Over its 30-year history, Australia-based franchise Poolwerx has established itself as a trusted leader in pool and spa maintenance, both in Australia and globally.
With more than 500 marketing territories spanning retail stores and mobile vans, if you own a pool or spa, chances are you’ve turned to Poolwerx for servicing, equipment or advice.
To sustain its success as a growing global franchise, Poolwerx set out to strengthen its digital transformation and marketing execution, focusing on empowering franchise partners to better engage with their local clients and broader community.
The challenge? Many franchise partners are busy managing day-to-day operations, leaving little time for franchise marketing – and it’s generally not their area of expertise. Poolwerx needed to support the franchise partners with strong marketing programs whilst also empowering them to run locally tailored campaigns.
Poolwerx CMO, Nicola Votier, recently sat down with me to discuss what makes Poolwerx so successful and how the marketing strategy is driving growth.
Balancing National Campaigns and Local Area Marketing
In addition to national marketing, driven primarily by promotions, seasonal campaigns and knowledge-sharing, the Poolwerx Support Centre Marketing Team at Poolwerx also places a strong emphasis on local area marketing.
“What matters at Poolwerx is that the franchisee has a strategy and a program that connects with its local community,” Nicola Votier, CMO of Poolwerx said.
As franchise partners have varying levels of marketing skills and resources, achieving a cohesive marketing strategy across a diverse franchise network can be complex. To tackle this, Poolwerx focuses on three key areas:
- Brand Consistency: Keeping a unified brand image across hundreds of locations while empowering franchise partners to promote locally.
- Franchise Support: Equipping franchise partners with the tools, buddy system and training they need to execute effective marketing strategies at a local level with their acclaimed “Pool School”.
- Digital Transformation: Adapting to scale by introducing new systems, platforms and technology to improve the client experience and promote growth across the franchise partner network
“This digital transformation journey that my team has been on for the last two years has been about bringing best practices to our marketing,” Votier said.
“We’ve got a team full of specialists, so we asked ourselves: How do we share that knowledge? How do we make the lives of our franchise partners easier?.”
Leveraging Social Media Across the Franchise Network
As a consumer, when you follow a favourite chain or franchise on social media, you’re typically engaging with headquarters rather than the specific local store or outlet you frequent.
While a social media presence is essential, many franchisees are simply “too busy” to allocate the required time to build a strong and engaged social media following.
The Poolwerx Marketing Team tackles this by using the brand’s social media pages to not only share national content but to also showcase local stories, customer reviews, and special offers. This also complements the company’s email strategy, providing franchisees with an important channel to connect with the local community.
Hot Tip: Clear messaging drives results. Business owners who can easily identify the messaging that generates the most engagement are more than three times as confident in their marketing strategy (source: Small Business Report, 2024).
Three Top Success Drivers for Franchise LAM
1. Boost Engagement with Marketing Automation.
To help busy franchisees save time on marketing, automated email, SMS and social workflows can streamline (and increase) customer engagement. Possible workflows can include follow-ups on service requests, maintenance reminders, and seasonal promotions or milestone celebrations for birthdays, customer anniversaries or loyalty programs.
2. Leverage Data Insights to Improve Campaign Performance
With a diverse network of franchisees, there is a need to understand the dynamics of each market/territory and assist them in understanding their customer data. With advanced segmentation in marketing tools such as Constant Contact, it’s possible to organise email lists by location, behaviour, and preferences. This targeted approach allows franchise businesses to tailor their messages to specific audiences, boosting engagement and conversion rates.
It’s also important to leverage valuable insights into campaign performance through metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion statistics. This data empowers both the franchisor and franchisee to refine their strategies, better understand customer preferences, and enhance future campaigns to drive sales.
3. Amplify the Message with Local Stories
Flexibility is essential when connecting with local audiences on the topics that resonate most to them. For Poolwerx, some franchisees gathered quite the following by sharing fun or humorous photos from kangaroos in the pool to friendly pets in the backyard. This method allows the local franchisee to increase customer loyalty and the corporate brand benefits organically.
When distributing email campaigns, it’s important that the Franchisor doesn’t lose the local touch with messaging and communications. Utilising tools that allow for dynamic content in email templates can not only make this possible, it can take away the headache of doing this manually at the franchisee level. Furthermore, corporate templates can be shared down to the franchisee level to allow for localising whilst still maintaining brand integrity. Tools like Constant Contact allow this and more with the ability to then seek approvals from HQ before emails can be distributed by the Franchisee.
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Did you know? Our support team is based in Brisbane, Australia. That means when our customers need help, we’re just a phone, chat or email away in timezone (AEST)!
