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Marketing Your Franchise

Written by: Mary Tomzack

Article Overview: Marketing Your Franchise The foundation for any successful franchise company consists of a good concept and a proven system. But the greatest system in the world will languish away into oblivion without a sharp marketing strategy. And although selling franchises may be the first order of business, good marketing can't stop there. Since a franchisor only makes money when its franchisees make money, the real challenge is in consistently generating business at the ground level. In this issue we talk to Todd Woods of Guerilla Marketing and Dwight Gould of Aviatech to get their views on the best ways to market your franchise.

Marketing Your Franchise

Marketing Your Franchise
The foundation for any successful franchise company consists of a good concept and a proven system. But the greatest system in the world will languish away into oblivion without a sharp marketing strategy. And although selling franchises may be the first order of business, good marketing can't stop there. Since a franchisor only makes money when its franchisees make money, the real challenge is in consistently generating business at the ground level. In this issue we talk to Todd Woods of Guerilla Marketing and Dwight Gould of Aviatech to get their views on the best ways to market your franchise.

Guerilla Marketing in the franchise industry
Guerilla Marketing Strategies is a relatively new marketing company, having been in development since October 2005. CEO and former franchise area developer Todd Woods co-founded the firm with Jay Conrad Levinson. Levinson is best known for his popular book, Guerilla Marketing, first published back in 1983. The duo has put a fresh spin on Levinson's concepts by launching a marketing company aimed specifically at serving the franchise industry. The idea is to help franchise companies grow by coaching the franchisees to gain better sales, which in turn increases royalties for the franchisors.

"We've found that while many franchise companies want to provide ongoing training and support and realize that it's important," says Woods, "many fail to do so. It can be tough for franchisees to really get a good head start, especially with younger startups and companies with less corporate support. Generally, the problem stems from lack of money and resources. In a lot of franchise companies you will have one corporate person to support 50-70 franchisees and that's really not much to go around."

Woods has learned a lot from interviewing franchisors on his radio program, Franchise Bootcamp Radio. "What I have found is they're all in business to make money, but many are short-sighted. They think if they cut field support they're saving money, but the message we're trying to get out is that's not true. When I interviewed one of the vice presidents for Jazzercize, a franchise that's been around for 30 years or so, I heard, 'we learned that the more we invest in training our people, the happier they are, the better they perform, and the higher our royalty fees,'" asserts Woods.

Woods says his company's goal is to fill in the gaps where the franchisor is not providing as much marketing support as they could or should. He says, "This is not designed to replace the franchisor, but rather to supplement and support what the franchisor is currently doing." There are three levels of service starting with ongoing training via the online Franchise Training Center. "This is a monthly service whereby anyone from the franchisee's organization can log in anytime and get access to thousands of marketing articles and audio clips that will teach them how to market more effectively," states Woods.

Franchisees need to take active role in marketing
In addition to the generic online help, Guerilla Marketing provides one-on-one and group coaching. Services also include keynotes and workshops. "We'll go into a company and fire people up, get them excited about marketing, and let them know it's their job to do marketing. Too often franchisees wait for the franchisor to do everything for them. They think that when they sign up as a franchisee, they instantly will have success. Of course, that is not necessarily true. The franchisees who fail are those that are kind of sitting back and not taking the action needed to produce sales," explains Woods.

Woods says his company focuses on getting franchisees to execute on their plan. "For example," says Woods, "we provided a 12-week coaching program for Basic Communications. We designed the program to specifically help their people gain more customers. What the franchisor wanted was for us to get their people to take action and be more responsible about their own businesses. Each week, we gave the franchisees an assignment and instructed them to complete it and report back the next week. It worked. We got the people to execute."

According to Woods, there tends to be a lot of finger pointing going back and forth when franchise sales lag. "Franchisees point at the franchisors saying, it's your fault I'm not successful. I need the tools and the support. And the franchisors point back saying hey, we've given you the system, we've given you the name. But at the end of the day you operate your own business and it's up to you. We're trying to bridge the franchisor with the franchisee with a system that is very cost effective. They can outsource a lot of this training for just pennies on the dollar." Woods adds, "It is important to note that the whole mindset behind Guerilla Marketing is to get better results while spending less money."

Franchise marketing on the Internet
Aviatech is a full service agency that specializes in online marketing. CEO Dwight Gould says, "We are on the leading edge of technology. The majority of work we do is online interactive." All services are performed inhouse by a full team of designers, video producers, and a technology department staffed with programmers, systems analysts, and other staff. "Our marketing strategists understand the Internet, its power and uses. For example, we have a complete search marketing team that comprises SEO as well as pay-for-click." Other teams handle media buying for banner ads and various kinds of flash animation ads.

