Franchising your business as a smaller start up brand, if done properly, can be one of the most effective, cost efficient, and productive ways to expand your business at a fast pace to become an industry leader. The concept of franchising enables businesses of all sizes to include qualified investors seeking new business development opportunities to invest into a brand to operate the model under specific regulations. A lot of startups and growing business reach out to companies such as: Franchise Marketing Systems, which has become one of the primary organizations for providing full-service marketing and sales support consulting to clients in various industries. Those brands that truly succeed in developing a successful franchise system incorporate a blue print for their model, which will allow for the new investor to step into the industry and operate under very specific operational standards to increase ramp up time and utilize the existing brand to leverage their business success.
Step 1 : Create a business plan
Starting this process begins with creating a very thorough and unique business plan which will allow for a vision to be created for all new incoming investors. This business plan should pave the pathway for goals, company vision, industry competitive analysis, market research, and a comprehensive break down of projected numbers for new incoming investors. This will also include the lay out for building the brand. This plan should lay out what type of population base and demographic will support a location and what defines a profitable location. This should also include what types of expectations can be in place from both franchisee and franchisor relationship in developing the brand’s operational standards and marketing efforts which will be utilized together as they enter the brand into a new market segment. This plan will lay out the steps for training, marketing support, ongoing support by the franchisor for the length of the franchise, and what approach you intend to take as you look for locations if needed in your prospective industry.
Step 2: Creating the Operations that will outline your business
When creating the operations, you are focusing on a detailed level about how you intend for the brand to look and operate. This will include how you intend for the location image to be portrayed, employee responsibilities and how daily operational procedures will be performed to incorporate a uniform standard at each location or service based territory. This step will also outline marketing efforts on both sides of the franchisor and franchisee relationship. It will be extremely important to incorporate a strong presence within social media platforms and build a strong very functional website that will incorporate the franchise model. Dependent upon the industry, it may be advantageous to lay out different options for SEO campaigns and different PR campaigns that can be launched to help drive immediate attention and “buzz” to the new opening locations to create a customer base.
Dependent upon the business model, it will be important to implement successful distribution chains and determine how a cost efficient method can be put in place for specific branded items to be allocated to franchisees from the point of rolling out your franchise model. These are all aspects of a successful roll out that new investors will look for as they are entering into a new brand. These specifics will be outlined within the operations manual created as a functional training guide provided to each franchisee upon purchasing the franchise.
Step 3: Creating the legal structure to your business
Creating the legal entities of the franchise involve a very highly regulated registration process when creating your franchise system. The process of registration includes specific registration states, filing states, and non registration states which will each have their own process and set regulation to follow. Creating these legal documents will set the legal basis for your model moving forward.
Step 4: Following through on your plan and taking your brand to the next step
It is important to remember that creating a new start up franchise brand takes time to develop the operations and the system to support a successful roll out. The success of a brand is directly correlated to the ongoing support and growth of the franchise infrastructure to support their franchisees. It is the role of the franchisor to develop these processes from the beginning to enable a fast growth and sustainability to their franchise system growth.
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This guest post is courtesy of Devin Conner, Franchise Marketing Systems.