5 Tips for Planning your 2016 Franchise Development Budget

The growth of your franchise depends a lot on the budget that you put together and where you allocate your funds. Here are five tips for planning your franchise development budget for 2016.

Conduct an annual review. This sounds like a simple feat, but many brands don’t look at their budgets from the previous year. All franchise developers know how many leads they generated and the number of new franchisees that signed on to open, but they oftentimes don’t know where they came from.

It’s vital to your success as a developer to learn about where these leads came from and how you can increase your budget for 2016 to focus on these specific strategies.

Increase your online and digital strategy. With more and more people going online and conducting their own research now a days, your online and digital strategies are key to successfully hitching a new franchisee. What do the results on the first page of Google say about you when a potential franchisee searches for your brand? These are the types of items that can make or break a franchisee’s interest in a matter of minutes; if not, seconds.

Devote time and effort to your website. Complementing your online and digital strategies, your website is vital to your success too. The quality of a website is not only important for your customers, but even more important for your franchisees. If the content on your website isn’t appealing from a customer standing point, your franchisees will take note of this very quickly.

Allocate funds for public relations. This goes without saying, but public relations should be a key aspect of your 2016 budget. Whether it’s prospective franchisees reading the business section of the local newspaper, the statewide business journal or even FOX Business, your brand should be in as many publications as possible. Development-focused stories in your key growth markets can help your development team gauge the interest of franchisees that have the right experience and funds to open a new location.

Build a team to encourage growth. Without a franchise development team, you will not reach your growth potential. Period. Having a dedicated team that is focused on specific regions will help yield more and better quality candidates in your search for franchisees and real estate locations. With team members focused on certain areas of the country, you will also have experts in place for interview opportunities and they can touch on local angles that appeal to prospects.