential customer encounters it. This means every ad, every online video, every social media post, and every piece of physical marketing communicates the same unified brand message.

As you begin to take your business global, expanding it into an ever-growing franchise, you will need to focus on brand consistency so that all of your customers, everywhere, will have the same level of recognition. The marketing team at InnoVision can help to handle this element for you.

A Strong Social Media Presence

In this digital age, social media needs to be a major part of the marketing plan for any business, regardless of its size or if it’s been franchised or not. The majority of advertising nowadays is seen online, whether it’s targeted ads, video marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), or simply an active business Twitter account.

Online marketing is about more than just increasing visibility for prospective customers. It’s also about building rapport with them and providing them with a way to interface with your business. This means they should be able to approach you with questions, comments, or concerns through your social media channel.

The beauty of social media is that it can already be accessed worldwide, meaning that potential customers will have the ability to see your social media posts, if they want to, long before you open a physical location in their area. This can help a great deal when it comes to global franchising: future customers in a new location may already be familiar with your business and what you offer before you even arrive. Provided, of course, that your marketing team has appropriately focused on a strong social media presence.

 

Targeted Marketing

The social media element of your global franchise marketing plan will focus on casting a wide net for customers, while your marketing team will also use targeted marketing to narrow down the search to one that’s more local. As you begin franchising, your brand will cover more and more geographical space, but it’s likely that your customer base will remain consistent worldwide.

This is where targeted marketing comes in. By gathering as much data as possible about your customer base—for example, their demographics, purchasing habits, and interests—you can figure out how best to use your limited resources when it comes to marketing.

One way to do this is to focus on the context of any advertising you are creating as part of your franchise marketing plan. For example, if your business provides power tools, your franchise marketing plan should involve targeting customers who are looking online for “home improvement” and “DIY projects,” since those are the people that are likely to be most interested in buying those particular products.

Targeted marketing can also include location-based advertising. While you may expand into many cities as part of your franchising operation, you will likely still only occupy a very small physical area of those cities. Location-based advertising will use location data to indicate when a prospective customer is nearby your place of business. It can then send them ads at that moment, right when they are most likely to be able to walk into your storefront.

Creating Your Franchise Marketing Plan

There are many marketing agencies that claim they can help you create a marketing plan, but at the end of the day, success can only come if everyone involved is equally passionate about the project. This is why, when you’re looking for someone to help you create a marketing plan, you don’t want a standard agency. Most agencies create generic marketing plans that they think will work for everyone. Unfortunately, every business is very different, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

This is why it’s best to use an “anti-agency” like InnoVision Global Marketing. Rather than a paint-by-numbers approach, we’ll work closely with you to create a global franchise marketing plan. In this way, we help to ensure that all of your advertising remains true to the spirit of your original vision. Reach out and tell us about your business.