| ||
Vol Franchise Marketing Tips Vol 11 Sarah Dyer - Managing Director Coconut Creatives Same rules, new tools... Marketing communications has changed, not just for franchisors but for all businesses. While the rules to effective marketing haven't changed, the creativity and choice of tools have. There is such a vast range of communication tools to choose from, it can be confusing to reach a definitive decision. After all, we just want to choose a selection that are cost effective and will reach the target audience. The power of the consumer Many businesses now understand that people trust people and will trust the opinion of complete strangers on a blog site reporting back about the usability or quality of a new mobile phone or TV. You only have to look at Amazon to see that they are using other people's buying behaviour to influence the current customer in such cases as 'people who bought this item also bought...' Consumer power The increase in communication channels that are now available to us has increased the level of involvement and communication with other people and businesses. Ebay were one of the first to recognise this and harness the opportunity that it presented when it allowed customers feedback to have a direct impact on the business or person selling their goods on Ebay. This has led the change towards consumers trusting other consumers, based on previous experiences with that business. The way businesses need to communicate to spread the word about their products or services has also changed. Quirky is now king in the digital world and plays an important role in building or tweaking brand image. Those businesses that harness the capabilities of digital communication channels will succeed, like the drum playing Cadbury Gorilla which has been bastardised into a whole range of other theme tunes by copycats. Or the 1 min 22 sec Quiksilver Dynamite YouTube clip that is extending the reach of the Quiksilver brand beyond the seaside. The ones that shock and surprise gain the attention in the digital world, as in the real world How to grow your franchise network If you are interested in growing your franchise network, the simplest way to do this is to communicate the benefits of your franchise package to the people who are most likely to buy it and influence other people to buy it too. The growth of relationship marketing through digital tools has become cheap and easy to execute. In the past, to test a new campaign would be timely and costly. New digital opportunities allow businesses (on a small or large scale) to carry out some small distinct tests which gain results that are fairly accurate and simple to measure. We regularly recommend and carry out such tests for our own clients. ROI - Return on Involvment To a certain extent, the web and digital tools are about ROI in a different sense - Return on Involvement. If you achieve regular involvement, you will eventually achieve traditional ROI - Return on Investment. It cannot be ignored that relationship marketing is absolutely essential and with additional tools available to analyse click behaviour, search terms, blog entries and other influencer networks it is now much easier to engage with your target audience and achieve results. |
 |
 |
 |