Top 25 Franchise Marketing Leaders: Tom Matzen — Co-Founder, Links Golf Cafe

Name: Tom Matzen
Role: Co-Founder
Brand: Links Golf Cafe
Brand Website: https://linksgolfcafefranchise.com/

Tom Matzen’s path to franchising began long before Links Golf Cafe. For more than 11 years, he helped independent brick-and-mortar businesses grow, often working directly with franchisees even before he intended to. Over the past 21 years, he has become a trusted advisor, helping emerging founders decide whether they are ready to franchise and shaping brands around a simple truth: The job of franchise marketing is lead generation and conversion.

Today, Matzen applies that philosophy to Links Golf Cafe, where he and his team are building a first-of-its-kind concept with bold development strategies, including exclusively awarding multi-unit Area Development agreements and guaranteeing profitability for franchisees within their first year.

Q&A With Tom Matzen, Co-Founder, Links Golf Cafe

1851 Franchise: How did you find your way to franchising and franchise marketing?

Tom Matzen: I spent about 11 years helping independent brick-and-mortar businesses expand. In that process, I specialized in helping franchisees. It wasn’t a conscious plan on my part, but they ended up calling us up and telling us about it.

I had learned early on how to guarantee results in marketing. I would tell them officially our goal was to increase sales by 30 percent. Once they came on board, really the goal was to double the sales — and we were going to do it in 60 days or less.

In the process, I learned a lot about franchising. It was a real eye-opener to me. From there, I helped independent brands set up and franchise from scratch, and honestly talked a lot of people out of doing that because I could tell they weren’t ready.

I’ve put around 21 years into this space, focused on sales and lead generation. A lot of leaders get in and are confused on what the marketing should be doing. That is why I call it lead generation and conversion. That is the goal.

1851: What makes franchise marketing uniquely challenging (and rewarding) compared to corporate-only marketing?

Matzen: Anything high-ticket is a very different process than selling something low-ticket. High-ticket, you want to screen, qualify and award. Low-ticket, you want to pitch and pursue.

Your job is to screen, qualify and award and see if it is a good fit. If it is a good fit, absolutely.

Between franchise marketing and other types of marketing, there is a massive difference because you’re selling a partnership, not just a thing. The franchisor is really going into business with somebody. You are creating a business with somebody.

The big challenge is remembering that that is the game we are playing.

1851: What is the single most powerful lever a marketing team can pull to directly impact franchisees’ profitability at the unit level?

Matzen: If I was to narrow it down to one, I would say sampling. It’s boring, it’s repetitive, but it is the single highest return on investment that a unit-level operator can do.

If you are in the gourmet coffee business, give away your coffee, for example. We had one certificate that gave coffee to women’s hair salons for free. We probably gave out over 30,000 of those, and we would average $1.80 in additional sales after they would get the free coffee.

If you do the math, we are making around 85 cents minimum every time this shows up. It doesn’t cost any money to get a customer. Sampling is obvious in the food and beverage business, but all businesses can sample. Pretty much every business can sample something.

Many entrepreneurs don’t understand the power behind it. If it's done right, it’s a force multiplier.”

1851: What is an untapped marketing opportunity you see for franchise brands?

Matzen: The number one untapped marketing opportunity is referral contests. Every business wants new customers.

There are many ways — you get existing customers to spend more, and then there’s finding new customers, but the latter is where many franchisees drop the ball.

You have to have multiple systems of referrals. Happy customers will refer, but if you give them a reason to refer, you accelerate the pace at which they refer and the number of referrals that you get.

You can go from 0.3 referrals per customer to as much as 0.89 referrals per customer. That is a gamechanger for all of us.

1851: What is one marketing fad or buzzword that you believe will actually deliver real results in the coming year?

Matzen: It’s the application of AI, specifically AI agents. More than just ChatGPT — you actually create employees.

I was in a room with a chief operations officer who gave training on his 36 AI-agent team that he had created, all reporting to humans on the team. It shows that you can go much deeper with AI.

You can essentially have someone sitting on your shoulder with a laptop, helping you do everything faster, better and easier. They are able to do their own homework for you and come back with the results.

In franchising, we are going all in on this — every franchisee support key role could have an AI agent supporting the owners.

AI isn’t going to replace people; it’s going to replace people who aren’t using AI.

1851: What’s your boldest franchise marketing take?

Matzen: Our current brand is a startup, and our boldest marketing take is we are only selling multi-unit area development agreements even though we are just starting. We’ve done that on purpose because we want better partners to grow our brand.

While that may mean more work on the qualifying and screening side, it means much better partners will come through on the other end — people who are much more focused on better results.

Also, we are the second franchise in the U.S. to guarantee unit profitability within the first 12 months or they stop paying royalties. I’ve only seen one other franchise have that in their FDD. I am surprised more brands don’t do that. We’ve built that in from the very beginning.

Want to learn more about how 1851 helps franchisors grow their franchises with confidence? Visit www.1851growthclub.com and see what we can do for you.