This Is Where the Dollars From Your Franchisee Marketing Fund Should Go

Determining how to allocate the money from your franchisee marketing fund is serious business—but with the right priorities, it can be done effectively and to your franchisees’ satisfaction. Every brand's marketing fund is different, yet there are common themes that emerge in how brands can best spend. 1851 caught up with three franchisors to learn how they allocate dollars in their franchisee marketing funds to derive best practices that are applicable across the board.

“We break [our fund] into two categories: Production and placement,” PickUp USA president and founder Jordan Meinster said. “Production is going to be things like developing and optimizing the website and producing promotional videos.”

By utilizing the fund that each franchisee contributes to for these production purposes, PickUp USA can produce high-quality marketing collateral for systemwide use on the local level, Meinster said. In terms of placement, PickUp USA uses its franchisee marketing fund to run Google ads, social campaigns and radio ads at the local level, as well. 

“Essentially, we’re producing marketing content that franchisees can use at their discretion, and we’re actually placing ads on behalf of the franchise owners in their local markets,” Meinster said. 

Meinster noted that without tapping into the franchisee marketing fund, these efforts can be expensive. He recommended that brands wait until they have grown to a certain size and number of franchisees before investing in larger pieces of marketing collateral so all of your budget isn’t going toward a single thing. 

“If you’re just a single location gym, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend $15,000 to produce a video,” Meinster said. “That’s going to eat up your entire marketing budget. So it’s been really effective for us to pool everybody’s money together, spend that money to create promotional videos and get high-quality stuff that the franchise owners can use.” 

Blue Ox Axe Throwing CEO Gerald Ferraro believes a large part of a brand’s franchisee marketing fund should be invested in social media. 

“The best way to spend ad fund money to benefit the further development of the brand falls in the utilization of underpriced attention,” Ferraro said in an email. “Currently, the most underpriced attention is social media. Taking advantage of social media allows you to get the most attention per dollar spent with a great hyper-focus through setting the parameters on the exact demographic that your brand appeals to.”

The axe-throwing brand has seen the most success through Instagram, Ferraro said. 

“Instagram allows Blue Ox Axe Throwing to utilize the excitement and attention-grabbing visuals that come with axe throwing,” Ferraro said in an email. “A great quality visual along with an entertaining caption goes a long way to intrigue consumers.”

Ferraro’s advice to emerging brands as they decide how to spend ad fund money is to stay true to the brand’s ideal and tell their story. 

 “If you have a great product that has a compelling story to tell, it will sell itself,” Ferraro said. “All it takes is patience and consistency when you are true to your brand.”

A challenge that often arises when determining how to allocate franchisee marketing funds is balancing everyone’s preconceived notions about advertising and how it works. That’s why Royal Restrooms founder and co-owner David Sauers said his strategy focuses on community involvement, first and foremost. Royal Restrooms directs franchisee ad fund dollars toward establishing franchisees high among local search results, building on its reputation and brand recognition from the ground up as opposed to from the top down.

“That is one of the main strategies that we focus on,” Sauers said in an email. “We ask that each office have a landline because it shows up almost instantaneously on Google, Yahoo and Bing. When offices use their cell phone for business, it makes it much more difficult to achieve a good ranking in local search results because Google may not recognize them as a legit business.”

No two brands will ever spend their franchisee marketing funds exactly alike because every concept has its own needs and priorities, but all franchisors should keep in mind the importance of showing their franchisees that the money they are contributing to the brand’s marketing efforts benefits them on the local level. Establish that education within your franchise system is critical to ensuring all parties are on the same page contributing to a common goal.