The Problems facing mature brands | Franchise Recruitment

By Dugan Aylen, Director of Franchise Recruitment Services (FRS) Ltd

In the Beginning...

When a new franchise brand is launched and starts to recruit franchisees some of the problems faced are budgetary constraints, lead handling and support of the growing network.

As long as the business model is realistic, the investment requirement is justified and the franchisor has the ability to convert good enquiries into franchisees, then solid growth should be expected.

With most brands opting for web and print advertising on a national basis, what commonly occurs is that the high density areas centered around London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow produce the large majority of interest and these are the areas where territories get taken in the first few years.

A Case Study...

Countrywide Signs is a franchise brand specialising in offering a signage management service to estate agents. Franchisees manage all 'For Sale' and 'To Let' signs from erecting them, removing them when a property comes off the market and everything in between.

Established as a franchise in 1998 they are now at a stage in their development where the majority of the 'popular' areas are taken.

FRS recently carried out postcode analysis on all their 2007 leads to date and discovered that 49% of leads had no territory available at all, and a further 14% had limited resale opportunities.

This had effectively doubled their cost per lead, and largely increased their cost of recruiting a franchisee, as well as leading to less franchisees coming on board over a 12 month period.

Solutions...

The strategy FRS has set to combat these problems simply relies on more targeted advertising and more flexible recruitment strategies.

FRS are in discussion with the lead generation portals to try and set up a filter system where only enquiries from relevant postcodes are sent to us and these are charged on a cost per lead basis.

Local and regional newspapers can be a great way of driving interest in relevant territories. Therefore money that is saved by filtering online leads is reallocated to these areas.

Making use of search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo to pinpoint significant interest in relevant areas can be another effective way of gaining leads from required regions.

'Road shows' have been set up to help focus interest and these are advertised through a combination of email shots and targeted print advertising.

The early results of this strategy have been encouraging but the true success of this approach will take shape over the next few months.