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Compulsory centralized marketing programs are probably one of the supreme strengths of franchising. Pooling funds from all of the franchisees in a system gives them communally much greater marketing power. This fundamental fund can be used to do things that no individual franchisee could afford. The fund can also be used to hire professionals to produce advertising materials of far better superiority than what an individual owner could create. It is essential for anyone considering a franchise investment to know prior to becoming a Franchisee that the Franchisor’s marketing system is a good one. The essential qualities of a good franchise marketing program include these actions.The first priority in any marketing system is knowing that the results will be more people using the products or services of the Franchise.
Second, allow franchisees to offer their opinions. They work in the market in which they operate and know what works and what does not. The final decision can be made by the franchisor, but franchisees will appreciate your allowing them to become involved. Create a franchise advisory group consisting of representatives of all of your franchisees. They should meet with the franchisor’s marketing group and provide input into future projects and campaigns.Marketing funds should be directed primarily toward covering the costs of controlling the marketing effort (internal expenses, agency fees, etc.). Next they cover the expense of producing advertising resources (print, direct mail, radio and television ads, etc.). Finally, they pay for media purchases to place these advertisements for the advantage of the contributing franchisees. A frequent franchisee criticism is that too much is being spent in one of these area and not enough in another. Clearly there must be a practical balance between these needs.Don’t spend more on brand advertising than on efforts to bring in more customers. Building the brand is very important but so is bringing in customers. A powerful brand is only as good as the customers in brings in. The marketing system should be carefully documented. A franchisor most likely won’t provide all of their proprietary internal marketing documentation, but you can ask for at least the table of contents of the marketing support manuals they provide to franchisees. This will give you a good idea of the extent of the strategies they provide in training franchisees to market successfully. It will also validate that they have improved their systems to the point where they have record them in manuals and other support and training tools.
The undisputable way to determine how the marketing program is working is to start asking the existing franchisees. You’ll find that they will be very accommodating on this topic since few things are closer to their hearts than marketing. Be precise and ask them how well the marketing works in terms of bringing customers to their business. Also ask if they think they’re steadily getting good value from their contributions to any required marketing fund. If you find a franchise system where the greater parts of the existing franchisees are unhappy about the way their marketing dollars are being administered, you can presume that others will be unhappy as well. If most of the franchisees are satisfied with the way the marketing fund is handled then you will often find that franchisees are happy about most other factors in their business as well.
Franchise Marketing Ideas for Explosive Growth
To expand your franchise you must use marketing techniques which will help to reach your target audience. Franchise marketing involves two areas. Customers are first and of course Franchisees. Both can benefit from the same marketing ideas and techniques, but the results differ significantly. Unfortunately, many franchise companies miss this little fact and focus their marketing methods too heavily on one cause over the other.Search Engine Marketing (PPC & SEO)
Search engine marketing means bringing increased traffic to your company on search engines through paid search billboards or other ads as well as natural search earned through SEO practices. Distinguishing between how this helps your franchise grow and how consumers will react is an important difference:Consumer: PPC and SEO techniques will help drive eligible traffic to your franchisee’s local page. This eventually helps you generate more leads or sales because your franchisee location or information pages will hopefully be shown to a direct and relevant audience that is most likely to become a long-term client or customer. It saves consumers time because they are instantly taken to the page that means the most to them because of your ads and to SEO efforts.Franchise Development: Each type of marketing will help drive traffic to your website which in turn will help create more leads. This essentially benefits franchise development the same way as with consumers. Your ads and organic search submissions are optimized for this audience and deliver prospects attracted to starting a franchise.Encourage Online Testimonials.
Testimonials are a strong method for showing your success and satisfaction amongst franchisees and customers. Because you manage the reviews you display on your site nevertheless they can make a big difference:
• Consumer: Testimonials provide opinions submitted by satisfied customers and it is important to include them on your site.
• Franchise Development: Testimonials are important to franchise development because they permit prospective franchisees to see how current franchisees’ businesses are functioning as well as their experiences with the corporate office.Franchise Development
The objective is to invite franchises in the locations where you don’t already have a franchise. Social media can help make this a likelihood by showing the opportunities your business offers next to your target market. Those who are seeing your social media crusade are your target market; consequently your products and services as well as those who relate are all in one place. Once you see who is the most active on social media, you can start generating more personalized content and emails to ultimately start up a conversation.Build familiarity in the media.
