Fill the Funnel | The Five F's of Franchising

Franchise growth is based entirely on selling new territories and in this way achieving expansion while collecting franchise fees (often called royalties) from the existing franchisee network. The franchise model relies entirely on these two main revenue streams. Growth is in the root of franchising and this is great.

But many franchisors make one fatal mistake that dooms their hard work and ambition to failure. They think they can sell their franchise to nearly anyone. In other words, franchisors are so focussed on selling the franchise thinking ‘no experience is needed’ or ‘anyone can do it’ that they sabotage their own franchise growth at a very early stage. What is worse- they don’t even know it.

Imagine shooting in the dark and hoping to hit a target. It is very much the same when a franchisor is trying to sell his business idea to nearly everyone that wants to buy in. Before launching any campaigns for lead generation or spending any money on marketing it is absolutely crucial to make sure but you know who you're targeting. You need to be very detailed when describing your ideal franchisee, ideal buyer persona, and get into the nitty gritty details such as where they live, what their experience is, what background and demographic they come from, education and so on. This is also often referred to as customer avatar and spending time and thinking about it, but really thinking about it, and creating a few, at least three customer avatars, will be extremely useful for targeting your campaigns later on. Not to mention the fact that it will help you clarify the idea in your head.

A couple of years ago we had a franchisor come to our agency asking for help with lead generation. He had created a great website with comprehensive information about the franchise opportunity and all and was spending a lot on ads but somehow he wasn't achieving quite the right results. After carefully auditing all the results, tracking metrics, landing pages and campaign we established that the audience of the ads was way too broad and he was spending most of the budget just to reach people that were not relevant and would never buy a franchise. What we did was to sit with the franchisor and brainstorm who exactly his ideal client/ franchisee was. We created a few buyer persona models and we then applied them to narrow down the audience of the ads. Only within a few weeks thanks to the changes made conversions went up dramatically. Not only that but the campaigns became much more cost effective and the cost per lead was lower, which meant that ultimately for the same budget the franchisor was getting a lot more value and leads to sell the franchise. Soon enough the first franchise sale was made and that provided a great return on investment and advertising budget for the next 6 months. Something as small as defining your buyer persona made such a huge impact.

Looking back to find out how things were done before the age of digital marketing, it was all much more complicated where and how to sell your franchise and generating leads was only happening around franchising events, exhibitions, expo's and advertising in offline franchise media such as magazines, journals and directories. This came with a high cost and was extremely time consuming. Not every franchisor could afford to exhibit their business on a franchise fair, for example. Today it is much easier and cost-effective to reach to a wider audience with the power of digital marketing and technology.

After you are a hundred per cent certain whom exactly you are after, the next step is to make sure that you have a crystal-clear idea about the opportunity, i.e. what minimum requirements and investment is needed and to describe that on a beautifully designed franchise brochure and a website or landing page where you will be sending the leads from the campaigns. Think about all the questions a potential franchisee might ask you such as the initial investment required, when you would break even, the support, training, royalties and much more. You need to be certain that you have all this information presented in a concise and clear way, displayed on your website or landing page. Naturally the website and landing page have to be designed to lead the user to a particular action whether that's to download a brochure and leave their contact information or call you and ask about the opportunity. This is probably the most important step from the lead generation process because through the years we have seen good looking web pages that receive high amounts of traffic from ads, but they simply did not convert into inquiries and leads. Having a clear call to action message is a priority.

The next step is then to carefully plan, built and launch your campaigns. Depending on your buyer persona that you should have already identified, you can build your campaigns using different marketing channels whether those are Facebook, LinkedIn or Google. This is where the magic happens and where most of you would need specialist advice and help. We at Franchise Fame have more than seven years of franchise marketing experience behind our backs, so do not hesitate to give us a shout in case you feel you need some help.

Last but not least, in order to measure the success of the campaigns you need to have the right tracking systems installed on your landing page or website. We are very adamant about tracking because this is how we can measure your return on investment. For the sake of the example let's imagine you're spending £1000 on a Facebook campaign another £1000 on Google ads and another £1000 on LinkedIn. If you don't know where your leads are coming from, how are you going to know which of all three is the most successful campaign that provides the best return on investment? Furthermore, how would you also calculate the cost per lead or cost per acquisition from each of the channels so that you understand which one is the most cost-effective? At the same time, if you knew that Facebook generated 10 leads, LinkedIn only 5 and Google 20, for the same amount spent, it is much easier to do the match and decide to ramp up the channel that brings most leads at the lowest cost-per-lead, isn’t it? This is how important tracking and measuring success of a campaign is.

Sounds a bit overwhelming, doesn't it? It really shouldn't be if you have the right resources and help to guide you through the process. Over the years working closely with franchisors I've heard all sorts of excuses such as lead generation being too expensive, too difficult, impossible to track or too complicated. Nothing in business is expensive if it generates a return on investment. Spending a couple of thousand pounds on lead generation might sound like a lot but what if that brought you 20 qualified leads of potential franchise buyers? Would that still be expensive? And what if out of those twenty leads you managed to sell your franchise to two? This same campaign already gives a great return on investment and pays off for your marketing and advertising budget for the next six months.

Alternatively, you could make the mistake of trying to do it all by yourself and fail, or sit and wait for potential buyers to find you themselves, and that will only lead to you feeling unaccomplished and frustrated for months and months, lost opportunities and time while you focus on low value activities and wonder why it is not working despite your biggest efforts. While at the same time your competitors will be selling and opening franchises in the areas where you wanted to step in and will be getting a bigger market share. You really don't want this to happen, do you?

A much better image is one of you focusing on franchise sales and lead qualification growing your business selling new territories you didn't even dream of and feeling successful, while staying on top of your finances generating a great return on investment and having a franchise marketing partner that you can rely on by your side.

If you do feel that you prefer the latter, contact us on www.franchisefame.com to have a chat and see how we can help you grow your franchise and achieve that dream of yours. Because ultimately this is what Franchise Fame does- we connect aspiring entrepreneurs with established franchise brands and in this way we create more decent jobs economic growth and equal opportunities for everybody.