Top Takeaways from the First Annual Franchise Customer Experience Conference

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By Mary Hanula, Senior Director of Marketing, Eulerity

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to Atlanta with a few of my colleagues and attend the very first Franchise Customer Experience Conference hosted by IFA and Franchise Update Media. The event brought together marketing, technology and operations professionals from a wide array of brands. Although there were many, I went ahead and listed a few top takeaways from the event below.

 

1. Every member of your team needs to know, live and breathe your company’s mission.

Although this may sound like a no-brainer, it’s a steadfast reminder for any industry professional. Sometimes we can become so consumed in our daily routines, trying to find the next best avenue of outreach, or even analyzing our competitors. It’s good to take a healthy inventory and compare how you measure up to the competitor brands in your space, whether that is through their offerings or their actions, but it’s imperative that you do not lose sight of your own brand’s mission in the process. Don’t try to change your brand so much that you lose sight of its internal power and meaning. Instead of criticizing, you should be utilizing what sets you apart from the rest. Your differences, albeit positive, can be some of your strongest assets when marketing and growing your brand.

 

2. Identify your customer’s “why.”

The customer journey is extremely personal. Any decision a customer makes is based directly off of personal experiences, past experiences, and memorable moments from their lives. These drive our behaviors as customers, employees, and stake-holders. As a leader, ask yourself, what are the emotional drivers for your customers? As you start to gain both quantitative and qualitative insights on your customers, these analytics will drive action. What factors cause your customer to take action? Perhaps it’s the type of language used when communicating with them via email or social media or a client testimonial video. Identify what makes your customer tick and start drawing on how your brand fits into their experiences, their daily moments, and more.

 

3. When your franchisees tell you how they learn best, listen.

There’s two parts to this insight, with the first being: are you asking your franchisees how they best learn information you give them? From digital marketing tools to discovery day tactics, what are your current processes for communicating new standards to your franchisees? Maybe a new brand strategy or tool sounds great to you and your leadership team, but how can you make it seem like an essential to your franchisees? They don’t have the same overarching view that you do, which means you need to take an incredibly informative approach when introducing something new to them. Ask your franchisees what fuels their learning — is it webinars and infographics? It could be that they love a video tutorial on how to use a new app or software. Don’t just listen — leverage — what they’re telling you. The better your delivery and training is

for new strategies, the higher the adoption rate among franchisees. Listen to your franchisees, take their input, concerns and pain points and create campaigns, education, and communication that highlights their worth, dedication and commitment.

 

4. Identify and reference the customer journey.

This one was huge for me, as I now have journey-mapping as one of my favorite takeaways from FCXC. Identify your consumer, then identify their needs or wants. From there, identify their way of researching and gaining information from you and your brand, then the next steps that take them to selecting your offerings officially. Ask yourself and your team: how can you take someone from the interested consumer doing research to the strong member and advocate of your brand? This ties back into using personal experiences to leverage your customer interaction. Once you start mapping out the steps and stops on your customer’s journey, you’ll have a better understanding of what areas you can grow in. You’ll start to see if you need to provide better content, or maybe a more seamless website experience. These steps make the biggest differences in getting a prospect to the finish line, and a customer as a life-long representative of your brand.

 

5. Treat every person with extra kindness and care.

The golden rule has always been my personal motto, but now more than ever, we must be treating one another with kindness and care. The world has experienced an incredibly traumatic and unprecedented past few years, a time period in which we are still in. Whether it is a customer, coworker, manager, or stranger, it is crucial to reach out to one another and connect. The franchise industry is strong and known for being a family — take care of each other and remember that positivity goes a long way.

Eulerity is the leading marketing automation software in the world. The company brings brands AI-optimized digital marketing, optimized ad spend, seamless ad creation, and automated ad deployment — all available on the first ever online advertising app. With Eulerity, your brand’s advertisements are reaching your prospects and customers where they are, across all platforms and thousands of websites through image, video, search, social, recruitment advertising and more. Eulerity was built with the dedicated business owner in mind, providing in-depth tracking and analytics, always-on marketing, fixed fees, and more, all available on desktop and mobile. Eulerity prides itself on partnering with Fortune 100 companies and top franchise brands to revolutionize digital marketing and give business back to business owners.

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