This is one facet of franchise marketing that has become more imperative in recent years. Building familiarity of your brand in the media is a great way to find that stability for your two goals:
• Consumer: Local newspapers and TV stations want to know what’s happening in the neighborhoods they cover. Connecting with publishers, editors and producers with press releases of anything newsworthy at your business will always be of interest to media professionals. Offer to write a free column that benefits a news outlet’s viewers. Many local media sources will show interest in your business. Always make sure you’re offering pertinent information and have something you can offer back to these media outlets.
• Franchise Development: Build relationships with media outlets and provide them with in-house research performed about the industry you operate in and how the franchise system operates in general. The information you provide should be valuable and interesting that the general public.Infographics
An infographic is an eye-pleasing portrayal of intricate data. Gather your data, and statistics, and create an infographic to transmit your company messages. They can be used in print, on blogs or on social media platforms.Preparing Your Message
Create a budget to make your infographic. When creating an infographic, using various free programs and templates is not a bad idea. The collecting of data and creating charts and graphs can be time consuming. However, the payout could be substantial.Choose your message.
The infographic should provide details about your business while not being overly complicated. Keep away from messages that are sales-focused. Buy our product is not a good communication to present. Stating how a product expands quality of life or helps to improve business is a better choice. Non-profits, universities and individuals can profit from infographics, in addition to companies. Infographics can present a story to potential customers more easily than you can by speaking.Assemble data that sustains your message.
Choose between assembling your own data or finding reliable data from other sources. The following are good places to find statistics if you can’t collect them yourself:• StatPlanet provides worldwide statistics.
• Search government websites such as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics or the EPA to get dependable statistics.
• Trade journals and scientific studies provide study-based data.
• Make sure to list your source(s) for your statistics at the bottom of each graphic section. Use the most trustworthy sources that you can find.
• Use industry reports from Ibisworld.com.Input your data into an Excel spreadsheet. The data that you gather can be entered into an Excel spreadsheet where you can create charts of varying types to use in your infographic.Choosing Infographic Tools
A graphic designer. If you want a fully personalized infographic, you should consider hiring someone who can produce it. Rates vary by designer so make sure your budget is adjusted accordingly. If you want to use your final infographic to improve web traffic or social media content, then you should hire a graphic designer. A graphic designer with experience will be extremely beneficial. Use a large headline. Don’t try to save space by making the font smaller. Use a big font that is easy to read, so that it catches the reader’s eye.Use your logo.
If you want your website found, make sure your logo, website and social media URLs are prominent in your infographic. If you have a general message that you want to go viral, you can skip this step.Use photographs.
If you prefer you can use photos over illustrations. Use between one and six photographs. Make sure to leave plenty of room to separate the images and add text.

