In this white paper, we examine real life challenges for franchise marketing, ways to fix them, and our observations of successful traits.

1. Saepio
Learning
Series
8
Franchise
Marketing from
the
Trenches
Traits
Successful
of
Franchise
Marketing
Management

2. 8
Franchise
Marketing from
the
Trenches
Traits
Successful
of
Franchise
Marketing
Management
Introduction
Franchise marketing is challenging. By the nature of the business model, many franchisees
are innovative, involved, small business owners. Others, in master franchise roles, are savvy
business operators with a full marketing team independent of corporate.
While a franchise connection obviously means many more things, a common brand, brand
messaging and brand marketing are critical reasons why an individual business person
would connect to a franchise. Thus, full compliance to franchise marketing guidelines, con-
tent and activities just naturally happens, right?
Maybe not so much.
Franchisees are an interesting lot. They’re fiercely loyal to their franchise brand, yet fiercely
independent. They will most certainly “know more than you,” yet look to you for the knowl-
edge they need. As a marketing team member for the franchisor, yours is most definitely an
interesting challenge.
As we observed the marketing activities of our various franchise clients over the past
decade, Saepio has noted eight common sense traits of successful franchise marketing
management. This short white paper outlines these observations, along with a handful of
anecdotal stories from the trenches. We trust that this document will either reinforce your
already on-target practices or spark an idea or two to help you improve your franchise mar-
keting solution.

3. Trait One
Make it Simple
Franchisees like marketing simplicity. If your corporate marketing resource center is easy to
use and intuitive, they will jump on board.
We observed a franchise struggling to get franchisee participation. The marketing re-
sources center was impressive in the amount of content that was available for use. Lots of
categories, lots of options. Lots of overwhelmingness.
We worked with the franchisor to simplify the organization of the content into nine simple
starting points focused on “what do you want to do?” This focus on simplicity changed
everything and franchisee use of the site grew quickly.
So observation one is make it simple. Put yourself in the shoes of the individual with respon-
sibility for local marketing and design your solution to the time availability and skill sets
they have.
To read more about how Saepio solu-
tions keep it simple and empower local
marketers while controlling brand, read
“Marketing Asset Management Technol-
ogy to Boost Marketing Results.”
http://info.saepio.com/white-
paper--using-mam-technology-
to-boost-marketing-results
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

4. Trait Two
Give Them Choices
Even while the power of the global brand is why they are a franchisee, they still want to be
involved in the choices.
There’s really no single story to tell here. Many franchisors and non-franchisors alike launch
their marketing solutions with limited content choices. The general concern is that the local
marketers aren’t capable of making as good of a selection choice as the corporate market-
er... which may often be correct. But lack of choice can translate into lack of use.
You may not be aware of this, but each of your franchisees is also an art director! Our sec-
ond observation is to let them be just that. Don’t take that participation away. Let them
make product, graphic and even verbiage choices, but do so within a framework. The bot-
tom line is that solutions that offer more choices and involvement typically see more use.
To read more about how Saepio solutions
empower local marketers but help the
corporate marketer control brand, read
the case study, “Sonic Boosts Brand
Consistency, Streamlines Marketing With
Saepio.”
http://info.saepio.
com/sonic-case-study
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

5. Trait Three
Provide Fresh Content or a Fresh Perspective on Content
Marketing resource solutions that provide fresh content or fresh perspectives on content
experience heavier use than sites with dated content ... no mater how good it is.
A franchisor in the auto services sector had a very strong marketing solution with a wide
range of content, lots of choices and flexibility and a very simple user experience. Use by
franchisees, however, was sliding.
A quick survey of franchisees showed that the content was thought to be old and stale. It
was an interesting finding because the content was “timeless,” if you will, and was really
strong and brand promoting. This revealed that the age-old challenge of an organization
seeing its own content frequently and therefore believing it is old and needing refreshed
while the target consumer has not seen the content enough to lock in the brand message
assimilation that repetitive messaging delivers. Thus, content was being viewed as dated or
stale when the target audience perhaps hadn’t even seen it yet.
The franchisor implemented a new process to
systemically add new content and refresh how
the existing content was used and franchisee
participation grew.
Observation three thus is keep content in your
marketing solution fresh but refresh how your
franchisees view legacy content so they view it
as fresh content as well.
To read more about how Saepio solutions
help to keep content fresh, read “Using
Marketing Asset Management to Keep
Content Fresh.”
http://info.saepio.com/market-
ing-asset-management--keep-
content-fresh
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

6. Trait Four
Make it Easy
Simple and easy are different. Easy is about minimizing the amount of tasks and time re-
quired to execute a campaign or even place a single ad.
A couple of good illustrations from the trenches come to mind here. The first was a retail
franchise chain with a lot of SKUs. The franchisees were finding shopper flier creation chal-
lenging because it involved navigating through category folders to get to the right product
image. When the franchisor marketing team surveyed the franchisees, it quickly learned
that everyone knew products by their SKU. Problem solved. A quick reorganization of the
marketing resource site enabled the franchisee to simply enter the SKU of the product they
wanted featured and then to select from among images associated with that SKU.
The second case example is also from retail. In this case, the local marketers wanted to still
put the finishing touches on ad content but they also wanted a more complete starting
point. The franchisor responded by creating a workflow step wherein a regional manager
used the marketing platform to version an ad template with suggested content and then
shared that template to the local marketers to add their finishing touches.
The point of Observation 4 is to look for every opportunity to make your solution easy to
use. Look for ways to parallel natural workflow within your organization. Additionally, look
for ways to automate processes. While not in the stories above, simple things like only one
credit card transaction being required for a
multi-supplier fulfilled campaign can go a
long ways towards gaining involvement and
compliance.
To read more about how Saepio solu-
tions empower local marketers, but help
the corporate marketer control brand,
read “Automating Marketing Localiza-
tion.”
http://info.saepio.com/
automating-marketing-
localization
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

