In the world of franchise marketing, striking the right balance between brand consistency and local customization is a critical challenge. Franchisors must ensure that their brand remains strong and recognizable across all markets, while also allowing franchisees the flexibility to tailor their marketing efforts to local conditions. Recently, Constant Contact’s report The State of Franchise Marketing uncovered the challenges and opportunities that franchisors and franchisees are experiencing.
The importance of franchise brand reputation
One of the most significant challenges cited by franchisors was managing brand reputation across multiple markets. According to the report, 47% of franchisors cited this as their biggest hurdle. With this in mind, ensuring brand consistency took a front seat as a motivation for maintaining control over marketing, with 59% of franchisors emphasizing that consistency as the primary reason for setting marketing control levels.
However, it’s not an all-or-nothing game; franchisors recognize that this control must be balanced with the need for local customization in order to drive results and performance, which 50% of franchisors also prioritize.
The role of franchisee autonomy
In addition to impacting the performance of their marketing efforts, the report found that the level of control franchisees have over their own marketing efforts also significantly impacts their satisfaction.
A majority of franchisees with full control over their messaging (61%) report being very satisfied, compared to 38% with moderate control and just 20% with limited or no control. This suggests that a balanced approach, where franchisors set smart, informed guardrails and provide relevant training and updated templates, can empower franchisees to achieve local marketing goals while maintaining brand integrity.
Franchisor and franchisee perception of marketing controls helps to support that suggestion. In fact, the largest portion of franchisors stated that they allow franchisees moderate control over marketing (48%), while the majority of franchisees (53%) say they have full control. This suggests that the franchisors’ guardrails in use are done so in a way that does not significantly inhibit franchisees.
Strategies for empowering local markets and maintaining brand control
All these insights suggest that striking this balance is both delicate and critical not just to the success of the franchise as a whole, but to how franchisees feel about their efforts and the support they receive.
By asking franchisees what they perceive as their biggest barriers to marketing success, there are some key strategies and approaches that emerge:
- Localized Marketing Support: Offer more localized marketing support to help franchisees adapt to their specific market conditions.
- Relevant Training: Provide franchisees with the necessary training to understand and implement brand guidelines.
- Updated Templates and Automations: Share email templates and automations that franchisees can customize to fit local needs.
- Background Controls: Ensure that marketing controls are in the background and visible only to corporate, allowing franchisees to focus on local execution.
- Performance Tracking and Reporting: Strengthen performance tracking and email reporting systems to monitor the effectiveness of local marketing efforts.
Brand control and AI
As it is across all areas of business, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly significant role in franchise marketing. The report highlights the specific advantages that AI provides for franchises: increased efficiency and automation, enhanced content creation, and better, data-backed insights.
With an eye on these benefits, franchisors are supportive of AI adoption, with 54% monitoring and analyzing AI-driven marketing performance and 47% sharing best practices for AI-driven marketing.
However, to maintain brand consistency, franchisors often require oversight or control over AI outputs. To that end, 94% of franchisors are more comfortable allowing franchisees to use AI if corporate can oversee or control AI outputs. This ensures that while franchisees can leverage AI for local marketing efforts, the overall brand integrity remains intact.
How marketing technology drives balance
“The biggest thing we think about every day is how can we help our franchisees and how can we help them make more of their opportunity. Running a business requires not just the selling, it requires other things, as well. So we try and provide as many systems as we can that make their life easier.”
Marcus King, International CEO, House of Colour
Marketing technology is a crucial tool in achieving the balance between brand consistency and local customization.
Take, for example, the correlation between franchisees’ autonomy and satisfaction. As previously discussed, 61% of franchisees with full control over messaging reported very high satisfaction. So how can franchisors help enable this while protecting their brand?
Employing the right marketing technology provides the marriage of autonomy and control, wherein franchisors can prioritize providing templates and tools to their franchisees that those franchisees are able to customize for their own local markets, thus achieving the control they need and satisfaction in their marketing efforts.
Additionally, marketing technology like AI content creation and marketing automation tools can help streamline these processes, making it easier for franchisees to make the most of limited time, budget, and expertise to execute local marketing while adhering to brand guidelines.
And the results bear this out: franchisors who provide the right technology and support are 2.5 times more likely to have an adaptive, best-in-class marketing strategy (83% vs. 44%).
A path forward
Balancing brand consistency with local customization is a delicate but essential task for franchisors. By setting smart guardrails, providing relevant training and updated templates, and leveraging AI and marketing technology, franchisors can empower their franchisees to achieve local marketing goals while maintaining brand integrity. Effective communication and collaboration are key to this process, ensuring that both franchisors and franchisees are aligned and working towards common objectives.
By implementing these strategies, franchisors can create a marketing environment that is both consistent and adaptable, driving success and satisfaction across all markets.
For a deep dive into what franchisors and franchisees shared about their marketing challenges, successes, and opportunities, download our State of Franchise Marketing report.
