There are more than 1,000 franchised brands available in the UK now. Standing out from the crowd isn’t easy, but that won’t be news to you. After all, you will have already made your mark as a business, and been successful enough at distinguishing yourself in a crowded marketplace to go on to franchising in the first place.

However, it’s not uncommon for businesses with even the most savvy of marketing and recruitment teams to struggle to find their first franchisees, or for their recruitment to dry up at some stage during their journey.

If you’re convinced your franchise can achieve so much more than it is already doing, you could keep just piling resources into it, but this can rapidly become a case of diminishing returns. Instead, it might be time to consider a different tack. After all, there is a better way…

How The Franchising Centre can become your franchise growth team

We can help you generate, qualify and convert franchise enquiries into exactly the kind of valuable new franchisees you need to grow your business.

We do this by putting at your disposal one of the most experienced teams in the industry, comprising every possible skillset you could need. From recruitment consultants and development experts, through to content writers, designers, and tech specialists, we already have the right expert to help you achieve your goals, whatever your sector or business model.

They all have a true understanding of how the relationship between franchisors and franchisees should work – which is, in our experience, by far one of the most underestimated and least understood parts of successful franchising.

This team can be your team, in as large or as small as a capacity as you need. Here are just a few of the ways we can help:

Creating the right digital footprint

How do you look online?

Your recruitment website, prospectus, or franchise portal profile are your front line in terms of the impression you give to your prospective franchisees. Unlike other marketing, less isn’t always more when it comes to franchising, as prospects carry out far more research into a franchise than they do with anything else they look at online. After all, they’re thinking about a huge investment and risk – not just in terms of money, but also in terms of their entire future.

If you’ve been doing any advertising, the chances are that many of your prospective franchisees may already be aware of your brand.

Just as your customer facing web presence makes your products and services appealing, so should your franchisee facing content – the big difference now is that you are the product, or at least, your franchise package is. You need to spend at least as much time and effort focusing on what your franchise offers as you do to attract customers.

To achieve this, you need to spend more time on storytelling. Not just your story, but also your future franchisees’ story. You need to explain how your franchise fits into their mission, inspire confidence and trust, and answer the simple question every potential franchisee has: “What’s in it for me?”

We can help. With decades of experience, and a whole specialist team to drawn upon, we can help you create the perfect digital footprint, from your franchise recruitment website, through to your email comms and social media presence.

Schedule a call if you want to find out more.

Generating the right kind of leads

It’s all too easy to think of franchise recruitment as a numbers game. The more leads the better, right?

But what if nothing comes from those leads because they are not the right people for your franchise? Having a database of 1000s of enquiries may look great on the surface of things but, if those leads never go anywhere, they’re only so much dead weight, and a pointless drain on your time and resources.

You can go on emailing and calling them (assuming they even submit their numbers), but you’d be very lucky to achieve even a 20% hit rate. The Franchising Centre deals with around 1000 enquiries every month on behalf of its clients, and 97% of them provide us with a valid mobile number and email address for future comms. We know how and can show you how we achieve engagement with 85% of these enquiries.

By understanding where and when to attract the right kind of leads, we can help you focus on those prospects who are most serious about becoming your future franchisees.

Schedule a call to find out more.

Managing enquires and understanding B2F

You will likely already have your B2C or B2B comms down to a fine art when it comes to selling your core product or service, but dealing with prospective franchisees can be a whole other game. You’re speaking to a very different audience now. For you, they might easily just be another lead number but, for them, this is a life changing decision you’re asking them to make.

We like to think of this kind of communication as B2F (Business to Franchisee), and it’s both a mix of B2B and B2C, and something subtly new, too.

By understanding the whole process, right from creating the right kind of franchise story for your opportunity, through to qualifying prospects and guiding them through all the information they need, we can help you build and manage a pipeline that actually gets results.

Schedule a call to find out more.

Nurturing your leads through to successful recruitment

As we said above, you need to view your franchise leads very differently from the potential customers of your core business. In most marketing, communication is aimed at people willing to make decisions quickly, and this communication generally ceases after 30-45 days from first contact. Customers might stay on your mailing lists, but you will rightly focus most of your energy on the start of the pipeline.

Not so with franchising. Did you know that 30% of franchisees take 12 months or more to go from first contact to signing an agreement?

We have established a unique combination of human experience, Artificial Intelligence, automations, machine learning and technology to create the most sophisticated and proven method of recruiting franchisees in the world. We can not only help keep your franchise top-of-mind with your leads for as long as they need to make a decision, but also monitor their engagement with your brand and help adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

Schedule a call to find out more.

Just some of the brands we have worked with over the last 25+ years

Could our team be your team?

Finding out more…

If you want to find out more about anything discussed in this email, we’re more than happy to have a chat. Likewise, if you think The Franchising Centre might be able to help you and your business, just schedule a call using the button below and I can put you through to one of our advisors.

This will not be a sales call. Just an introductory chat to answer any questions you have and talk about where you are on your franchising journey.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Dugan Aylen

Director and Head of Franchisee Recruitment