“Technology in the long-run is irrelevant”. That is what a customer of mine told me when I made a presentation to him about a new product. I had been talking about the product’s features and benefits and listed “state-of-the-art technology” or something to that effect, as one of them. That is when he made his statement. I realized later that he was correct, at least within the context of how I used “Technology” in my presentation. But I began thinking about whether he could be right in other contexts as well.What is Technology?Merriam-Webster defines it as:1a: the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area: engineering 2 b: a capability given by the practical application of knowledge 2: a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge 3: the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor Wikipedia defines it as:Technology (from Greek τέχνη, techne, “art, skill, cunning of hand”; and -λογία, -logia[1]) is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species’ ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.Both definitions revolve around the same thing – application and usage.Technology is an enablerMany people mistakenly believe it is technology which drives innovation. Yet from the definitions above, that is clearly not the case. It is opportunity which defines innovation and technology which enables innovation. Think of the classic “Build a better mousetrap” example taught in most business schools. You might have the technology to build a better mousetrap, but if you have no mice or the old mousetrap works well, there is no opportunity and then the technology to build a better one becomes irrelevant. On the other hand, if you are overrun with mice then the opportunity exists to innovate a product using your technology.Another example, one with which I am intimately familiar, are consumer electronics startup companies. I’ve been associated with both those that succeeded and those that failed. Each possessed unique leading edge technologies. The difference was opportunity. Those that failed could not find the opportunity to develop a meaningful innovation using their technology. In fact to survive, these companies had to morph oftentimes into something totally different and if they were lucky they could take advantage of derivatives of their original technology. More often than not, the original technology wound up in the scrap heap. Technology, thus, is an enabler whose ultimate value proposition is to make improvements to our lives. In order to be relevant, it needs to be used to create innovations that are driven by opportunity.Technology as a competitive advantage?Many companies list a technology as one of their competitive advantages. Is this valid? In some cases yes, but In most cases no.Technology develops along two paths – an evolutionary path and a revolutionary path.A revolutionary technology is one which enables new industries or enables solutions to problems that were previously not possible. Semiconductor technology is a good example. Not only did it spawn new industries and products, but it spawned other revolutionary technologies – transistor technology, integrated circuit technology, microprocessor technology. All which provide many of the products and services we consume today. But is semiconductor technology a competitive advantage? Looking at the number of semiconductor companies that exist today (with new ones forming every day), I’d say not. How about microprocessor technology? Again, no. Lots of microprocessor companies out there. How about quad core microprocessor technology? Not as many companies, but you have Intel, AMD, ARM, and a host of companies building custom quad core processors (Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc). So again, not much of a competitive advantage. Competition from competing technologies and easy access to IP mitigates the perceived competitive advantage of any particular technology. Android vs iOS is a good example of how this works. Both operating systems are derivatives of UNIX. Apple used their technology to introduce iOS and gained an early market advantage. However, Google, utilizing their variant of Unix (a competing technology), caught up relatively quickly. The reasons for this lie not in the underlying technology, but in how the products made possible by those technologies were brought to market (free vs. walled garden, etc.) and the differences in the strategic visions of each company.Evolutionary technology is one which incrementally builds upon the base revolutionary technology. But by it’s very nature, the incremental change is easier for a competitor to match or leapfrog. Take for example wireless cellphone technology. Company V introduced 4G products prior to Company A and while it may have had a short term advantage, as soon as Company A introduced their 4G products, the advantage due to technology disappeared. The consumer went back to choosing Company A or Company V based on price, service, coverage, whatever, but not based on technology. Thus technology might have been relevant in the short term, but in the long term, became irrelevant.In today’s world, technologies tend to quickly become commoditized, and within any particular technology lies the seeds of its own death.Technology’s RelevanceThis article was written from the prospective of an end customer. From a developer/designer standpoint things get murkier. The further one is removed from the technology, the less relevant it becomes. To a developer, the technology can look like a product. An enabling product, but a product nonetheless, and thus it is highly relevant. Bose uses a proprietary signal processing technology to enable products that meet a set of market requirements and thus the technology and what it enables is relevant to them. Their customers are more concerned with how it sounds, what’s the price, what’s the quality, etc., and not so much with how it is achieved, thus the technology used is much less relevant to them.Recently, I was involved in a discussion on Google+ about the new Motorola X phone. A lot of the people on those posts slammed the phone for various reasons – price, locked boot loader, etc. There were also plenty of knocks on the fact that it didn’t have a quad-core processor like the S4 or HTC One which were priced similarly. What they failed to grasp is that whether the manufacturer used 1, 2, 4, or 8 cores in the end makes no difference as long as the phone can deliver a competitive (or even best of class) feature set, functionality, price, and user experience. The iPhone is one of the most successful phones ever produced, and yet it runs on a dual-core processor. It still delivers one of the best user experiences on the market. The features that are enabled by the technology are what are relevant to the consumer, not the technology itself.The relevance of technology therefore, is as an enabler, not as a product feature or a competitive advantage, or any myriad of other things – an enabler. Looking at the Android operating system, it is an impressive piece of software technology, and yet Google gives it away. Why? Because standalone, it does nothing for Google. Giving it away allows other companies to use their expertise to build products and services which then act as enablers for Google’s products and services. To Google, that’s where the real value is.The possession of or access to a technology is only important for what it enables you to do – create innovations which solve problems. That is the real relevance of technology.