The Importance of “Why You/Why Now” in Telling Your Brand’s Story

When landing on your franchise Website, ask yourself one question: Do you define the why you/why now?

While simple, the question is a key evaluation tool when looking at your franchise brand as a franchise candidate. Then, the evaluation should go far beyond your digital landing page. Why should anyone care about your brand? And why is now the time to act? Those two questions must be addressed clearly and consistently at every touch-point with your target audiences. 

Before deploying its story and amplifying it across channels, franchise brands need to start with the Why You/Why Now. The Why You/Why Now ensures all marketing efforts are guided by a sense of purpose and strategy that allows brands to build and measure against growth goals.

If done honestly and effectively, uncovering the Why You/Why Now will require a deep dive into the core of your brand, your leadership team, culture and core values. In the end, your Why You/Why Now must revolve around the transformation of your franchisees’ personal and professional experience.

By creating this message on the front end, brands will have more purpose throughout the whole journey of their storytelling. For example, at Mainland, we define the Why You/Why Now for a brand, build owned assets around that messaging, then deploy it through PR and amplify it through paid assets so the right people will find the story. Mainland can package it all together to define a message that we are confident will resonate with key audiences in key markets. Finally, we look at analytics to figure out what worked and what didn’t, so all of that storytelling can have a greater purpose. 

Checklist:

• Define your brand’s Why You/Why Now: Why should someone care about your franchise over the competition, and why is now the time to take action? Build a storytelling strategy that accurately reflects the brand’s franchise development goals.
• Owned: Develop the copy, imagery and other content marketing assets to best tell your brand’s Why You/Why Now story.
• Earned: Take those stories and pitch them to the most relevant and far-reaching news and media outlets, including national news, trade publications, local media and digital influencers.
• Paid: Amplify the impact of those stories and media placements through digital advertising and other paid marketing.
• Data: Dig deep into the results of the Why You/Why Now campaign to gain insights on what stories and methods had the greatest impact. 

Discover more about how to win at franchise development marketing by downloading our free white paper here.