One initiative within your overall franchise development plan likely includes a digital campaign to generate leads. Your lead magnet – the downloadable content, online quiz, audit, etc. that users provide their information in exchange for – is a key part of this plan. When it comes to leads, quality always trumps quantity. Generating qualified leads is imperative for your franchise development team’s success. Consider these six tips when implementing magnets into your franchise lead generation strategies.

Single out each persona

Persona development is marketing at its core. Who is your target audience? If you have more than one that’s fine, but pick one — and only one — target for each piece. You can’t easily talk to second-career educators and entrepreneurial millennials in the same magnet.

Consider the format they use

Lead magnets take many forms. Is your target market more likely to take a quiz or download a guide? There are a multitude of options when it comes to lead magnets — tutorials, checklists, infographics, etc. Choose the format that is most likely to attract your target audience.

Make sure your content solves a problem

The primary message in your magnet needs to solve a problem for a potential lead. In franchise development, that might be providing steps to help a person become their own boss or offering a content in the form of a guide on how to gain financial independence by becoming a franchisee with your business. Most users know that if they provide their email address, they will be remarketed to. The more valuable the lead magnet content, the more likely they are to engage and eventually buy from you.

Call to action

The potential franchisee has given you their contact information in exchange for the valuable, free content. Your franchise development team can cultivate leads through remarketing and sales calls, but what do you want the reader/user to do after they have read or viewed your lead magnet? Whether it’s an invitation to request a consultation, a reminder to visit the website for more information or an offer to sign up for a webinar, always include a call to action at the end of any magnet. Also, consider where the lead magnet falls in the sales funnel. If these are top-of-funnel audiences, a “how-to” or “best-tips” guide is probably best because that audience is merely exploring and gathering information. If this is an audience that has already downloaded your magnet or engaged with your company before, a free audit might work better.

Evergreen

It’s always good to provide content that is timely and relevant, but consider creating pieces with a little more staying power. While articles, blogs and social media post calendars range from monthly to hourly, lead magnets can be produced every few months, and only need to be changed when data or offerings change or conversions drop. They can be a big investment, but at least they don’t need to be created every month.

Complete A/B testing

In a matter of seconds, consumers will decide whether to click on your ad or link for your lead magnet. Readers will base their decisions to click on both the visual layout of the ad and the title of the magnet. Run an A/B test to see which ad or link title has the highest conversion rate.

Lead magnets are important pieces of your digital franchise development campaigns. Use these franchise lead generation strategies to develop magnets that convert, and then coordinate with optimized ads, landing pages and follow-up emails to complete the franchise development campaign.

Looking for strong franchisee candidates? If you want someone with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, who is tech-savvy, enjoys collaboration and desires a proven business model, your perfect candidate is a millennial. So let’s dive into hot to become one of the most popular franchises for millennials.

Millennial Franchisee Potential

You literally have millions to choose from. The millennial generation comprises 83 million people, ages 18 to 34. Millennials make up the largest American generation, exceeding baby boomers, who number 75.4 million. The best news for franchises is that nearly three-fourths of millennials want to own their own businesses.

Entrepreneurship Trend Within Their Generation

Entrepreneurship is extremely popular right now, especially among millennials. And although it may be easier than ever to start your own business, it is difficult to be successful without a solid business plan, adequate funding and support. That’s where franchises have an edge in attracting millennials. With infrastructure, branding, HR assistance, a network of franchisees and possibly financing help in place, millennial franchisees can launch their own businesses much more quickly than if they were starting from scratch, and they can be set up to succeed.

What Makes Millennials Ideal

3 Millennial strengths that make them attractive franchisee candidates:

1. They are more interested in working for themselves than in traditional corporate settings, but they do not have a lot of experience. They will appreciate that franchises offer the benefits of owning their own business with the security of built-in structure.
2. They are extremely comfortable with technology and especially social media, a big plus when starting to promote a new business.
3. They are comfortable asking for help and actively seek out mentors, which would make franchise networks a natural fit.

How to Reach Potential Millennial Franchisees

To target millennials for franchise development, you should increase brand awareness efforts and advertise opportunities on multiple platforms.

Brand Yourself For the Millennial

Strong branding is key. Millennials value brand engagement and authenticity, so be sure that your franchise is relevant, transparent and engaging on social media and elsewhere. Millennials most certainly will check out your brand on multiple platforms before deciding to explore franchising opportunities.

Market Yourself for the Millennial

Likewise, you are more likely to reach millennials through digital marketing as well as franchise brokers and public relations. Digital platforms allow you to hyper target by demographic so you can tailor messaging to that group.

Adjust Your Messaging

Lastly, if you want to become one of the most popular franchises for millennials, adjust your messaging. Your messaging should be consistent and stress that franchising offers the freedom of owning your own business with a support system that can make launching a business quicker and simpler. Because millennials are younger than typical franchisees, you also may want to talk about your relationship with franchise-specific lenders who can help young business owners secure financing. Emphasize how entrepreneurial ventures, and franchising specifically, enable work-life balance and a flexible schedule, two highly desirable concepts among this demographic.

In Conclusion

This is a prime time to market your franchise to millennials. As this huge generation of American workers begins to flood the work force and embark on their careers, show them how they can be successful and achieve their goals with your company. In doing so, you can grow your franchise’s next generation of entrepreneurs.

At this year’s Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference, the conversations among franchisors repeatedly turned to a huge opportunity: How can franchisors cultivate supportive franchisor franchisee relationship?

Building a strong relationship is an important goal. Franchisees with strong franchisor connections do better locally, which helps the brand as a whole. But what are the smartest strategies for growing productive, lasting and trusting partnerships between franchisors and franchisees?

