{"id":1112,"date":"2017-11-07T15:57:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T15:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2017-11-07T15:59:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T15:59:20","slug":"franchise-consumer-marketing-in-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/franchise-consumer-marketing-in-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Franchise Consumer Marketing in 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our firm, Franchise Marketing Systems, supports businesses in developing franchise networks and launching businesses into the franchise market.\u00a0 This work is exciting, new, innovative and really fun work in most cases and we get to in many ways be on the leading edge of what is happening in small business and what trends are taking place in the small business community.\u00a0 Franchise expansion is a great test for what industry segments are showing the most opportunity for growth and what categories are expanding.\u00a0 Really, the franchise market growth is just an extension of the consumer market and what is driving consumer spending.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, consumer spending is just part of a trend.\u00a0 Starbucks has been literally genius in how they have managed their market and brand, but ultimately, Starbucks was the beneficiary of a consumer trend where coffee consumers transitioned from spending $1 a cup to $5 a cup and this entire \u201ccoffee lifestyle\u201d was born.\u00a0 Starbucks was at the leading edge of this transition, but certainly was the largest beneficiary of this enormous transition in consumer spending for high-end coffee products.\u00a0 Only this type of consumer spending trend could drive the chain from 10,000 units in 2005 to over 25,000 units in 2016 all amidst one of the worst global recessions in history during 2008 \u2013 2010.\u00a0 (https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/218366\/number-of-international-and-us-starbucks-stores\/<\/span><\/a> )\u00a0 So what\u2019s the point? \u00a0Some consumer markets are blessed with opportunity and upside and it seems like businesses couldn\u2019t lose if they happened to be in that space at the right time, yet there were hundreds of examples of coffee brands that either failed entirely or didn\u2019t achieve any significant growth during this same time frame in the coffee industry growth curve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Starbucks and other successful brands who have scaled through franchising or company owned growth have done exceptionally well is understand and embrace consumer marketing.\u00a0 In 2017, the consumer marketing trend is certainly focused on digital, much like everything else in our lives, the Internet has transformed the way we buy virtually everything.\u00a0 Digital isn\u2019t everything though and brands that are effective at marketing their model on the consumer level understand the complete marketing paradigm to effectively draw traffic into their stores and businesses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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First, great marketing companies are effective at defining their culture and standing for something.\u00a0 Their marketing and promotions all are consistently reminding consumers what they stand for and what the value of the brand is to the customer.\u00a0 Define what makes your brand special and make sure that all of your marketing strategies are effectively telling the same story.\u00a0 If your brand is positioned to be a premium offering, don\u2019t focus on discount marketing through coupons and things that might cheapen the offering.\u00a0 If you are a discount brand, probably better to avoid marketing in the Robb Report.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Second, understand who your customer is and what they read, watch, listen to or care about.\u00a0 Although digital is enormously important, it\u2019s still not everything, there is still a strong case to be made for direct mail, community-directed marketing and referral marketing.\u00a0 In some cases, radio can be even still be effective for some markets and with some customer bases.\u00a0 Social media and loyalty marketing are incredibly important in today\u2019s market for virtually any business.\u00a0 Define your consumer marketing channels that effectively reach your target customer and then build strategies that allow you to execute at the store level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Background:<\/span><\/p>\n

Christopher Conner is the founder of Franchise Marketing Systems, he holds a degree in marketing, management information systems and an MBA in marketing.\u00a0 Mr. Conner has worked with several hundred businesses to develop platforms to help these brands transition to franchising and position for scaled duplication of a business model.\u00a0 Mr. Conner founded Franchise Marketing Systems in 2009 and has since started 7 new companies in 5 different industry segments.\u00a0 Chris Conner currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and two children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For more information on Mr. Conner\u2019s background, visit this overview:<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/voyageatl.com\/interview\/meet-christopher-conner-franchise-marketing-systems-cumming\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our firm, Franchise Marketing Systems, supports businesses in developing franchise networks and launching businesses into the franchise market.\u00a0 This work is exciting, new, innovative and really fun work in most cases and we get to in many ways be on the leading edge of what is happening in small business and what trends are taking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[24,23,21],"tags":[193,112,30,327,367,368,123],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/shutterstock_561776362.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefranchisecourier.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}