The agency deals with many more franchise companies than non-franchise. Gould says, "Probably 70% of our business is in the franchise community. That's primarily because of my background as a senior vice president at Cendant Corporation, a major franchise company with hotels, real estate brands, Avis, etc. And a lot of my senior management staff also came out of the franchise community. We've been both on the client side and the agency side and really understand franchise development as well as how to work with franchisees, right down to knowing how to generate traffic and business for franchisees."

Aviatech deals with both franchise development and consumer sales. The firm counts many big names in franchising as customers, but they also have the knack for making companies appear larger than they really are. "We've built programs for our clients that look and feel like they're national," says Gould. "As you know, a lot of franchise companies are not national while they're growing. They tend to have pockets. We develop programs that look national but work in a very targeted area, focusing on customer acquisition and lead generation for the franchisees. So while their budgets are not huge, we make them look so. Using our expertise in the online interactive space, we can actually develop things online that will make a franchise company appear to be a global organization."

Cutting the global marketplace down to size
The Internet offers unique advantages for any company looking to further its brand image that go far beyond development of the company's main site. Gould explains, "We can do microsites for geo-targeting whether it be for franchise development or consumer sales. We have the capability of drilling right down through with pay-for-click and other things so that someone in a particular region will look very expansive. Then we can replicate that for a specific market. For example, we are working now with a major food company that has a hundred smaller markets that they want to penetrate. They are already in the major markets but they want to go into these smaller markets with a franchise development program. So we've created microsites with video streaming elements and we're utilizing pay-for-click targeting for those specific areas to generate interested people and drive them to the microsites."

In the past, the Internet was one big global melting pot. But times have changed. Gould says, "We can make a campaign look like it's global even though we may be targeting Cincinnati. The Internet now allows us to do geo-targeting and get very specific about where we target our messages. We utilize our product, GeoSearch Online, for franchisees that need to generate customers or leads from their specific small territory. We can target a geographic area through coordinates or zip codes or even streets to get lead generation for an individual franchisee. It is an extremely effective program because an individual franchisee can pay a modest amount of money and get a flow of leads every month from that campaign. It takes the place of direct mail only it's much more effective and much more targeted. You can also use that same concept and take it nationally. So when we talk about developing a hundred markets, essentially we're not doing that campaign nationally - we're doing it in a hundred markets across the U.S."

Challenges for marketing franchise companies are unique
"In a 'normal' company that is managing various properties," says Gould, "they can pretty much dictate what they want. But it's a bigger task in a franchise system because you really have to work very diligently to get all the franchisees on board. And a lot of times you have franchise marketing committees that need to sign off on certain things. Obviously the success or failure of any business lies in the strength of its brand message. It is a challenge when you're dealing with 1,000 franchisees to get that consistency of message out there." The key, according to Gould, is to build infrastructure into the marketing programs. "Whether it's your websites or marketing tool boxes, you have to make it reasonably easy for a franchisee to embrace the branding message and the systems and procedure of the franchise. It requires a lot more patience and understanding of the system."

From the Publisher
Marketing Your Franchise

How many times have I seen a great franchise concept that can't seem to really get off the ground and attract franchisees? Or the franchise grows by fits and starts but never quite attains the stature of a known national brand? Or the complaints of franchisors about franchisees who think that customers will just automatically buy the product or service without any effort on their part? It all comes down to MARKETING.

The fact is that the U.S. economy is rife with marketers--- advertising agencies, public relation firms, strategic marketing consultants, promotional companies, and so on. Surprisingly, almost none of these specialize in the unique marketing needs of franchise companies. I know this for a fact because we are often asked for marketing recommendations related to specialized franchise needs and I have to think long and hard to come up with a list of companies to refer.

And so, we did some digging. Of course, you can find listings of Marketing/ Public Relations companies in the IFA Supplier Source Book. And that's a good start even though listed companies run the gamut from software companies to full service marketing agencies. In this ezine issue and the next, we are spotlighting companies which you may not have heard of yet; several of them are new. Perhaps one of them will provide just the service you are seeking.

One of FranchiseHelp's clients is Vital Dent, a franchised dental management company which is the major player in this sector in Europe. Vital Dent courageously decided to expand its franchise system into the U.S., with the first market chosen being the biggest and toughest of all--- New York City. Like the song says--- "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere---".

The CEO of Vital Dent, Ernesto Colman Mena, is a huge proponent of the power of marketing. From sponsoring the Yankees "Fan Cam Smile of the Game" to regional advertising on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Vital Dent is becoming a force in the U.S. dental industry in less than two years.

In a recent column of Time magazine, authored by Bernard Stamler, Vital Dent is portrayed as the aspiring McDonald's of the dental office business. Vital Dent management will tell you that much of the publicity that they are getting is due to "the power of a smile," one of their trademark slogans. But, I think, much can be credited to the power of marketing.

Related Articles
  Internet Marketing in 2008
  Franchising with all its Success
  Question Your Franchise Decision Making
  About 60% of all franchise opportunities have less than 50 units.
  Why Use a Franchise Consultant?

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