Franchising is one of the fastest-growing business models in the world today.

As a business model, it can be found frequently in industries like restaurants, clothing stores, and service providers (essentially, any brand where more locations can equal bigger growth.)

Many experts agree that approximately 80% of all franchises have less than 100 units. That makes for an extremely competitive landscape, as each of these emerging brands vie for the attention of potential franchisees. To succeed in the world of franchising requires continual improvements to the brand’s business model, growth strategy, systems and processes.

Source: Franchise 500

Why Marketing And Sales Alignment Matters To Your Franchising Strategy

When you’re crafting a marketing strategy for an emerging franchise, it’s important to start with an in-depth look at the overall franchising strategy.

The franchising strategy is the overarching game plan that a franchisor uses to replicate their business success over and over again. It should take into account the brand, its values, its target market, its competition, and any differentiators that set it apart from the competition.

Then the franchisor and franchisee need to work together to create a successful marketing strategy that best supports the franchise strategy. But with emerging franchises, the franchise strategy is often where the problems arise. 

New franchisors often lack the brand awareness that more established brands can rely upon. They don’t have a dedicated customer base yet, so that’s why the primary goal of any emerging franchise’s marketing strategy should be the same: drive up leads.

Once you are able to attract new customers and build customer loyalty, you can begin to align your marketing and your sales accordingly. 

Case Study: A luxury pet services franchise makes more tails wag with yorCMO

3 Tips For Aligning Your Marketing With Your Sales

If you’re new to the franchising game, you may be wondering how to align your marketing efforts with your sales activities.

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to marketing or sales, there are some best practices you can follow to ensure a stronger alignment between your marketing and sales teams. 

Here are some tips to help you get started: 

1. Choose the right marketing and sales channels for your franchise business.  

It’s so important to ensure you are engaging with the right customers. To do this, you must identify which marketing channels are relevant to your customer base.

For example, if you’re targeting millennials, then social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are great channels to engage with this audience.

If you’re targeting Gen-Xers and boomers, then traditional marketing channels like print media, radio, and TV ads may get the job done. 

2. Track both your marketing and sales activities. 

Once you’ve identified the right marketing channels, you can then match up these activities with your sales activities. 

For example, if you’re using social media to drive prospects, then you can use your CRM system to track which sales team members are engaging with these prospects.

Alternatively, you can use a social media management tool to track the interactions between your brand and prospects.

3. Stay consistent with your marketing messaging and sales activities.  

Staying consistent ensures your prospects know what to expect from your organization.

For example, if you offer a free consultation with your sales team, then you should also have a free consultation option available for prospects via your website and social media channels.

3 Ways To Market Your Franchise

Now that you’ve learned how to align your marketing activities with your sales activities, let’s examine three common ways that emerging franchisors market their brands. 

Typically, the franchisor will foot the bill or even provide some level of marketing support to their franchisees. This might include a national advertising campaign or marketing materials that can be used by all franchisees. However, it is generally up to the franchisees to do the majority of the marketing on the local level. 

There are three general strategies any emerging franchise can use to help drive new leads. 

Social Media Marketing

In recent years, franchise marketing has evolved to almost 100% to digital marketing, generally, and social media marketing, specifically. Social media is one of the top ways for emerging franchises to reach their target market.

And it offers plenty of desired benefits. It’s an inexpensive way to reach large audiences, it gives you the ability to create incredibly targeted ads, and it allows you to generate excitement with promotions and giveaways.

When getting started with social media, it’s a good idea to experiment with the different channels available until you find which types of ads generate the best ROI.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is powerful, yet relatively inexpensive, giving you users an excellent ROI. On average, email produces an astounding 4,200% return, according to Litmus. Email marketing allows you to reach a large list of people – on a personal and targeted level – all at once.

You can use email marketing to promote special offers, announce new products or services, and give information about upcoming events. You can even track your results easily using a marketing scorecard, so that you can see what is working and what needs to be improved.

Relationship Marketing 

Relationship marketing is next-level social media and email marketing.

This strategy involves more than content and ad creation; it involves active engagement with current and prospective customers.

This is your chance to respond to comments and questions and to show that you genuinely care about your customers and their experience. And you can do this via email newsletters, social media, and other online platforms. 

One of the best parts of relationship marketing is that it is a great way for emerging franchisors to build brand loyalty and address common customer concerns before they become deal breakers. 

How Fractional Professionals Can Help

In the early days of a franchise, it’s crucial to reach new customers and expand the brand. Fractional professionals – one of the great weapons for success in business – are uniquely skilled to help you use these strategies to drive more leads to your sales team.

Together, we can work to align your marketing and sales, so that you can drive as many leads as possible to your sales team and achieve your revenue goals for this year.