I asked him to list out where they spent their marketing budget. His answer:

• Creative Company
• Leaflets
• Posters
• Advertising
• PR
• SEO
• Website Development

The list was pretty good. I was impressed. They definitely were not shying away from spending money on marketing.

There was a problem, however. His franchisees were still complaining to him that they weren’t seeing return for their marketing levy. They weren’t happy, and they were letting him know about it.

He asked me the question: How can that be?

From my view it’s pretty simple. Just because you’re spending money doesn’t mean it’s money well spent. If you spend £70K on an advertising campaign that only generates £20K worth of business, do you really think people will be congratulating you on investing so much on your marketing? Like hell. They’ll be asking you why you wasted all that time and money with no reward to show for it.

You don’t get points for trying. You get points for results.

Back to my conversation. I more or laid out this same idea to him. The reason his franchisees were unhappy was that they weren’t seeing any benefit from the marketing spend. From their perspective, all they were seeing was money flying out the door. It never seemed to be coming back in.

Sure they got the leaflets delivered every month, and yes they were very pretty. But there was nobody helping them with what to do in their territory. Nobody really helping them get the most out of what they had to work with.

Now THAT is where local marketing comes in.

And the even better news?

It’s normally cheaper and more effective.

How? It’s a simple numbers game.

Let me give you an example. Say our franchisor decides to put on an offer and send it out to all of his network. He prints up 500,000 leaflets and gets them distributed to all 50 of his franchisees. It’s the same offer to everyone, with no recognition of the differences between the different local markets.

Now in this scenario, only about 15 of his network thinks that the offer will work in their territory. 15 out of 50. If we assume that they will only use about 30% of the printed leaflets, the numbers start to get scary:

500,000 Printed Leaflets: £5000

Distribution to 50 Franchisees: £500 (£10/franchisee)

Total Expenditure: £5500 (£110/franchisee)

Sure that’s not a lot of money. Only £110 per franchisee.

But hang on. Only 15 of the 50 are going to use the campaign, and they will only use 30% of the leaflets. If we look at those numbers we really only need to print up 45,000 Leaflets. That’s a much more targeted way of doing a marketing campaign – send out the most effective materials for those areas. The numbers look better:

45,000 printed Leaflets: £650
Distribution to 15 Franchisees: £150 (£10/franchisee)
Total Expenditure: £800 (£54/franchisee)

See any difference? We can make it even more brutal:

Total spent on mass campaign: £5500
Total spent on targeted campaign: £800
Wasted Marketing Spend: £4700

That’s 85% of the campaign budget being flushed away.

THAT is the importance of local marketing.

THAT is where franchises need to focus on.

And if you want to know more, give me a shout.

- Jordan

(This article was originally written at www.franchisemarketingsystem.co.uk – please contact Jordan directly if you’d like to learn more about Designate’s unique local marketing systems for franchises)

Or not. Either way, really.

I was speaking to a group of franchisors the other day.

(For those of you who don’t know the term, a franchisor (person or group/company) sits at the head of a franchise. They are the people everyone else buys their franchise from. They own the brand, have developed the systems and processes, and take a monthly fee from each of their locations.)

So anyway. I was speaking to them. I was there to give them a bit of input and advice about local marketing. It’s a subject that is particularly relevant to most franchises out there. I can’t tell you how many franchisees (the people who buy the franchise) get upset about marketing. Seriously it’s a high percentage.

The thing that drives most of them mad is this – they keep getting given generic marketing strategies that have nothing to do with their area, their competition or their customers. It’s all generic. What kind of support is that?

My company has a bit of a speciality in this area. We developed a comprehensive franchise marketing system to do just that. It’s all about getting results at a local level.

It’s also about learning. Why don’t companies take the time to learn about their customers? Why don’t they take the time to really understand the competition?

This is particularly true when it comes to the franchise industry. Most franchises will boast about their ‘world-class’ marketing support and, to be honest, 98% of them are talking bollocks. Their idea of marketing support is to print up a bunch of generic leaflets and tell the locations to distribute them.

Where? To whom? Why? All good questions.

The thing is, most franchisors miss out on one of their greatest local marketing assets – their franchisees. For the most part, a franchisee buys a franchise within the area they live. They know the history. They know the people. They know who is there and why people prefer one thing to another.

So why don’t they get asked?

When I posed this question to the group of franchisors, how many do you think actually asked their franchisees about this?

Not one. Seriously.

That’s an awful lot of local knowledge they missed out on. It’s silly, and it winds up costing you money.

It’s not just about franchising either. We’re currently bringing two new software products to the market for two separate clients. In both cases we have been doing an awful lot of groundwork to identify and connect to the potential customers. You have to do this, or you’ll end up with a very shiny system with nobody to use (or pay for) it.

Talking to people is important. Listening is even more so. If you really want to practice sensible marketing, take the time to engage with your customers (or potential ones). Take the time to really understand who they are. Look at the real competition, not just the obvious ones.

In short – you need to do the ground work and understand that every area, every city, every group of people, are all different.

Or you can call my company, and we’ll do it for you ;-)

-j

I like reading up on Franchise opportunities. They all boast about having ‘world-class marketing’ (where did that phrase come from anyway? It sounds like some sort of weird advert for hoovers) systems in place that will guarantee that their franchisees will make tons and tons of money.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I was always told that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The reality is most franchises fall down in translation – translating what they found successful in one area into another one. This isn’t as easy as it seems, and it’s a critical part of developing a marketing strategy for your franchise.

Repeat after me: All marketing is local. All marketing is local. All…you get the idea.

What works in one place won’t necessarily work in another. What works for one type of customer will turn another one off. You simply have to understand the local market before you send your new franchisee out to sell. If you don’t, they’ll get frustrated and accuse you of shoddy marketing. And they’d be right. Just because it worked in one area doesn’t mean it will work in another.

I speak three languages. That’s not bragging, it’s the truth. When you’re translating from another language, you very rarely do it literally – you almost always form your words in a way that will make sense to that new language. You adjust for your new audience.

It’s the same with marketing. When we create a marketing strategy for a franchise, we look to adjust it as new franchisees come on board. We translate it into the local market – taking advantages of what the local opportunities are.

Go on, say it one more time: All marketing is local.

- j

(this was originally written for The Franchise Gap)

But good news (and if you’ve been thinking about franchising your business it’s great news) – The Franchise Gap is up and running.

For those of you that don’t know, the franchise world is one of the areas we’ve been working in over the past couple of years. In that time, we’ve been working with a couple of Franchise experts, and that relationship has been bearing proper fruit. The Franchise Gap was the next logical step – a collective of businesses that can work together to provide all the expertise to successfully franchise a business.

The group has an open meeting every month where we invite guests to come and meet the team. If you’re thinking about franchising your business, or you’re a new franchisor that’s looking to grow, we have the right people to drive you forward.

Check it out.

-j