Franchise marketing isn’t just about following corporate’s plan—it’s about standing out in your local market. Whether you’re battling competition, struggling with engagement, or just looking for fresh ideas, this episode is for you. Today, we’re talking about the most innovative marketing strategies for franchise brands, from hyper-local tactics to digital breakthroughs that can drive serious results.
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Marketing a franchise comes with some unique hurdles that can make it tough to stand out. Here’s what franchise owners struggle with:
Imagine this: Your franchise location is the talk of the town. People know your brand, engage with your content, and your sales are climbing. Here’s what happens when you market smart:
Marketing success isn’t about luck—it’s about following key principles that work across industries:
Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive—it just has to be smart. Here are some innovative ways to market your franchise:
You’re ready to take your franchise marketing to the next level! Here’s your action plan:
So I have a question. How are small business owners like us who are spending sixty plus hours a week working in our businesses and are still struggling to make ends meet? We have no time to spend with family, friends, or the things we value most in life. We feel trapped inside of our businesses, and it is consuming our lives. How do we get the freedom to be able to work on our businesses and not in them?
That is the question this podcast will give you the answer. My name is John Nichols, and this is Expansion Code Radio. What's up, everyone? Welcome to today's podcast. Let's talk about something every franchise owner needs, killer marketing strategies.
Sure. Your franchise provides some marketing, but if you wanna dominate your market, you'll need to get creative. The good news, I've got some powerful out of the box marketing ideas that can help you drive more customers to your doors and build a thriving brand. Let's dive in today. Marketing a franchise comes with some unique hurdles that can make it tough to stand out.
Here's what franchise owners struggle with. Number one, corporate marketing isn't always local friendly. National campaigns are great, but they don't always connect with our local customers. Number two, limited marketing control. Many franchise feel restricted by corporate guidelines, making it hard to get creative.
Number three, competition is fierce. We're not just competing with other businesses. You're also competing with other franchise locations in your area. And number four, marketing budgets can be tight. Many franchise owners have limited funds for local marketing, making it tough to reach new customers.
And in saying all of that, I really wanna touch base with one of these main core topics of talking about a top budget. And you can get really creative in this. And what I mean by that is that a lot of the time in our UPS stores, we focus a lot on in store marketing. And in store marketing doesn't cost a ton a ton of money, but what you can do is print out, at least for me in my in my stores, we print. So I can print out bounce backs in our locations to hand out to our customers.
And then it all goes back to doing that customer engagement using that bounce back as a tool to create much more content conversations about what we're marketing or what we're trying to promote for that month. And it's really important that you do in store marketing. In fact, I tell any brand new franchise owner, yeah, you need to do some out, you know, out of the store marketing, outside marketing, but you really need to focus on your in store marketing because your franchise is gonna drive a lot of people into your locations. And everybody that comes in is basically doesn't cost you much of anything to get into the door. Your franchise brand will normally bring people directly to you, and because of that, you need to take advantage of that.
And so in store marketing is one of the best ways to do that. Here's the good news, you don't need a massive budget or complete freedom from your corporate to crush your local marketing game. Let's talk about what's possible when you take control of your own marketing. Imagine this guys, your franchise location is the talk of the town. People know your brand, engage with your content, and your sales are climbing.
Here's what's happening when you market smart. Number one, a stronger local brand recognition. Customers recognize and choose your location over competitors. Number two, more customer loyalty and engagement. Creative marketing builds strong relationships with your audience.
Keep them coming back. Number three, increase foot traffic and sales. The right strategies bring new customers through your doors consistently. And number four, a competitive edge. Even if you're part of a national brand, unique marketing makes your franchise the go to spot in your area.
And let's talk a little bit about about some of these. Increase foot traffic and sales. Now, for me, my location, I am a destination. I did not get very much foot traffic at all. But what I do do as far as marketing goes is that I use an a frame sign in front of my store.
And what this does is that it helps with my in store marketing. Even though an a frame sign is what I consider a a outside marketing tool, it still connects so closely connected to my location, to my entrance of my location that it works really well. An a frame signs are pretty cheap. You can get an a frame sign for two to three hundred dollars, and then you can have your local printer, print out the print out the, signs for you. The signs are normally, 24 by 36 inch, on Thoroplast.
