How we increased franchise prospect leads by 20X


We recently increased the leads generated in a brand's exclusive email sends by 20X!

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We have been working with the brand for around 12 months and to be honest had struggled to generate a consistent high volume of enquiry for their business opportunity - as high as we all wanted anyway...

In saying that though, they converted two of our leads into sales – so the result had still been pretty strong.

What did we do to get a 20X Boost in franchise leads?

  • Decided to be bold
  • Collaborated with the franchisor
  • Focused on Benefits
  • Intrigue - Removed entirely what the concept was.

Bold

Generally, when it comes to promoting franchises as a business opportunity, franchising and franchisors in my experience can be pretty conservative with their brands and their messaging.

Not all of course, but I see a reluctance quite often to be bold and really experiment with the messaging around attracting franchise opportunity seekers. You’ve grown it carefully over many years, so being a little reluctant to mess with it can be understandable.

There are reasons for this, and certainly not falling foul of the franchise code is a bloody big one!

But, if something is not getting the result you want, then you simply have to be bold in a calculated way. Getting out of your ‘messaging comfort zone’ to the market is crucial if you are going to cut above all that noise out there.

Be different, say something different, headline something different. In franchising recruitment marketing we have a lot of ‘vanilla’ statements and claims out there that are exactly the same as the next brand, and the next…

‘Be your own boss’, ‘No experience necessary’, ‘Lifestyle business’ - sound familiar?

Collaborate

This is crucial. We got on the phone with the franchisor and talked it through. The reasons why we think their messaging was not working with opportunity seekers, what the prospects were telling them, what we’re seeing in open rates, click throughs, unsubscribes, and aligning and comparing that with similar opportunities.

It was, and has to be, a really open and honest discussion with no ‘sacred cows’.

Focus on benefits

In my opinion, franchisors talk too much about features of their opportunity as opposed to creating interest and intrigue through the benefits provided via the features of their opportunity.

Our franchisor on this occasion came back pretty hard with renewed vigour about the benefits of their business model for franchise buyers. We revised these with new benefits identified beyond our earlier discussions from the campaign commencement several months ago.

Intrigue – We didn’t say who or what the opportunity was

This was the game changer. Sometimes, all the online data in the world does not tell you what you might be missing. As it is hard to set measures against something you don’t know you are missing or doing wrong!

“Split test it”, you may say. But what if you are split testing the wrong things? Maybe the most obvious thing is too obvious.

Remember that famous quote by Donald Rumsfeld?

“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Yep, hurts my brain hurts too….! But he did have a point somewhere in that word jumble.

To get the 600%+ lead increase, I suggested we go ‘full intrigue’ by not giving any indication what the business was, mainly because I don’t think prospects were believing that they could go from nothing to fully trained in 2 weeks.

We made people judge the opportunity on the benefits they were seeking.

We almost always judge a book by its cover. In the world of franchise business opportunities, this can bring any interest unfairly to a grinding halt.

The Stats for the Comparative Sends

Previous very poor send result

Total Sent: 27,248

Open: 11% (3,018)

Clicks On: (50) (on ‘Get More Info’ button)

Click Through Rate: 0.very bad %

Leads / Enquiries: 3


This New Send

Total Sent: 18,033

Open: 11% (2,013)

Clicks On: (147) (on ‘Get More Info’ button)

Click Through Rate: 7.52%

Leads / Enquiries: 59

Get Leads

Interestingly, we actually also tried quite a different approach in the prior send to our previous sends through the year. The open rate was the same as you see above, but the result in how people reacted to the content was unbelievably different.

Specific business opportunity seeker messaging matters SO much to the result.


Find Out How We Can Generate More Franchise Leads For YOU with Better Messaging and Targeting.

Email: Glenn@franchisebuyer.com.au

Call: 1300 669 983

OR Contact for a discussion and Media Kit on our Advertise Page HERE