Recruiting through Twitter: Have Franchise Candidates Flying Your Way! The process of recruiting franchisees can be grueling. Half the battle is deciding where and when to reach your audience. What if there were a recruitment strategy that eliminated the need to search high and low for franchisees, and instead turned them right to you? Social networking may be the best way to attract and interest prospective franchisees. But which social outlet is best?
Rejuvenate your image Just being on Twitter gives your franchise a youthful, up-to-date feel. Using Twitter is an easy way to spruce up the image of your franchise. Twitter gives you the opportunity to make personal connections with prospective franchise owners, so be sure to take advantage of it! Others tweet your horn for you Positive word of mouth is every brand's most powerful asset. How Can Brand Storytelling Boost Franchise Sales Lead Generation? Just Ask Chem-Dry - Franchise Performance Group. How Chem-Dry Carpet Cleaning used brand storytelling and organic search to generate more than six times the leads, triple close rates. Bill Knight, VP of Franchise Development for Chem-Dry Carpet Cleaning Bill Knight, formerly of Lenny’s Subs, TCBY and Ruby Tuesday’s, joined Chem-Dry Carpet Cleaning as vice president of franchise development in 2009, in the depths of the recession. Franchise growth had stalled in 2008, and the company hired Bill to kick it back to life.
He immediately took the established steps franchise pros use to boost lead generation: He redesigned the company’s franchise website, launched portal advertising, networked with brokers and took out full-page ads in Entrepreneur magazine — steps straight from the roundtables of the IFA conference. Leads and sales increased incrementally, but nowhere near as much as Bill had wanted. By 2011, Chem-Dry — with almost 3,500 units worldwide — was generating only about 350 leads per month. Today? Without a doubt. How Can Brand Storytelling Boost Franchise Sales Lead Generation? Just Ask Chem-Dry - Franchise Performance Group. Evaluating a Mandatory Marketing Program, Franchise Information. Franchise Buying Guide - Franchise Buying Steps - Steps Involved in Investigating a Franchise Opportunity - Evaluating a Mandatory Marketing Program A franchisor's system-wide marketing program can be a great benefit to a franchisee but also a potential source of conflict when the contributions are mandatory.
The real source of contention is not that such a fund exists, and these funds are very common in franchising, but because the franchisor, not the franchisee, decides how it is spent. How do you evaluate whether the marketing program provided will give you a fair value for your money? First let's take a look at why such a fund can be an advantage.
When a franchisor pools funds from all of the franchisees in the system, it can hire a top public relations or advertising company to create a marketing campaign that will benefit the entire system. It also has a much greater ability to do expensive advertising, such as television. Return to Franchise Buying Steps. Steps Involved in Investigating a Franchise Opportunity. Franchise Buying Guide - Franchise Buying Steps - Steps Involved in Investigating a Franchise Opportunity Before You Begin: You've carefully evaluated yourself. You know what you need to find in a business to match your preferences and desires. You have a picture of what the future will be like for you as a business owner. Now you just need a process to investigate individual franchise companies and determine if they fit perfectly into your plans.
The first thing you need to keep in mind in your investigation is that it is a process of mutual elimination for both you and the franchisor. You might find exactly the franchise you're looking for on the first try but that is highly unlikely, unless you are using a consultant like FranChoice to narrow the search for you. Step 1.
The franchisor will begin by providing you with overview information on the company (typically a brochure and CD/video/web link package). Step 2. This document, commonly referred to as the FDD, is the F. Step 3. Www.franchoice.com/franchise-fitness-test.html. Only by having a clear understanding of yourself, your motivations and your goals, can you determine if franchise ownership is right for you. The questions and quiz below are designed to get you thinking - take your time and be completely honest. There are no right or wrong answers, only insights into your true self. * Why specifically do you want to own a franchise? Is it to get rich, Is it to be your own boss and control your own destiny?
* Are you in good health? * How involved is your family in this decision making process? * What sort of hours do you prefer to work? * How do you feel about selling? * Do you enjoy following a system, or would you rather do your own thing? * Are you confident in your decision making, not needing the support of others? * How do you feel about accepting coaching and assistance from others? Keep your answers to these questions handy and use them as a reference tool to ensure you are choosing the franchise that best suits your style and motivations. Status Library. PR as a Cost-Effective Lead Generation Strategy. With the proliferation of more sophisticated social media, PR, web, and blogging tools available today, franchisors have a golden opportunity to tell their story to a captive pool of franchise candidates who are hungry for such information.