7. Trait Five
Connect the Dots
Guide the franchisee through the connected pieces of a campaign. Help them put the
various pieces together such as ordering a window sign when they plan an EDDM or email
campaign.
Many franchisors organize and launch solutions around categories of ads – emails, print ads,
direct mailers, signage, etc. While this works, several franchisors have found that walking
franchisees through a step-by-step process leads to more integrated campaigns.
One franchisee in particular improved multi-channel campaign use by simply collecting the
different pieces of a campaign in a single storefront view. Others have taken a more ad-
vanced approach of integrating workflows.
Observation 5 then is to tell your franchisees exactly what you want them to do by organiz-
ing your marketing storefront as a step-by-step task sequence.
To read more about how we organize the
storefronts’ step-by-step task sequence,
read “Marketing Store Front: Connect
Multi-Channel Marketing Processes,
Streamline Marketing Fulfillment.”
http://info.saepio.com/mam-
marketing-store-front
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

8. Trait Six
Share Success
The franchisees talk amongst themselves re: what works and what doesn’t. Help them by
putting that information in your marketing solution and becoming part of the conversation.
Franchisors know that franchisees talk amongst themselves outside of the corporate frame-
work. One franchisor in the auto services space chose to engage in these conversations by
capturing and sharing success stories.
An easy way to share these helpful hints is to use the marketing center email and/or land-
ing page platform to send out the success stories. Plus, you can point back to the specific
campaign collections or individual templates that are referenced in the success stories.
We like to share success too. See how
four national brands succeeded by using
Saepio technology to power brand con-
trol and local marketing.
http://info.saepio.com/how-
four-national-brands-control-
brand-and-empower-local-mar-
keters
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

9. Trait Seven
Make it Free / Share the Costs
If they have to pay, they won’t play.
We’ve watched all types of strategies through the years regarding who has to pay for what.
What we can observe definitively is that FREE is a powerful word.
When access to the solution is free, use of the solution is strong. One franchisor in the hos-
pitality space learned this the hard way. This franchisor associated a cost with each media
output. The price set was just a pittance of what the franchisee would have had to pay to an
agency to create a local version of the ad. The content was good and the process was easy.
Yet no one was buying.
During an annual survey process, the franchisees spoke loud and clear – it wasn’t the low
cost that bothered them but rather the fact that they were being asked to pay. The franchi-
sor responded by making the solution free and utilization immediately soared.
Other franchisors have found success in offering to share campaign expenses, as well. What-
ever your approach, make sure it is understood and accepted by your franchisees because
our Observation 7 is that if they have to pay, they typically don’t play.
To learn more about a shared platform, request a demo today. It’s free too!
http://info.saepio.com/demo-request
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

10. Trait Eight
Communicate Frequently
All of the observations above pale in importance to the value of communicating frequently
and effectively.
Like with many of our observations, there are many stories we could tell about the im-
portance of communicating frequently. When we notice utilization of a marketing center
starting to slide, we immediately look to see if there’s been a drop off in the communication
from corporate marketing to franchisees. Usually there is.
Our recommendation is that you communicate both on a systematic schedule, where you
highlight and direct franchisees to specific, featured content, and on a special events basis
where you draw attention to a specific action you want them to take.
The speaking part, however, is not the most important part of communicating frequently.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, woven throughout this list of observations is multiple refer-
ences to a survey of the franchisees. Our observation would be that these surveys too often
happen in response to a problem. Really successful sites typically have some process for
gathering ongoing feedback and input from the franchisee community.
One way our marketers communicate is through
campaign calendars and to do lists. To read more
about this functionality, check out “Campaign Cal-
endar and To Do List Keeps Distributed Marketers
on Schedule.
http://info.saepio.com/mam-
campaign-calender-and-to-do-
functionality
Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management

11. About Saepio
Saepio makes it easy for corporate and local marketers to build and run effective and en-
gaging all-channel marketing campaigns. Saepio’s powerful MarketPort marketing platform
starts with easy …
• Easy to Build and Run Cross-Channel Campaigns because everything – email, land-
ing pages, social, mobile, digital banner ads, signage, print ads, direct mail, and much
more – are all managed in a single, integrated digital marketing platform.
• Easy to Maximize Brand Value at the Local Level because local and corporate mar-
keters share a single platform but experience the same platform differently based on
their roles. Brand control, speed to market, and content localization is all easily accom-
plished whether messages are for local, national or global audiences and corporate
marketers can easily assign campaign tasks to local marketers.
• Easy to Engage Customers with personalized, relevant messages because corporate
intelligence gleaned from CRM data, customer analytics, consumer actions and more
can determine what content is served when, where and how.
• Easy to Automate Marketing Fulfillment because robust workflow enables every
cross channel customer touch point to happen automatically whether launched by
corporate marketing, initiated by a local marketer or triggered by a customer’s action.
This robust yet simplified approach to today’s complex marketing challenges is in use at
hundreds of leading companies and organizations, including many of the world’s most
powerful brands. It is transforming the way corporations focus and manage their marketing
efforts in a world that introduces new channels, new competitors, new regulations and new
opportunities at every turn.
Visit Saepio.com, email sales@saepio.com or call 877-468-7613 to learn more.
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Franchise Marketing from the Trenches
8 Traits of Successful Franchise Marketing Management