Empowerkit as a sales tool for your franchise

If you look at even our name “Empowerkit” – empowering franchisees is really going to be a very strong selling advantage [for franchisors] in terms of franchise recruitment and development.

Looking at the local level, [Empowerkit] continues to allow the franchisor to control the brand, but at the end of the day, it gives a local opportunity for the franchisee to develop business through local promotions and issues related to their business in that market. For me, being in franchise development for such long period of time, if I was able to present [Empowerkit] to prospective franchisees that would be a very powerful tool.

Dennis Mulgannon
Director of Franchise Accounts

If I´m a franchisee looking at prospective franchise [opportunities], I´m making a significant investment up front for a particular brand. When I make that investment, I don´t want to just have the signage, standard promotion materials, whatever the case may be. But also along with that, it´s 2010, I want to make sure that my presence on the web is solid. I want to make sure I can highlight any associated video I may have, I want to make sure I´m tweeting about things appropriate to my business, and I want to make sure there´s a landing page for that, beyond what [many franchisors are] currently providing on their corporate site, [such as] a static page, an image of my business, hours of operation, a brief description. That´s ok, but it could be so much more dynamic than that, it could be so much more robust, more innovative than that, and it’s not that expensive to do.

John Rodgers
Account Director

As a prospective franchisee looking a different franchise opportunities, you have to really look at what the current state of marketing is, in terms of what is happening on the web. If I am looking at a franchise opportunity, I have to have some really solid resources in terms of web marketing so I can push myself online and not only through traditional marketing, through national advertise on TV, print, [radio]. You have to have that web component, it’s an essential part of the toolkit, and if you are not offering that as a franchisor, it’s a huge disadvantage.

You have to get in the mindset of the 2010 prospective franchisee. They are looking for a higher level of marketing infrastructure, and they just can’t be satisfied with [only] traditional media. You have to have that web component as part of your toolkit – Empowerkit provides just that, the flexibility to build your own site, to customize it, manage the content easily without having to hire a contractor, and without having the rigid template system that a lot of franchisors offer. Empowerkit is a really huge benefit for franchise sales representatives to pitch to prospective franchisees, and franchisees are looking for that.

Chris Anderson
CMO

Let´s just take companies A, B and C, all in the same sector, same industry. One of the great push-backs that development people know in the franchise industry is that lack of true entrepreneurialism at the franchisee level. So if you have A, B and C – all three hamburgers are all pretty good, same investment, same royalties, same ROI – a great segregator, in the franchisee’s mind is that Wow! this company cares about my ability to express myself on a local level and really help to grow my own business.

Dennis Mulgannon
Director of Franchise Accounts

April 30, 2010

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