Franchises are a special type of business. They require different attention than other businesses for ultimate success. There are many reasons franchises are different than other types of businesses.
Perhaps the biggest one is that a franchise has multiple locations. On top of that, they must have the same brand and quality in each location.
You also have to do different SEO, research, and many more. It definitely takes more time and effort to succeed as a franchise business.
What are the definite things that you must do to achieve franchise success? Even though there is no direct answer, we compiled a list for you.
Also Read: Top 15 Franchise Marketing Strategies
Key Tips For Any Franchise Success
Here are 13 key tips for any franchise’s success. Following this will give you a head start on your success.
1. Have a Solid Business Plan
The first thing to do when starting a franchise or takeover is to have a business plan. A business plan includes information about your business, past performance, and future projections.
These are some of the important things that must be in a business plan:
- Executive Summary
- Company Overview
- Industry, customers, and competitive analysis
- Marketing and operations plan
- Management team
- Financial plan
This business plan will include research about your market, business, and other vital things. The main aim here of a business plan is to know about your business.
Making decisions when you know about your past, present, and future is always much easier.
2. Create Relationships Through Networking
There are probably many people like you in your sector and location. If you don’t take action, meet new people, and create relationships, you’ll never know what your competitors are doing. Creating these relationships gives you an edge on most stuff.
You get to know your competitors more in-depth, you get to know how they are doing things differently than you, and if there is any opportunity, they will be inclined to come to you.
3. Always Invest in Marketing
Whether you are a franchise or not, marketing is essential. You will not last long on the market if you do nothing to increase your brand awareness and visibility. People need to know you and constantly see you everywhere they go or the apps they use.
Marketing mostly needs some sort of money. You need to invest in it to get results. This investment is a must and will give you a good return on investment in the long run.
You will get more customers, and people will know your brand’s name, which will lead to your success.
4. Work With Professional Where Necessary
A franchise’s success requires a team. You can’t do everything on your own. A franchise includes many layers, from website design to marketing.
All the small things need some sort of professionalism. You might be able to do some of them, but you probably can’t do all of them. Don’t be afraid to invest in working with a professional when this is the case.
Working with a professional will give you better franchise success. That is because they know more about the industry and how things work than you. They will take the necessary actions in order for that area of the business to work well.
5. Don’t Be Afraid of Good Debt
We all hear that debt is bad. This is not true all the time. As a franchise, you have a lot of spending to make. Even though your cash flow must cover this, you still need to invest in your business.
Like investing in marketing, hiring a professional, or changing the design of your offices or buildings, it could be anything.
Getting into debt might be a good idea to cover the costs of this. Eventually, you are investing it back into your business which will return more money.
6. Study Your Industry In Depth
Because you are a franchise, you have multiple locations and multiple competitors in various locations.
This makes it harder for you to create personalized efforts on your website and in your advertisements to attract customers.
You can make this easier if you study your industry in-depth and know your competitors in each location. You can use that information on your business with slight changes when you know what others are doing.
7. Know Your Customer Base
Franchises generally have a certain customer base, no matter the location. Yes, some percentage of your customers might change depending on the location.
Yet, most customers will come from people who already know your brand. Eventually, your brand will be the same everywhere.
That is why you have to study your customers more in-depth. Both for existing customers and future customers.
When you study your customer base in-depth, you know what they like and how you can attract them better. More customer means more success for franchises because other locations will also benefit from that.
8. Personalize Your Marketing Efforts
Doing and investing in marketing is important. How you do that marketing is what counts. If you are making a generalized approach to your marketing efforts, you are losing a lot of potential.
One of the other benefits of studying your customer base is this. Personalization. It could come in various ways:
- A freebie
- Message about a problem of a community
- Special offer when they do something
If you can get to your potential customers with a message they resonate with, you are more likely to get them as a customer.
When creating your marketing campaigns, always make different campaigns and try to personalize them as much as possible for different customer bases.
9. Make Sure to Have Good Customer Service
Imagine if you have a problem with a service you receive from a franchise. You try to reach out to get this problem a solution.
No one cares about you or even answers your calls or emails. How likely are you to come back to that franchise for anything? Probably close to none.
If you were to have good customer service that would help you in this situation, you would probably come back.
This shows that your franchise not only cares about your customers before purchasing. It shows that you also care about them after they make purchases because their customers are valuable.
10. Be a Part of Your Industry’s Community
This is slightly similar to networking but with a few fundamental changes. Depending on what kind of industry you are on, there are likely meetings, events, or other things. Being present there is essential as a franchise business owner in this industry.
It is even better i
f you can participate in these meetings, events, gatherings, or anything else and somehow contribute to the audience. You should aim to make this happen even if it is in a different city.
This will show people that you care about your business, and you can also show them that you know what you are doing at a local level.
11. Follow the Same Branding Everywhere
A franchise is all about branding. You have the same service, quality, and branding in every location you own.
If you have bad service in one place and a good one in another, this will not bring you success. The same goes for branding.
Having the same branding in every location helps your customers to identify you. It also helps to increase brand visibility.
You simply put yourself in front of your potential customers wherever they go. There is no better marketing than this.
12. Create a System
When you are a franchise, making sure that every franchise follows the same principles and the service is hard.
You have to ensure, one way or another, that every location assures the same level of service and success. This is something that will create the fundamentals of your franchise’s success.
This system must include everything from how to operate the franchise business to how to service the customers.
Creating something like a manual and giving it to each location so that they do everything by the book is one of the best solutions.
13. Focus on Franchise SEO
SEO is one of the most important things to generate success for any business. Even though it is still necessary for franchises, the type of SEO a franchise must do is fundamentally different than the traditional one.
It is called franchise SEO. This franchise SEO is harder to do and more complex than normal SEO.
Because a franchise has multiple locations and each of these locations serve mostly different types of customers, each location needs its own SEO.
That’s why you need to create different content for each location. These contents must include keywords popular in that location for better results.
The Verdict
To conclude, franchise success is hard. You must keep an eye on many things and constantly work on them.
These things include investing time to create content, network, and investing money in creating marketing campaigns and constant lead generators.
Even though you might make some mistakes at first establishing these, your franchise success will be higher over time.
Sources
Amit Gupta is the founder of DrFranchises – a digital marketing agency that helps brands rank better on Google Maps through local SEO strategies. Amit has over 11 years of experience in digital marketing, SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing. He’s also the owner of multiple franchises and has helped countless brands achieve success online. When he’s not working, Amit can be found playing with his dog.