Three Steps To Ensure You Send The Right Message To Franchisees And Consumers

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During a phone consultation today with a franchisor — to prepare for a marketing and management workshop that I’ll conduct at the franchisor’s convention in a couple of months — we focused on a critical marketing challenge: building business around the buyer’s needs, rather than the organization’s.

This is a challenge that trips up large numbers of marketers — we are all marketers, of course, if we’re building businesses.

This particular franchisor — one of the most enthusiastic in existence today, with an outstanding service in an expanding market — told me about their marketing strategy, which includes discounting as a ploy to attract retail customers.

But does it get the job done?

It’s a viable plan, a strategy used by countless other marketers — proven to work because it broadcasts extra value. And it was left to me to burst their bubble by asking: But does that strategy attract the right customer for your business? . . . And does it keep the right customer coming back time after time?

There’s the trip up for most marketers — because they don’t clearly understand the psycho-demographic profile of the right customer for their business, they make an offer that attracts any and every customer. In other words, the wrong customer.

This franchisor, like so many, wants to attract a consumer who has a household income of at least six figures. But will that customer be enticed by a discounted offer? Or will that customer think, “Gee, if that’s all it costs, it can’t be good enough for me.” Consequently the desired customer goes elsewhere and — sorry about this — spends more money! Ouch.

That’s why your franchisees aren’t happy

Similarly, franchisors send the wrong message when they attract franchisees — and that’s far worse, by the way, then attracting the wrong consumer as a customer. You can get rid of customers overnight without penalty — but franchisees? Not so fast. They come with rights backed up by courts. They sign franchise agreements that may extend for five, ten or more years! You can’t get rid of them overnight, as much as you may want to.

Make no mistake about this one: Selling a franchise to the wrong franchisee is worse than a franchisee attracting the wrong clientele.

And franchisors make that mistake all the time! The message they send to prospective franchisees implies a different business than the one the franchisor actually expects the franchisee to build. And when the franchisee doesn’t build the expected business, neither the franchisor nor the franchisee succeed, long-term.

Tuned In Says

“Without a focus on the buyer, marketers build programs around what the organization wants to say rather than what the buyer needs to hear,” say the authors of Tuned In, a book that every marketer should read.

“The difference between these two approaches (the latter tuned in, the former tuned out),” continue the authors, “is tremendous, and it’s the difference between success and failure for many organizations. Successful companies focus on buyers and the best ways to reach them, and they develop compelling content and programs accordingly.”

Perfectly said (and I wish I had written that book!).

Here’s what to do now

So what now? If you’ve been sending the wrong message, or you’re not sure if your marketing strategy attracts the right franchisees or customers, what do you do now? Three critical steps:

Create a psycho-demographic profile of your customer or franchisee. Who’s your ideal candidate? Identify the prospect by gender, age, marital status, household composition, religion, race, occupation, income, property value, types and numbers of vehicles, shopping habits, political outlook, etc. You can’t be too specific! And you need to be very specific — for example, the key to the right cusomter may be their computer habits, or their charitable inclinations, or how often they travel by plane every year. Find out what matters — then line up the data.
Test your assumptions about your ideal customer base. Use blind studies, surveys and focus groups. Very often I’ve seen franchisors surprised when they read the results of a professionally-implemented focus group. “We had no idea that mattered to franchisees,” or “to the retail buyer,” they say. . . I say: Duh! Why not? Franchisees and customers expect you to possess this intelligence.
Test your marketing implementation. A franchisee has a right to expect their franchisor to have tested their marketing activities, knowing that those activities produce the right customers. How often are franchisees surprised in this respect? (I won’t offer an answer!). Of course, if the marketing plan doesn’t attract the right customer, the franchisor selects the wrong franchisee, and the franchisee selects the wrong customers. And yes, “select” is the right word — no one forces a franchisor to sign a franchise agreement, and no one forces a franchisee to accept a particular customer. Hit and miss doesn’t work in business, but it’s at work almost everywhere we look today!

In these challenging economic times, it’s critically important to identify the right customers (and franchisees) and then strategically go about capturing them for your business. Put these three steps to work in your business and you’ll build a more satisfying and profitable business!