Using Your Four Walls to Educate Buyers About Your Franchise Opportunity

In franchise development, brands should always look under rocks and for pathways of least resistance – why? Franchising is freaking hard.

You are trying to convince someone to invest their life’s savings, perhaps quit a job, take a leap, and own a brand where they really don’t have control. Tough, right?

Look at your store or mobile truck. What story does it tell? Does it introduce the opportunity to be an owner/operator? Does it help you showcase the fact that someone has bought in?

Most brands simply rely on “franchising” or “franchises available”, yet, many people don’t even know what that means. This creates an opportunity to leverage your franchise owners, their stories, and your brand’s buzz/press to create additional interest in your opportunity.

How to Tell Your Franchise’s Story Through Your Four Walls

When a client, customer or potential franchisee walks into one of your existing franchisee’s units, what do you want them to see first? What do you want them to hear? How do you want them to feel? Have you educated them that this is an owner-operated business? All of these questions directly relate to your marketing.

Four-walls marketing is fairly simple conceptually, especially when it comes to franchise development. It’s because it’s simply about letting the people who interact with your business know that the franchise opportunity exists. And you have so many ways to do just that. Your candidates interact with you in countless ways, from the signs on the wall to the receipt they take home with them, to the email they receive about your next big sale. Each is an opportunity to educate them on the franchise opportunities with your brand.

And it’s not just brick-and-mortar franchises that use a four walls approach to marketing. Service brands have ample opportunities to let their best customers know that they can have a deeper connection with the brand as an owner. Think of the wrap text on a van, a printed invoice or even a leave-behind pamphlet about franchise opportunities in strategic markets.

Each touchpoint between your brand and a potential franchisee opportunity to tell your franchise development story. Ask yourself what kind of owners are you looking for, what makes your brand stand out from the crowd and why do so many people in their community turn to the franchise as a path to business ownership?

Once you start connecting the markets that you want to get the greatest amount of scale in, you can start looking at your four walls a little bit differently and introduce franchising in a productive way.

Checklist:

• Determine what you want people to see within your four walls.

• Tell that story with each touchpoint between your brand and potential candidates.

• Introduce franchising into your four walls.