10 Key steps to boost sales of your franchise business !
10 Key steps to boost sales of your franchise business !
Are you in the franchise business for a long time and not able to generate enough sales?
This is a very rare situation with franchises of established brands but it’s very common when it comes to startups especially which are not backed by large business groups or investors. Reason being, well established brands put in a lot of budgets in product & market research, invest right in offering marketing support whereas this is not the scenario with small firms with bootstrap budgets. We are highlighting these 10 key steps that you must follow to keep growing your business.
There is no harm in hiring marketing firms or consultants when you are looking to grow your business. After Covid and the new Work From Home culture, you will find many small boutique firms and consultants who can easily offer you marketing advice / support on hourly basis or on the monthly retainer basis. After you partner with franchisekaro.com we also marketing partners to our franchise clients so that they can continue to grow their business.
Just in case you do not choose to hire marketing partners it is advisable to conduct business research for your franchise. This can be done by the franchise owners on their own or they could college grads /MBA students to conduct small scale business research. If it fits in your budget then one can easily also look to hire small marketing research firms but one will definitely need to understand the basics and exact requirements for the study to be conducted. Outcomes from such a business research can provide business insights for sure.
Whether you are conducting business research or not,it definitely makes sense to follow a systematic approach to know your customers or audience. This keeps on changing from time to time as well depending on the business scenario. For example, customers pre-covid and at this stage would be very different. The research should be carried out to fine-tune it from time to time so that the core audience for your product / service could be identified.
Once you have identified the right customer audience for your business, it makes a lot of sense to understand their interests and preferences. Accordingly content can be created for them keeping in mind communication messages as per their preferences. The right marketing content will appeal to them more and will chord a connection with your brand. Investing in the right marketing content is one of the key to business growth.
Once the content is ready the next step is to spread the content or we call it amplification of the content. These days majority of the customers in at least metro cities and Tier II and Tier III cities are present online. So spreading your message through digital mediums is very important. But it should not be the only medium to reach out to your customers. One should study the mediums well as well and study their effectiveness as well and then one should invest in it. As a franchise owner this is extremely important for your business but rarely businesses find it very important.
Once you have identified that your audience is online then one must try to reach out to them outside your social network. Many times clients are hesitant to explore or invest in paid social media marketing budgets, but to our experience it works wonders for brands. Provided you do not spill over budgets outside your franchise territory. Investing in building brands gives long term returns. Any franchise owner must divide the budget well, separately for building brand and lead generation activities.
Now this was only for social media but as a brand if it is a brick n mortar franchise it makes sense to invest in outdoor marketing activities as well as hyper-local activities as well. A franchise owner must keep investing in these activities at short intervals and at festive times. Usually with the big brands this support is offered by the franchisor to the franchisee but one must look for these details while signing the contract. As the right marketing budgets are must for lead generation from time to time to expand the business.
Franchise owners must keep taking customer feedback from time to time and bring products and services as per their market needs. This valuable feedback is also important for marketing meetings with the franchisor so that they can launch the right products and services for your market and continue to keep offering the right marketing support with the right mix of products or services. This would definitely help in growing your sales.
For business owners who are in the IT field it is a norm that you launch your product /app then keep improving as per the users feedback. Similarly it can be implemented in marketing as well even if it is a brick and mortar set up. Franchise business owners should keep coming up with new offers and schemes to keep their customers stay connected with the brand when the customer experience is mostly becoming online due to delivery models.
10. Innovate
Any franchise business owner must keep innovating their products /services as per the marketing needs. Just like there were no delivery models as they exist today. Even companies like Uber and Jio have changed their business models to delivery specific business models. While the customers are not stepping out much they would continue to order online adapting to their needs can help boost your sales as well.
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