Grassroots Marketing: How to Become the Mayor of Your Community

While some franchise chains might naturally attract more customers than others for a variety of reasons, including brand recognition, some franchises might do well to advocate for their businesses within their local communities via grassroots marketing.

Starting small and targeting local businesses and organizations can go a long way in promoting a new franchise location.

Enter Danavan Hylton, CEO of the Hylton Elite Marketing Agency, which specializes in grassroots marketing. Hylton works with a variety of clients, including franchisees, and he shared his thoughts with 1851 Franchise on how franchisees can reach out to their local communities.

His first piece of advice for franchisees is to make sure they get to know the decision makers within their community.

“Those decision makers that they want to get to know are what I call recruiting sources, and those recruiting sources are sources or organizations that traditionally have access to the franchise’s target market or potential customer,” he said.

Hylton is a big believer in owning one’s zip code. If a franchisee is not the mayor of their zip code, or wherever their business is located, they’re going to have a tough time of growing their business.

When it comes to technological resources, the franchisee needs to be realistic about what they themselves are capable of doing, Hylton said. There are many different technology strategies out there that business owners can use, but nine times out of 10 the business owner is not a technology expert and doesn’t know how to effectively utilize it.

“I always advocate to connect with a technology-related marketing company that provides those services and just pay one person or one entity,” Hylton said, adding that doing so will be less expensive and less of a liability. “You get more return on your investment if you connect with some sort of technological agency that provides those services that get the job done for you, and you can sit back and focus on developing your business.”

When it comes to attracting new customers, events are a prime way to go. Franchisees should have potential customers visit and experience the facility and have the opportunity to participate in menu and taste testing and get coupons, Hylton said.

“You definitely want to focus on events, first of all, and bringing people to your facility because if you are serious about the customer, I’m sure the product or service the brand is representing is going to sell itself,” Hylton said.

There’s also a more passive option: street signs and flyers. Franchisees don’t necessarily need a big billboard, he said, but they can place signs advertising their businesses strategically along the interstate, for example.

Those signs, he noted, will be “working 24/7.”

Hylton is also a fan of doing something that almost seems quaint in the age of social media and society isolation: showing up in person.

Business owners shouldn’t be afraid to show up to local offices, introduce themselves to the person sitting at the front desk and ask if the decision maker is available for a quick chat. Of course, he acknowledges this may not be a viable option at every location due to security purposes, but he does advocate doing it when possible and bringing marketing materials, such as flyers, to leave behind.

The majority of the time, the person the franchisee first speaks with will take your information and say they’ll give it to the decision maker or they’ll give you that person’s business card and you can reach out that way. It’s also possible they’ll say they’ll call the decision maker out to the front, he said.

“You as a franchise owner set the tone first by first promoting their stuff on your Facebook and it may take a while for them to start promoting your stuff on theirs, but you want to show value by making the recruiting source’s job as easy as possible,” he said. “And that’s how you win their loyalty. And therefore, when you want to become the mayor, you’re going to have those ambassadors.”

This is not the time for a franchisee to be shy. Hylton pointed out that entrepreneurship is a tough industry.

“It’s either eat or be eaten,” he said. “If you have doubts or fears, then you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur because entrepreneurship is a risk all the way around.”

Granted, not every location will just let people walk into their buildings, but the point is to try.

“Until they tell you no, you go after it, because that’s the only thing that’s going to really separate your company from the competition,” he said.