You can change out change out your signs monthly, every other month. We normally go sixty days before we change them out. I figured out that my in store marketing, it takes around sixty days to really saturate whatever products or services that I'm trying to promote. Then after sixty days, we switch them up. So every six months or it takes six months, we have six different products, over a year, products or services over a year, and we normally do it for sixty days.
And I can tell you right now, this really has increased the people coming into our locations. The foot traffic stuff, what happens is is that the a frame is double sided, so when they come in, they see the a frame sign. When they leave, they see the a frame sign, and they get consistent messaging as they come in and out through my location. And it's a great way to really get people's attention an a frame sign is. Alright.
So now that you, can make this happen, it all starts with some key marketing principles every franchise owners should follow. Marketing success isn't about luck, folks. It's about following key principles that work across all industries. Number one, know your local audience. Corporate marketing is broad, but you'll need to understand what specific customers want.
Number two, consistency is key. A one time marketing effort won't cut it. Build a marketing strategy that keeps your brand visible. Number four. Overpromotion.
Customers don't wanna be sold all the time. They want value entertainment and connection. And number four, tracking and measure everything. If you're not tracking your results, you're guessing. Use data to refine and improve your marketing efforts.
And I really wanna talk about engagement over promotion. This is one of the big things that we do in our centers. So part of some of our marketing and what we do is that we normally send out a newsletter or some sort of email marketing twice a month. The first email that we send out, we're trying to educate our customer about our products and services. This is a really great way to get some customer engagement.
Always put in some funny stories, make it more humorous than anything, and people would normally really engage with email marketing that way. And then our second one we send out is normally what we're promoting for that month. So let's say, we're promoting shredding. So we'll talk about shredding, how important shredding is. And then our next one will have some sort of discount on it.
So it's like 50% off on shredding. And as long as you stay consistent on when you do things, like, we normally promote shredding the month of February, and March. And what's really interesting is is people really wait for those coupons to come out, for those promotions to come out, and then they'll keep them because I don't end that promotion until the I don't end that promotion until December 31 of the year. And people will hold on to the bounce back coupons and whenever they need it, they'll bring that bounce back in. It has that discount coupon on it, and then they'll use it.
And so it's really important that you stay consistent, and we do it at the same time every year. And people look forward to this because they won't do shredding until they have that coupon. And it's really kind of interesting how my customers or how we have trained our customers on different types of marketing that we do. And it's really important that once again, you stay consistent on what you're doing. Consistency is key on all of this.
Like I said, we're consistent every year on when we do this particular marketing strategy. Now that we have the principles down, let's talk about some innovative marketing strategies that can make your franchise go to the next level. Marketing doesn't have to be expensive. It just has to be smart. Here are some innovative ways to market your franchise.
Number one, hyper local social media marketing. Go beyond corporate post. Create content about your local area, highlight customers, and engage with community groups. Number two, leverage user generated content. Encourage customers to share their experiences on social media.
Feature their post. Build a loyal community. Number three. Host local events and collaborations. Partner with nearby businesses, schools, influencers to create in person events that draw crowds.
Number four. Invest in local SEO and Google and my Google business. Optimize online presence so that when people search for your products and services, your franchise location appears first. And I'll say this, the UPS Store does a really great job of marketing us and doing SEO and pushing us to the top of the page. I'm gonna give them really great, kudos on that.
But I wanna talk about, number three, hosting local events and collaborations. So we use our Chamber of Commerce, and our Chamber of Commerce normally once a month, they normally focus or highlight a business, and they do it like an after hours event. And we've done these things a lot, and what we do is that you get the local Chamber of Commerce involved, and then you host that event after you close your location. And what happens is it brings all the other business owners in. And for me, small business owners are my ideal customer.
Right? They they are my customer avatar. And so whenever I target this and do these events to really get other small business owners to come into my locations, it turns into a great networking event, and we normally get, a business boost out of this. We normally get sales out of this too. But what you're doing is that you're just creating more of a community vibe in your locations.
