When Exploring Franchise Opportunities, a Solid Marketing Program Matters to Franchisees

When completing due diligence on what franchise brand is the best for your investment, taking note of what the marketing department will offer you is one of the most important—yet frequently overlooked—pieces of the puzzle. Everyone acknowledges that purchasing a franchise gives you the toolbox and playbook to succeed if followed properly, but what many people don’t always recognize is that the corporate office’s support extends beyond an operations handbook.

Marketing drives sales. But oftentimes, the general public has difficulty understanding just how marketing works. Without properly promoting your franchise business on a local level—or without your franchisor spending the extra dollars and effort on a national level—you’re going to have difficulty bringing customers through the door.

Two experts, Marketing & Communications Director at TWO MEN AND A TRUCK* Dawn Kroeger, and Director of Marketing at The Cleaning Authority Heather McLeod, expound upon what franchisees are looking for and how they’ve created solutions to make local marketing as simple as possible for franchisees.

“Our biggest focus has been to make marketing easy for the franchisees,” McLeod said. “So we’ve taken the approach that we’re going to do all the tricky Internet marketing on behalf of our franchisees. That way, instead of them figuring out their own SEO or managing a pay-per-click campaign on their own, we manage that for them.”

The Cleaning Authority also offers an automated direct mail campaign that franchisees can opt into. As one of the best ways to get in front of the right audience, franchisees simply have to make a couple of basic choices from existing artwork selections on the franchisee software system. From there, the corporate team handles the rest. McLeod explains that when they recognize there is a program that would be beneficial to the network, they try and build it into the entire system. For example, they recognized that customers might cancel service sometimes, but when reached back out to via email or direct mail, they will start hiring The Cleaning Authority again. Based on that information, the corporate team built an option to market to these ex-customers to bring them back into the system with an automated option that they don’t have to execute.

“I think the big overarching message of what we’re doing from a marketing perspective is that there’s so much we can manage at a corporate level to free up franchisees’ time to improve operations and manage their employees—something that we understand is the cornerstone of being a successful franchisee,” McLeod said. “So we take away the stress of running the day-to-day marketing so they have more time to focus on the critical aspects of running their business.”

Kroeger echoes McLeod’s sentiment of making marketing for franchisees as easy as possible, but she also elaborates on a crucial element to becoming a franchisee in the first place.

“Part of the benefit of being in a franchise system is we have years of knowledge, data and a deep understanding of what specific tactics work across every market,” Kroeger said. “We, as a resource standpoint, have a playbook of tactics they need to understand will work and they need run with.”

An important educational point for a potential franchisee is to understand what the National Ad Fund does for them on both a national and local level. Then, the candidate needs to grasp what their marketing requirements are from their local budget.

“When trying to understand how we’ve built the brand in the last few years, we get questions like ‘Do you run national television ads? And what national campaigns, such as billboards and radio, do you have running to support me before we open up in my market?" Kroeger said.

When it comes to the National Ad Fund, TWO MEN AND A TRUCK’s home office seeks opportunities to build the brand nationally and locally while looking for ways to bring cost savings to the system and enhance the results of all marketing efforts.

“We like to put forward initiatives where we both have an investment,” Kroeger said. “The National Ad Fund pays for managing the global system and software for franchisees to use, and then the franchisee comes alongside our investments and pays for their monthly clicks. A franchise couldn’t afford the types of solutions that we provide to them if they had to pay for this all on their own, but because of the National Ad Fund, it lowers the cost for the franchisee to come alongside what we are doing and support it locally.”

Similarly, Kroeger discusses how corporate produces TV spots out of the National Ad Fund, and the franchisee can determine if they want to run it or not. However, most franchisees wouldn’t be able to afford to make commercials on their own. The National Ad Fund also implements the strategy for online marketing, organic website strategy, and the overall online presence support. TWO MEN AND A TRUCK’s home office also staffs a large marketing team to help support the franchisees with their own local efforts, which is important to understand from the start.

When it comes to a local level, Kroeger mentions that franchisee candidates should ask questions about what you’re allowed to do because there will most likely be regulations on the local budget and local marketing area. One question Kroeger frequently receives is about how the franchisees can “co-op”—a term they use on a local level to make their advertising dollars work more for them by partnering with their franchisee neighbors. This allows for franchisees to share pricing on local marketing efforts.

And don’t forget about cause marketing—where the franchise partners with charities in an effort to help others while also bringing awareness to the brand. As the largest franchised moving company, TWO MEN AND A TRUCK is heavily involved with multiple cause marketing programs. Nationally, franchisees participate in Movers for Moms, where each location collects items needed for women and children in need. The brand also supports a partnership with the American Cancer Society, where 10 cents from each move is donated to the cause.