There are many ways in which you can market a business, but you have to find the approach that works best with you. For franchises, it can be difficult to stay within the policies and regulations of your parent franchise while trying to stand out and provide yourself an identity to fit in a community. Here are some ways franchise owners can help market their business better.
Working With Parent Companies
When you are part of a franchise, and an owner of a shop or store within a bigger company, you will have access to more resources than other smaller stores not associated with a franchise. You should be using this to your benefit if you are looking for ways to market your business. The resources available to you as a franchise owner is through the audience that your company has and the relationships surrounding trust and long term reliability that people associate with the franchise name. This helps you reach you connect with consumers and customers much easier, as it is cheaper and faster to keep existing customers rather than trying to entice new customers. Setting up a new franchise in a location, you can announce your arrival to the neighborhood and they will already be able to attach a level of quality and idea of your products and services with you.
Social Media
Feeding off the idea that people already are aware of your brand or company, you can utilize different online platforms to further connect and build your relationships. With an already established name, you can feed off that with location specific branches, drawing from the pool of audience and community members to any parent pages. Additionally, when your franchise company shares and markets ads, you can share them with your own pages directed specifically with your community. This requires less work on your side as there is no need for content creation, simply forwarding or resharing content that is already out there.
Reviews And Search Engines
One important way that franchise owners can market their business is through reviews and through search engines. This is crucial and forms a cycle that can impact your success. As customers continue to provide patronage to your business, they build an opinion. If they then share that opinion, you then begin to increase your visibility. Of course, you want to do your best to ensure your products and services are top notch so that you maintain a high rating and positive reviews. That translates then to more visibility that can again translate to more reviews. The importance of search engines with your specific location is when customers utilize mobile devices and the searches on their phones, that typically translates to location based searches. If you are ranked highly enough, you will appear in these location driven searches, which lead to a good portion of sales and transactions for many businesses.
Blog Content
It is important to differentiate yourself with your parent company in order to provide a uniqueness that can be lost with many franchises. Unique content ideas such as affiliate marketing and advertising with a course that highlights different uses for your online platforms provide a gateway into standing out in a competitive and crowded market. Creating content for the platforms you are on provides you an opportunity to establish that identity that is unique and separate from your franchise and other stores. This highlights the importance of connecting with your community and developing long lasting relationships to establish a strong presence for long term success.
Community Initiatives
Continuing with ideas of community building, it is important to take initiatives to support your community outside of marketing channels and simply staying in the online platforms. By connecting with your community, perhaps acting as a sponsor for local sports teams and youth programs, or donating goods and services, creates a bond with your neighborhood. This helps people understand that being a franchise owner doesn’t necessarily mean you are part of the corporate system, but you are a business owner and still a member of your community. This is where large corporations are lost to tight knit communities as they will more often support locally run and operated business. If you show that you are part of that community, revealing the people behind the store or franchise, you will see continued support from people in your area.
Marketing for business can be approached many different ways. It is important to recognize your audience and customer base and create a campaign that encourages long term consumer relationships. This is crucial for any neighborhood business, regardless of whether they are independently owned or within a franchise.