Start with these three steps to build a franchisor franchisee relationship:

1. Foster a common culture
2. Communicate effective and sincerely
3. Lead with focus

Foster a common culture.

Every business has a specific culture that’s based around its overarching principles, ethics and values. Franchisors should ensure that franchisees not only understand that culture, but also buy into it completely. Each franchisee will be responsible, after all, for introducing new employees to that culture, so the franchisee must thoroughly embrace and represent it.

Spreading a brand’s message through training and internal transparency is key. From that point, franchisors can provide franchisees with informative and motivational content, such as videos or franchisee testimonials, to help them share the culture with their employees.

Over time, trust and loyalty will strengthen; franchisees will become more deeply invested in the brand, and franchisees will begin to promote the brand’s narrative. Although customers might not consciously recognize this link, they will experience greater consistency and positivity from it. What better way to ensure repeat business and a constant flow of referrals than consumers who are excited by a good experience

Communicate effectively and sincerely.

Franchisors must view themselves and the franchisees as one team — think “we” instead of “us and them” — and the best way to build that mindset is through open communication. Regardless of how geographically distant a franchisee might be from the franchisor, the franchisor must institute channels where seamless ongoing dialogue takes place.

The franchisor must initiate communication if it is to flow naturally between the two. For instance, the franchisor might want to set up weekly calls at the start of the relationship. Subsequent emails, newsletters, conferences and content avenues will bond franchisors and franchisees together, leaving franchisees feeling “in the know” every step of the way.

Of course, conversations are not one-way streets; franchisees must be comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns with franchisors, who must then act on the information they receive. Franchisees provide valuable on-the-ground viewpoints that franchises need to successfully grow and scale.

Lead with focus.

If franchisors can demonstrate exceptional leadership principles, franchisees will be more engaged in their roles. Talented leaders hold people accountable, but they also help people spread their wings. Thus, franchisors must walk a fine line between providing guidance and accepting honest feedback.

This requires tremendous focus as well as a willingness to be innovative and responsive. That focus may be shared with franchisees through consistency and strength at the top. Both franchisors and franchisees should have clear, attainable goals to work toward, and each one’s progress toward those goals should be transparent.

Ideally, franchisees and franchisors can work together to boost their brand. The closer their relationship, the better chance they have of building wealth, community and customer loyalty.

Taziki’s Mediterranean Café is quickly becoming a well-known restaurant chain. The casual eatery has 63 locations in 15 states in the Southeast and Midwest. The restaurant’s story often begins with Keith Richards’ trip to Greece with his wife, Amy, where they say they fell in love with the food and culture. SO let’s take a dive into how to become a household name and how how they did it.

While it’s true that the Greek vacation served as an inspiration for the restaurant’s menu, the work necessary to operate a successful restaurant began decades before that, when 18-year-old Richards first entered the restaurant business. He went on to work in various restaurants before landing at Bottega, the restaurant of the James Beard Award-winning chef Frank Stitt, in 1988. Ten years later, Richards purchased a closed hot dog joint and transformed it into the first Taziki’s Mediterranean Café.

Richards’ business was clearly built on hard work and passion. Similarly, anyone looking to grow a franchise must love what he’s doing and be willing to put in long days and lots of effort to make it work. In addition to passion and hard work, however, there are a few additional steps that emerging franchisors. These steps should be considered if they want to grow quickly and become household names:

1. Define your brand and its values.

The first key to successful growth is clear branding: determining your core values, creating brand guidelines and establishing national and local marketing plans. You also must zero in on what makes your brand different. Use all of these to craft the story of your brand across multiple channels.

Confusing brands are not successful brands. If you don’t define your brand — who you are and who you’re not — from the franchisor level, you won’t be able to expand across national and international markets.

2. Build relationships with top franchisees.

Franchisees need guidance and support, and potential franchisees look for businesses with strong leadership networks. Ask your franchisees what they’re doing locally and learn from their experiences, taking note of what works for each and what doesn’t.

Position your top franchisees as leaders and resources for your entire system. Franchisees can serve as ambassadors for your brand and provide strong leadership, serving as resources for other franchisees.

3. Look at the big picture.

If you want to rapidly expand into multiple markets, you need to consider the logistics. Do your vendors have the capacity to handle your growth? Do your vendors really understand franchises? Can they help you grow nationally and locally? This type of focus on the big picture is a major key to how to become a household name in every industry.

We recently spoke with an emerging fitness franchise with fewer than 25 locations. Its leaders said they wanted to operate their marketing and branding as if they had 100 locations to make sure they were on the right path as they continued to expand rapidly. We know this brand will see long-term success with that mindset. Other times, though, we’ve seen franchisors so focused on expansion that they overlook some of the gritty details of their company’s infrastructure — a recipe for trouble.

4. Think nationally and locally.

As a franchise, your goal is always growth. But that doesn’t mean your marketing focus should just be on national efforts: You should give equal weight to local campaigns, too. Determine what your national brand will handle best and what your franchisees or co-ops would be better at rolling out. As you expand, make sure both corporate and franchise locations are clear on their marketing roles and expectations.

The top complaint we hear from franchisees who pay into national ad funds is they don’t feel the impact locally. The right marketing partners can help structure the campaign to be a win-win for franchisors and franchisees, maintaining brand standards while giving franchisees some local control. Without local success, your national brand will struggle with long-term success.

For franchisors looking to become as successful as Taziki’s, success will be determined by a few factors. These factor range from the strength of a brand’s story to scalable plans to local and national marketing. The task of growing your business and learning how to become a household name might be daunting. That’s why it’s important to keep these four steps in mind, so that you’ll be on the path to becoming a household name.