Franchising is a two way street

There's much more to a successful franchise than passively soaking up the information and support materials provided by your franchisor.

When you invest in a franchise you're investing in the rest of your life, so it makes sense to involve yourself as deeply as possible. OK, so your franchisor is the expert. But you have a valuable contribution to make too.

When you first buy into your chosen franchise, you have a rare window of opportunity. This is the first time you've experienced the concept and materials. With your eyes wide open and no preconceptions, you might spot areas where the franchise could work better. You might have an amazing marketing idea or spot something really exciting that's missing from their offer.

Don't be scared to stick your head above the parapet and send your ideas and feedback to your franchisor. If they're on the ball they'll be delighted to hear from you.

Your customers represent a goldmine of information too. Take note of customer feedback and look out for patterns. If several people have experienced the same issue or problem, are confused by a proposition or consistently mis-fill the same form, you have the power to help make things work better.

Tell your franchisor and together you might find that, as a result of your observations, the entire franchise business pulls in more customers and more cash.

Here's a short list of the kinds of things to look out for:

• promotional and marketing-led ideas; discounts, special offers...


• gaps in support materials for franchisees and end customers


• elements of the sales proposition that cause confusion


• potentially profitable target markets currently underexploited or excluded


• website navigation and interface issues

You can even go in for a spot of blue sky thinking... even the wildest and most unlikely seeming inspirations and ideas sometimes have a grain of pure gold at the centre.

Joining the online video revolution - Franchise successes 'on-screen'

I just searched Google for video marketing tips and it returned 68,100,000 results.

Which just shows you how popular web video is! YouTube on its own gets around a billion unique visitors every month. As such, video is an enormously powerful commercial force.

International direct marketing guru Drayton Bird is a big fan of video – he's been making direct response videos for clients since 1985. He's seeing a massive boom in the use of video for marketing online and he's also getting some fantastic results for his clients.

In fact a good online video can demonstrate, entertain and involve people in exactly the same way as a television advert. Drayton Bird says, “When we analyse clients' websites, almost the first thing we look at is whether they have videos, and how they use them.”

If you're thinking about buying into a franchise, check whether they're using online video to draw in new prospects, convert them to customers, cross sell and up sell extra services, advertise their services and more. Do they have a YouTube presence? If so, you're probably looking at a forward-thinking franchise that's operating at the cutting edge of web technology. If not, you might want to think again.

TopMatch combines state of the art online technologies with intelligent human intervention to deliver a unique dating service. They have a growing range of videos that sell a variety of exciting services to new customers and to their existing customer base. They even offer personal video profiles for full members. If your chosen franchise doesn't operate at this level, find one that does!

Take a look at what Drayton Bird's favourite video production agency has to say about online videos, complete with a quick appearance by Drayton himself. It's very interesting stuff and it'll give you a good idea of the considerable commercial power of video. Here's a link: http://www.creationvideo.co.uk/