Local Marketing Strategy For Franchise Businesses

The key to a franchise business’s success lies mostly in one thing - marketing. Without proper marketing, even the best products and ideas can’t last long. Similarly, a rather simple product could be a raging hit if marketed properly. They don’t always, of course, but marketing making or breaking a brand’s fate is generally the norm.
But even the most adept franchise businesses often fail to encash on their local market. In an attempt to reach a nationalized market, they struggle to figure out how to capture local audiences.

Franchise Marketing Solutions

What is franchise marketing? How do you cope with the growing pressures of making your franchise business a success? It’s a fair enough question to ask since there are obvious hurdles on the way. The trick to overcoming the difficulties of a local marketing strategy for franchise businesses lies in a few solutions. These franchise marketing solutions will guide you through the nuances of every successful marketing strategy.

Solution #1: Scope Your Target Audience

Do you know why McDonald’s is superior to, say, a Burger King? There are different answers to this simple question, but possibly the most important one is the successful scoping of their target audience. They used multiple methods to catch the attention of the local audience in different regions. And that is a very crucial marketing strategy.
Even if you own a franchise business, whose product has a universal appeal, you need to target the local audiences separately to garner a more positive outcome. 
But what does scoping your target audience mean? To put it in words that everybody can understand, you need to do market research and survey.

You need to look for the following things in your research:

• The population demographics of the region you’re surveying.
• The behavioral and mental attributes of the customers, i.e., how and what do they think? How do they behave against others? What are their socio-economic or political beliefs?
• How could your business be more available for the customers?

Solution #2: Understand Your Customer

Scoping your target audience is just the tip of the iceberg. The majority of the marketing strategy lies underneath it. Understanding your customer refers to building a relationship with your customers, from making them aware of your business to making them a loyal buyer.

• The relationship begins when you succeed in making your audience aware of your business’s existence. It generally happens through ads - be it an ad campaign on TV or the internet - but sometimes, word of mouth helps, too. On your part, you could generate content specific to the particular region and ensure that it is diverse, but relevant to the local demographic.
• When the audience is aware of your existence, they start to discover you more and more. Again, it could be online discovery or through word of mouth.
• After discovering your brand, the audience begins to evaluate. This is a vital part of your business. You need to increase your activities to impress potential customers who search for your business online and offline. Use market research to develop a smart email marketing strategy that grabs their attention. 
• The evaluation continues with them deciding to buy from you and having a positive experience with your business (whatever the root cause be). If they are genuinely impressed with your services, they may decide to buy again. At this stage, the customer is yours to lose, and you should do everything in your ability to keep them happy!
• The franchise’s relationship with the customer reaches its peak when the customer becomes a loyal one and starts buying again and again.

All these stages in the relationship help the business gain traction and raise its overall awareness among customers.

Solution #3: Scrutinize Your Competition
Marketing strategy does not only include surveying your customer base. It also includes your competition - other businesses that are in the same field as you are. Therefore, you have to be thorough on that front. Figure out what makes your rival businesses successful or which strategy goes against them. Keep a tab on their customer bases as well, and be on the lookout the potential base they are trying to attract. If it seems feasible, go for their customer bases and see if you can succeed.

Solution #4: Build An Image

The best way to build your franchise’s image or identity is by improving the social media presence. That social media is the future of marketing is a foregone conclusion, but not every franchisee knows how to make full use of the different social media platforms.
Social media marketing is an ever-growing marketing strategy for all kinds of businesses, and especially franchisees. And doing it cleverly is the answer to a successful strategy. Instead of going for a nationalized approach, opt for one where your franchise has an account for the regions you have your business spread in (or, the areas you want to capture). This not only makes it a more customized and well though-out approach, but it also saves a lot of money, thereby increasing the profit threshold.
Digital marketing for franchisees is a surefire way of attaining more and more success over time. The plan should be to engage your audience as much you can while promoting your business and products at regular intervals.

It’s a prerequisite to be able to differentiate between franchise marketing and the general notion of business marketing. Business marketing is a lot less varied than franchise marketing. And, even a small mistake could potentially ruin the reputation of the entire franchise. But it is also essential that you are able to improvise on existing strategies or completely restructuring a plan.
No marketing strategy can remain unchanged for a long time because of the demographic changes and the behavioral aspects of the customers. Local marketing strategy for a franchise business will include all these aspects. Constantly tweaking and experimenting with these strategies without changing the core values and visions of the franchise will pave the way for future success.