And it's really important that you do community events. It's really important that you talk to non profits in your area and sponsor some of these things. It's really important that you do go to any type of business networking events that are going on. These really make a big difference in what you're doing. And, another thing that you can do is that you can collaborate with other businesses and actually do a trade off on advertising.
So, we did some advertising with a dry cleaners in our in our area, and what happened was is that they would hand out my coupons and I would hand out their coupons. And it's it's pretty simple, pretty easy. And when you they are able to promote us and we're able to promote them, it's a really a win win. And you can also go in together on the printing of these things and put your information and their information both on there. And so what you're doing is that they are handing out information or a bounce back that has the dry cleaners information on it and then has the UPS store information on it, and I'm doing the same thing.
So what's happening is is that I'm reaching twice as many customers as I normally would. So really think about trying to find some collaborations with some local other businesses that isn't necessarily in the same industry as what you are so that you can piggyback on their customer base. It's a really great thing. You really need to check it out. These strategies are powerful, but the magic happens when you take action.
Let's break it down into easy follow action plan. You're ready to take the franchise marketing to the next level? Here's your action plan. Number one, audit your current marketing efforts. Identify what works and what's not working, where you can improve.
Number two, choose one marketing strategy to implement this month. Start small. Pick one strategy, social media, events, SEO, and execute it well. Number three, track and adjust. Set key performance indicators and measure results to see what's driving the best returns in your business.
And number four, create a marketing calendar. Plan to promote your your content and your events in advance. Stay consistent and be organized. These things are really crucial folks. In saying all this, we normally have a social media, marketing calendar.
In corporate, the UPS store has one too. And what we normally do is that we try to put some of our social media stuff around their marketing campaign, but we also, do some social media promoting whatever, services or products we are promoting for this, sixty day time period. And it's really highly important that you kinda look at their calendar too. And if they're promoting, like, mailboxes, you probably wanna promote mailboxes around the same time because you're gonna get some national advertising around that. And it doesn't really hurt whenever you do or whenever you do your promotions.
And if you're able to get some extra exposure through corporate, it's really great to do that. And so, I highly recommend looking at whatever your corporate social media calendar is and kind of plan your stuff a year in advance around that particular calendar. And, also, I wanna talk about, you know, choose a strategy and don't implement something immediately. If you're not doing social media, start doing social media. Social media is such a big part of what we do at our UPS stores.
It creates, customer engagement. We also have joined local groups of people, and then we just post stuff in there to try to help people out. The big thing about groups, especially in Facebook groups, is this, is that you wanna join a group and you want to give information. You're not trying to sell stuff in there. You're trying to help the people in the group.
And so you need to promote things that will help other folks, and people will then naturally be gravitated to your location. It's a really strong strategy, and it's really easy to promote. And we're we're all the time scrolling on our social media all I mean, every day. So you might as well get in there and get into a Facebook group and really start kind of talking about things that you can do to help people inside of this. If people know who you are, then they will definitely recommend you for other things.
And then, the last thing I kinda wanna talk about which is kind of marketing, kind of not, but it is more community things, is join a civic organization like the wine's club or rotary, something like this. And what you're trying to do is just give back to your community. And this is a promotion. This is a way of marketing your business. You're giving back first, but you are still representing you are you are still representing you are still a representative of your business in these civic organizations, and it's really important that you do these.
Because giving back to your community, either in a civic organization or, pairing up with some sort of nonprofit in your local area will really make a big difference. And if you're able to tie yourself with a local nonprofit, it makes a big deal. It makes you stand out in your community, and you have to be active and consistent in doing this. It is such a big deal, folks. Because if you are not active in doing this, and you just do it like once a year or whatever, then people would just associate you as a part time person trying to do something for the community or you're just doing it just for financial gains.
And we don't want that to be a stigma associated with our business. And so, it's just highly important that you really get out there and start looking at what is local, what is community, and try to really get engaged. Marketing doesn't have to be complicated or expensive folks. It just has to be intentional. By thinking outside the box, taking control of your local marketing, you can drive more customers, increase loyalty, and grow your franchise like never before.
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, subscribe and share it with another franchise owner who needs fresh marketing ideas. If you like this podcast, then check out my newsletter called expansion press. You can get great business content delivered directly to your inbox. Just go to expansionpress.com.
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