Why marketing and branding are pivotal to your franchise conference.

Leveraging marketing at your franchise convention goes beyond incorporating a few pretty signs throughout the space.

It’s a key driver for success not only for your convention but for your business overall.

A strong marketing strategy at your convention gives you the opportunity to align corporate and local marketing strategies in a collaborative environment, inspire and educate your franchisees, and bring in real-world examples.

It’s also a dedicated opportunity to introduce new campaigns or ideas to a captive audience.

If you haven’t embraced a full marketing strategy at your franchise convention yet, here are the top areas we recommend incorporating.

Start with onsite branding.

Onsite branding sets the tone for the conference and leaves a lasting impression on attendees. Every touchpoint—from signage to swag—should reflect your brand’s identity and values.

Leverage every area you can for onsite branding, from the elevators to digital signage to the floor clings throughout.

Engage your marketing team to create a cohesive story throughout the space, from the first touchpoint through the last.

Invite your creative team onsite during your site visits to better visualize the space and build their strategy.

The goal here is to create an immersive experience that helps reinforce any stories you’re planning to tell during sessions. It also should help franchisees visualize marketing within their own business space and perhaps spark ideas for them.

Tips for impactful onsite branding.

• Visual consistency: Use consistent logos, colors, and taglines across all materials.
• Keep the message clear: Create a consistent story throughout the event space and don’t try to stuff too many ideas into the overall design.

• Visual extension: Create enough diversity in your visuals so that each piece of branding onsite isn’t exactly the same (AKA a snooze fest).

• Leverage digital signage: Digital signage provides you with more flexibility to have multiple messages or a change in messaging throughout the event.

• Evaluate the whole attendee experience: What touchpoints will your attendees see throughout the event? Make sure you cover each one to create a fully immersive experience.

Share your corporate marketing strategy.

Franchise owners often look to the corporate team for guidance. 

Use the conference as a platform to showcase your overarching marketing strategy and demonstrate how it can be localized effectively.

Make sure to carve out some specific time for your marketing team to share those messages onstage and even collaborate with franchisees to share how they’ve leveraged the corporate marketing strategy.

Key areas to share corporate marketing insights onsite.

1. Session videos: Share examples of work in exciting videos throughout your mainstage sessions.
2. Case studies: Have your franchisees share their successes onstage.
3. Q&A: Let your franchisees bring marketing challenges to your corporate team and find solutions onsite.
4. Keynote presentations: Showcase campaigns and metrics that reflect your brand’s broader goals.
5. Workshops: Provide franchise owners with templates and tools to apply corporate strategies to their local markets.
   
   

Provide practical local marketing tips.

For franchise owners, the challenge lies in translating corporate strategies into localized efforts that resonate with their specific audience. Equip them with practical tools and ideas tailored to their communities.

Bring in partners and case studies to help them understand how others are effectively leveraging local marketing.

Actionable tips for local marketing.

• Social media playbooks: Provide step-by-step guides for creating engaging content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
• Hyperlocal campaigns: Share examples of successful local campaigns that align with corporate branding.
• Marketing calendars: Help franchisees plan seasonal promotions with pre-designed templates.

• Partner / vendor support: Bring in vendors to showcase local marketing trends, tools, and assets for franchisees to leverage at their stores or offices.
  
  

Support their social media efforts.

Social media is an invaluable tool for franchises, but many franchise owners struggle to use it effectively. Your conference is the perfect opportunity to bridge this gap.

You can host specific workshops to help franchise owners get things rolling, or provide an overall trends session to get the ideas flowing.

Either way, make sure your franchise owners understand why social media is important, how it can help their business, and how to effectively implement it.

Social media strategies to share.

• Content ideas: Offer a library of pre-approved, customizable posts for franchise owners.
• Engagement tactics: Teach owners how to respond to comments, run giveaways, and boost posts.
• Platform trends: Highlight emerging platforms or features that franchisees should consider, like short-form video or geotargeted ads.
  
  

Address common challenges.

Planning a marketing-focused franchise conference isn’t without its hurdles. Budget constraints, task overload, and differing stakeholder priorities can complicate the process.

Although your convention serves many purposes – one of which is simply to let franchisees meet and network – it’s still important to incorporate key moments for marketing.

• Prioritize key goals: Focus on the marketing strategies that deliver the most value to franchisees.
• Streamline tasks: Use a project management tool to coordinate speakers, workshops, and branding materials.
• Foster collaboration: Engage franchise owners early in the planning process to address their needs and concerns.
  
  

Case study: elevating an annual franchise convention with strategic marketing.

Our franchise client recently demonstrated how integrating marketing strategy can transform a franchise conference. 

They took extra care to incorporate onsite branding that told their brand story, from the first elevator through the general session rooms.

Since the marketing team was launching a new campaign, they chose to incorporate themes throughout the onsite branding to hint at the campaign launch, then switched key pieces of onsite branding out once they launched the campaign. This created a sense of excitement onsite and helped them tell the story visually.

They also incorporated specific marketing sessions into their overall agenda, allowing their franchisees to ask questions, see new materials, and collaborate with the corporate marketing team to produce action plans for the upcoming year.

Finally, they brought vendors onsite such as printers, sign-makers, and more, to give franchisees direct access to companies that can help them with their local marketing efforts.

Let’s get started.

Ready to incorporate more marketing strategies into your franchise conference? Let’s chat about how you can find better success alongside your franchisees.