As any franchise owner knows, running a successful enterprise is not an easy task. Being able to run a brand is one thing, and successfully duplicating it across demographics is another.
Furthermore, the franchising landscape is getting competitive with each passing day, and franchise owners want to develop coherent franchise marketing strategies to covey an integrated brand message across all locations to connect with their target consumers.
Franchise marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your business. However, franchise marketing has its own challenges.
From lead generation and content marketing to brand consistency and reputation management, franchise marketing is not as simple as you think.
In this article, we’ll explore some most common challenges in franchise marketing and share the best practices to conquer them to ensure maximum brand growth. Let’s get into business!
Also Read: The Failure Rate For A Franchise
Key Challenges In Franchise Marketing
Here are some most common challenges faced by franchises in marketing their business:
1. Lack Of Unique and Localized Content
The first challenge franchisees face today is not creating engaging and value-rich content with local relevance.
Customers are less likely to engage with your brand if your website publishes only generic information or duplicate content from another similar website.
To most of you, this may not look like a challenge, but for franchise marketing, duplicating content might cause an issue with ranking by making it difficult for a search engine to determine the original source of the content.
How to Fix it?
Content marketing is one of the best ways to fix this. Creating unique and useful content with local relevance can improve the SEO and other algorithms to reach the target clients.
Participate in the local job fairs and community events, and get involved with the local community by building friendly ties with business owners.
2. Lack Of Organized Communication Strategy
The lack of organized and consistent communication between franchisors and franchisees can take a serious toll on their symbiotic relationship.
If the franchise management fails to ensure clear lines of communication, it can result in confusion and complete hotchpotch on the part of the franchise.
Plus, it also impacts the consumer perception of how the overall brand is doing. Similarly, suppose the franchisee fails to communicate effectively with the franchise management.
In that case, they will fail to catch up with the latest trends in the industry and miss the chances to implement their best practices.
How to Fix it?
Checking with your franchises regularly enables you to measure and align your efforts. Send out newsletters, document meetings, and action points, and prioritize face-to-face communication to transfer a large amount of information easily.
You can also create feedback loops to help them understand what they need to improve and provide franchise support where you can share your best practices with them through written materials, Q&A, and informal discussions.
3. Not Understanding The Unique Needs Of Franchise Outlets
Another reason franchise marketing can be challenging is due to the lack of knowledge about the unique needs of each outlet or partner.
Each outlet has its own unique needs based on location and consumer needs. If a certain product is successful in one location, it doesn’t mean it should work equally well in other outlets as well.
If the franchise fails to acknowledge the individual needs of each partner, then it is destined to fail at franchise advertising.
How to Fix it?
An effective franchise marketing strategy and data tracking software can help you identify what consumers are searching for in a particular area and what the sales number indicate for that particular product.
The needs of each franchise are different, and the brand needs to study its audience and data to meet those needs.
Educate all the outlets about the significance of developing local marketing strategies to provide a more personalized and automated brand experience according to the audience’s demand.
4. Not Making Individual Sites
Another great challenge franchises face is not having individual websites or social media accounts for each of their franchise locations.
Instead, they use one social media account and principal website for the whole brand.
Like being a new kid in the town, people have a slim chance of knowing anything about the new franchise until they make conscious efforts to create brand awareness.
How to Fix it?
Having a separate website and social media accounts for all franchise locations is an excellent space to build their unique identity and make the most of the social media algorithms and SEO.
This allows your franchise to connect better with local communities, attract more customers, and generate the sales you want.
5. Lack Of Marketing Synergy Between Brand And Outlets
Since brand franchises have a presence nationwide, it becomes very challenging to maintain a consistent dialogue with all the stakeholders involved.
Some franchises do their marketing without involving the brand in any of the marketing activities, while others work on a cost-sharing basis for their marketing needs.
When the brand is not in charge of controlling all the marketing decisions of a franchise, and franchisees make their decisions independently, the marketing synergy breaks.
How to Fix it?
If you want your franchise to emulate success, you must maintain synergy between all the outlets to combine efforts and resources to accomplish common goals collectively than they could individually.
Companies can promote synergic behavior by crafting mission statements applicable to all franchises. When all franchises work toward the same goal, synergy will automatically follow.
6. Poor Tools And Inadequate Data
Franchise marketing mistakes often happen because of insufficient data and improper marketing tools not designed to meet the multiple challenges of franchise marketing.
The lack of appropriate marketing research tools makes it challenging to keep track of contact lists, monitor the campaign success of each franchise, and expose the franchises to the risk of spending their marketing budget on expensive inbound and outbound marketing campaigns that are futile for the enterprise business.
How to Fix it?
The effectiveness of your marketing strategy depends on your data. Invest in the latest performance tracking tools and franchise management software to monitor the most important key performance indicators, keep track of your campaign progress and gather advanced analytics to direct your franchise marketing and advertising campaigns.
7. Incoherent Goals and Conflicting Strategies
One of the biggest hindrances to franchise growth is the lack of coherent goals and strategies for franchise marketing.
When a franchisor and its franchisees have different goals and use conflicting lead-generation tactics, this could lead to brand inconsistencies.
Too often, many franchises give too much freedom to their marketing poaches and lose brand cohesion.
How to Fix it?
Create a unified vision for your franchise business, and set goals that benefit the whole organization.
You should neither give too much autonomy nor have such tight control over marketing that branding becomes too generic to connect and engage customers.
Instead, provide your franchisees with proper guidance on entering their local markets while keeping their brand integrity.
8. Improper Inbound And Outbound Marketing Strategy
Another major challenge in franchise marketing is the lack of appropriate inbound and outbound marketing strategies.
Franchises have unique digital marketing needs, which make their marketing strategies multilayered and intricate.
Implementing inappropriate outbound marketing strategies and outbound marketing campaigns can destroy your brand image and fail to target your target consumers.
How to Fix it?
Do a thorough market research SWOT analysis to determine the strengths, weaknesses, risks, and marketing opportunities.
Understand the limitations of each approach and adopt a tailored franchise plan that works best for you.
9. Lackluster Leads
Lackluster leads are one of the major hindrances to franchise growth that many franchises tend to overlook.
Without a solid lead nurturing plan, a franchise cannot build healthy customer relationships and persuade potential customers to make a purchase.
For a franchisor, failure to move the customer down the sales funnel could mean losing a lot of ideal customers and the opportunity to recruit new franchisees.
How to Fix it?
The process of developing and reinforcing customer relationships is critical at every stage of the sales funnel.
To ensure that you’re getting the best leads, create customer personas to get to know your ideal customers and their purchasing behavior.
All this information will help you create a targeted marketing strategy to serve their interests better.
Check out our Franchise Lead Generation Services
Wrap Up
Although opening and marketing a new franchise business has its own unique challenge, most of them can be solved with a mindset shift, a new strategy, or just a phone call to your corporate office.
Your franchisor is counting on you to keep sales strong, so don’t hesitate to ask for help and support to ensure everyone can take home a paycheck.
By following some best franchise marketing practices and, using integrated tools and scheduling software, adapting your strategy to your industry and target audience, you can craft the marketing blueprint for optimal growth and gain a foothold on the daily challenges you face as a franchisee.
You May Also Read
- Franchise SEO Vs. Franchise PPC Or Both: Which One Is Good For Results?
- 13 Tips For How To Make Your Franchise Business Success!
- 18+ Fascinating Franchise Marketing Statistics
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.