During a Franchise Update Leadership & Development Conference only a few years ago, you could count on one hand the number of franchisees successfully recruited through franchisors' implementation of a social media strategy. In contrast, Showhomes, then an emerging franchisor specializing in decorating and staging vacant, upscale residential properties for quick resale, stood out as an exception. Showhomes attributed $300,000 in franchise fee revenue in 2009 to their social media outreach efforts. Thomas Scott, then Showhomes' partner and resident social media expert (and collaborator on this e-book), is quick to point out what he does differently than everyone else... which appears to make all the difference.
Implications Action Items Social Reach: Generating Your Own Press. Note: For part 1, Discovering the Power of Public Relations, click here. For part 2, Hiring a PR Agency, click here. As a bootstrap franchisor, there certainly are ways you can gain public attention through your own personal efforts. Ask some franchise PR firms for general advice on how to stir up some publicity on your "franks 'n' beans" budget. They can often help out with suggestions. Their valuable direction may help accelerate your initial PR successes and avoid costly mistakes, so you can use their services in the not-too-distant future! Let's take a look at three franchisors who triggered extraordinary media attention through their personal PR efforts. 1. 2. 3. PR tips for do-it-yourselfers If you aren't ready, willing, or able to afford an outside PR firm, a common situation among start-up franchise companies, don't despair.
Wait until you are ready -- Sometimes opportunities come faster than expected, before you really have your act together. Social Reach: Viewer Response: Creating a Cost-Effective Lead Generation Strategy. For many franchisors, the traditional advertising vehicles - portals, print advertising, PR, and broker networks - do not appear to be working as effectively as they were five years ago. We predicted the slow decline of these once-proven vehicles in our white paper, "The Future of Lead Generation: 6 Big Changes Which Will Alter Franchising Forever," available as a free download.
Since we've already written a detailed paper on this topic, we won't rehash what we still believe to be highly relevant information. Instead, we will focus only on additional insights we've had since the paper was published a few years ago. For those who have read the paper, you may remember we took issue with franchise portals for not doing more to provide franchisors with better educated, more informed, and buyer ready leads. Since then we've spoken with owners or representatives of most of the major franchise opportunity portals about our assertions.
Here is a marketing tip. Social Reach: Viewer Response:
Local Facebook pages outperform corporate pages in terms of reach, engagement percentage, study finds. Facebook pages for local branches of a business generate greater reach and engagement than their corporate counterparts, according to a study by Mainstay Salire in collaboration with Hearsay Social. On average, a Facebook post from a local division reaches five times the percentage of fans as a post from a corporate page.
The study also found local posts see engagement from eight times as many of the fans reached compared to corporate posts. These results suggest that companies should consider maintaining Facebook pages for local stores or branches in addition to a main corporate page. “Conventional wisdom is that personalized and targeted communications win out,” Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih tells us. “But we were blown away by the numbers.” Shih attributes the difference in reach and engagement on local pages to be the result of content that speaks more directly to fans and the amount of interaction that occurs on mobile devices when customers visit brick and mortar locations.
Your Business on Facebook: Solving the Local vs Global Dilemma. Around the world, in places near and far, social media gurus are gathering in secret Starbucks locations they've discovered on Foursquare, engaging in one of the most important debates of our time. A discussion so profound, it threatens the very social frameworks we all hold dear -- should brands have a single global Facebook page or multiple, local market Facebook pages? What are Facebook's big f8 announcements likely to mean for this debate?
Historical data on the question is clear. According to Syncapse research, local Facebook pages drive 36 % higher engagement than does a single global page. The benefits of local lie with harnessing the power of the social graph to create digital word-of -mouth campaigns that engage fans, drive organic impressions, leverage influence across the brand network, and create goodwill for the brand. Illustration by Bonkers World In practical terms, a company's Facebook page architecture should be based on the organizational physics of the enterprise. LinkedIn. The 3 Scariest Things About Owning a Franchise. Image credit: Shutterstock Owning a franchise is not for the faint of heart.
The idea of being your own boss plus the upfront costs and extra obligations to a corporate business, can be downright frightening. With Halloween around the corner, it's the ideal time to talk about some of the scary realities that come with owning a franchise. Before jumping into the business, make sure you are aware of these three hard truths: 1. Related: How to Avoid the Most Depressing Sentence in All of Franchising With so much cash going into a business before it even opens, some people get worried they made a poor choice in the franchise they purchased and will lose their money. One way to prevent the mistake of choosing the wrong franchise is to make sure you are a good match for the franchise. TIP: I've found the people that do their homework at the beginning of the franchise purchasing process and during the research phase, end up increasing their chances of success as franchise owners. 2. 3.
Franchise News & Top Ranking Franchises For Sale. Page 2 2013 Top Franchise Opportunities.