Imagine for a minute you are done, yep you have worked hard to franchise your business. You have thought through every detail during the process of setting up a franchise for your business. Now, you are ready to tell prospective franchisees exactly why, out of a myriad of franchise opportunities, your franchise is the best. Given the chance you can rattle off a hundred facts to state your case to why someone should buy your franchise. Now one of the things you need to do in order to award franchises is provide them with compelling marketing pieces. This will start the franchise qualification process that you put applicants through before eventually meeting with them in person (learn about meeting your applicants in person known as a discovery day).
Like you, many of your potential franchisees are looking to be as efficient as possible with their time. This means NOT meeting you right away, which quite honestly is a good practice to determine if they are a good candidate before you invest the time to meet with them (read how to find ideal franchisees). Within their search for the right franchise opportunity, they will want (to use an old analogy) “to take a peak under the hood before buying the car”. They will want more information from you before giving you the chance to sell them.
What are Franchise Marketing Collateral Pieces?
Most of the time you will not have the benefit of a face-to-face meeting right away. Even if you do, you will need information that can speak for you. The information about your franchise needs to be in a format that can be sent to potential franchisees to review (typically in PDF format). You will need to arm yourself with some good, strong franchise marketing collateral pieces. Your franchise marketing collateral must be easy to understand, informative, compelling, attractive, and actionable. Good franchise marketing collateral pieces should be compelling and covering different topics about your franchise opportunity. So lets talk about what some of the topics might be as you begin put a portfolio of pieces together.
Your franchise marketing collateral should include a brochure and a collection of various talking points (one page flyers) about your franchise program highlighting aspects of your business that will get someone excited about your business. Paint a picture of what operations looks like, who are your customers, what are your different streams of revenue, why your business and franchise program is so unique coupled with why someone needs you. The information you provide on your various franchise marketing collateral pieces should complement whatever information you have on your website. Remember your website is intended to get someone interested in your franchise opportunity, your franchise marketing collateral goes into a bit more detail about your franchise program leveraging your Franchise Disclosure Document for further detail.
What Makes Great Franchise Marketing Collateral
So what does it take to create great franchise marketing collateral? Keeping it simple. Try not to be too fancy. Speak directly to reader and give substance. Don’t be too salesy and whatever you do we encourage you don’t just take what you have on your website and slap it onto a document. Yep that will do the opposite effect and turn people off. If you are giving statistics then you need to cite your source, otherwise it is just opinion. And most important do not make any claims of revenue, profit or how successful they will be if they jump onto your program (all of which is inducement and will get you into trouble). While all of this should not replace getting a good marketing professional to help you create your franchise marketing collateral, there are three fundamentals necessary when developing franchise marketing collateral.
- Provide Useful Information: In franchising, information is key; you must set out to clearly define your franchise opportunity for your prospective franchisee!
- Formatting: Create these pieces so they are easy to read, splashed with color and imagery. And use REAL pictures of your business!
- Design: Whatever format you choose to present your franchise opportunity, make sure the information is “dressed for success” (check out our article for more on essentials of franchise marketing pieces). In the end, franchise marketing collateral may be your only boarding pass for entry into your prospective franchisee’s mind. Be sure to get your ticket and use it wisely! The process of setting up a franchise may venture into new territory for some, but it doesn’t have to be scary if you have a worthy guide.
Take the Time
You have spent months putting your franchise program together. It is important to take the time to put together an arsenal of franchise marketing pieces and put your best foot forward. Remember you only get one time to make a first impression so it is important that you nail it. At The Franchise Maker, we walk with you through every step of the franchise development process and beyond. And yes, we have all the resources and support necessary for each phase of your franchise development. Call us directly at 1-877-615-5177 or contact us and we will be happy to answer your questions.
