What if putting your franchise on the map was easier than you ever imagined?
Part of the joy of opening a franchise is that you have a pre-established brand rather than having to build one up from scratch. However, you must still compete with other businesses in your local area. If you don’t take your branding game to the next level, it won’t be long before your business loses out to the competition.
However, the opposite also holds true: By focusing on branding, you can leave the competition in the dust. Ready to rev those engines? Keep reading to discover important branding secrets to help your franchise succeed.
1. Constantly Communicate Benefits
It’s an open secret that branding is all about communication. However, do you know the single most important message you need to communicate? Simple: the benefits your business has to offer.
That doesn’t mean just advertising everything your business does. Instead, focus on the unique benefits you are providing to the customer. One interesting example is Buc-ee’s, a southeastern chain of country stores and gas stations. The clean and roomy bathrooms are proudly proclaimed on frequent billboards along the interstate. That may sound simple, but this convenience became something the store is famous for with travelers and locals alike.
Ultimately, you need to determine the biggest benefits your business provides to customers and hammer that message home in your own creative branding.
2. Build a Recognizable Brand
It’s critical for you to have a recognizable brand, and there are many different ways of doing so. For example, it’s important to have a creative and eye-catching logo. While it’s easier said than done, you want to come up with a design and color combination that stands out and will look just as good on T-shirts and billboards as it does inside and outside your store.
Slogans are also very important. At this point, who isn’t familiar with Nike’s “just do it” or McDonald’s “I’m loving it” jingle? In addition to being memorable, a catchy slogan is one that others will frequently repeat, turning them into brand ambassadors for your business.
Speaking of jingles, it may be worth hiring local talent to create something catchy for your own commercials. Once you put everything together, you’ll have a brand that can be recognized in several crucial ways.
3. Balance Digital and Traditional Marketing
Digital marketing is very important to franchisees and all small business owners. Because you can do so much with social media and investing in digital ad space through Google and other companies, savvy digital marketing helps smaller businesses compete with much larger ones.
However, if you want your business to be as successful as possible, you need to balance both digital and traditional marketing. For example, many of your customers will be local, so you’ll need to fill out your Google business profile so they can easily find you. While television ads are very pricy, it may be worth taking out local newspaper and radio ads to reach certain (typically older) demographics.
Don’t underestimate the importance of good billboard marketing. With the right location, you can have a captive audience of commuters each week!
4. Interior Decor Is Important
When building a brand, it’s easy to focus on everything outside of the franchise itself, including catchy jingles and giant billboards. However, your ultimate goal is to get customers to walk into your business. Unless you want them to turn around as soon as they walk in, it’s important to make sure the interior of your store is a positive reflection of your growing brand.
For example, your store interior needs to use your recognizable logo, colors, slogans, etc. At the bare minimum, this ensures a kind of brand consistency because customers walking in will recognize everything from your previous marketing efforts.
Beyond that, you’ll want to make sure your layout, shelving, furniture, and everything else are consistent with style guidelines. There is always room for creativity, but you also want to make sure customers have a consistent experience across multiple locations.
5. Online Brand Management
Digital marketing can be a real double-edged sword for your branding efforts. As we noted before, savvy online marketing can help you compete with much larger businesses. But a good marketing campaign is not enough — you also need to continue to manage your brand online in dynamic ways.
One way to do so is to hire (or outsource) a dedicated social media manager. Such a person can coordinate your marketing efforts across popular social media platforms while also fielding questions and concerns from your customers. Actively managing your online presence like this can really boost your brand, and younger demographics will appreciate the ability to send your business a direct message rather than having to pick up the phone to call your company.
6. Create a Style Guide
If you’re reading this, chances are you want to improve your franchise’s branding. But once you have the perfect guidelines created, what comes next? Simple: Write them down!
It’s important for your business to have a style guide that helps employees with everything from marketing to basic customer service. This helps you maintain a consistent brand voice across everything from advertisements to social media posts. The style guide might go so far as to outline the preferred vocabulary used to describe your goods and services and more technical details about best practices for search engine optimization.
Build a Successful Franchise Brand Today!
Now you know the best branding secrets to make your franchise a success. But do you know who can help you open a very successful franchise?
Here at Confie, we are always ready to work with entrepreneurs with a clear vision of the future. To discover what we can do for each other, contact us today with this online form. Otherwise, you’re always welcome to call us at 714-252-2500. Entrepreneurs like you are the future, and when the future calls, we’re always ready to pick up the phone!
