Marketing Guides

Why Clients Hate Their Franchise Marketing Agency

The truth might hurt, but it will also set you free.

My company works with many of the leading national franchise brands and, recently, I wrote two essays about how many franchisees hate their franchisors and how many franchisors hate their franchisees.

I’d love to say that I’m above all the hatred and loathing because every company loves its franchise marketing agency. But, of course, the headline is a dead giveaway that this is not true. Franchise marketing agencies (public relations companies, ad agencies, internet marketing companies, web developers, etc.) also generate their fair share of anger and distrust from clients.

Obviously, I hope that’s not the case for our company. We have dozens of clients, many who have been with us for years, so I feel pretty confident that I don’t have any clients who have put my photo on a dart board and are practicing their aim during their lunch hour.

In any case, it is true that a lot of clients end up despising their franchise marketing agency — and for some good reasons.

If you’re a franchise marketing agency looking to improve your relationship with your clients, or if you’re a client looking to validate the hostility you feel for your marketing agency, well, I’m here to help. These are a few of the reasons many franchise brands hate their marketing agency and what the agency can do to correct them.

Bait And Switch

We repeatedly hear of this problem from new clients who have left another franchise marketing agency. The people clients meet and assume they are going to work with are smart, have creative ideas and seem to know their business backward and forward. Impressed, clients sign the deal. But once the actual work begins, the talent that sold them isn’t the talent that’s serving their account. The franchise marketing agency brought their A-team for the introductions but assigned their Jteam (the junior-level staffers) once the actual work began.

Juggling Accounts With Inexperienced Staffers

Having junior-level team members is essential to injecting new energy and vitality into the agency. But if agencies put inexperienced staffers on the front line and then bring in the heavy hitters only when problems arise, it can quickly lead to overwhelmed employees, poor results and angry clients. The client may feel like they have to spend too much time educating the agency team and generating the big marketing ideas versus getting initiative and insight from the agency. I’ve found, throughout my 25-year career, that having a mix of junior-level and senior-level team members who are actively involved with a client generates the best results and client relationships.

Sleazy Business Practices

There’s no easy way say this, but some franchise marketing agencies end up coming off as a little shady. I’ve talked to numerous franchise executives who have told me of franchise marketing agencies that weren’t transparent about the hourly rate, the breakdown of the digital marketing spend or the number of hours allocated for each team member working on their account. Many franchise marketing agencies churn through employees and, worse, make promises to clients that they can’t and don’t keep. If you can’t trust your own marketing agency, something is very wrong. Again, agency transparency ensures client relationships are based on trust and clarity. These values should be instilled within the agency in order to meet client expectations and ensure a trusted relationship.

Complaints Fall On Deaf Ears

So maybe a client has told its franchise marketing company, “Look, this isn’t working.” And while the agency seems to listen, the client has the same conversations about the same topics repeatedly and nothing changes. It begins to feel as if the situation is a sequel to Groundhog Day, in which nothing changes for the better — except, in this instance, nothing’s funny and there’s no Bill Murray. Unfortunately, most franchise marketing agencies don’t have a regular scorecard system in place to allow clients to review the account team’s performance. This strategy can help ensure a client’s voice is heard and changes occur.

There’s No Passion – Except When It Comes To Billing You

Similar to bait and switch, the big ideas and bold thinking never materialized or quickly evaporated. The only thing a client can be sure of is getting billed regularly. And they tend to feel as if nothing would happen if they didn’t push their marketing agency. Yes, clients have a right to be irked. The scorecard system I mentioned earlier serves to uncover negative client perceptions, enabling the agency to have the opportunity to address perceived client issues before it’s too late. There Seems To Be No Plan In Place Is the franchise marketing agency working off of a collaborative strategic plan with clear and measurable goals? Does the client have a way to track its performance? Franchise marketing agencies must communicate these strategic plans with their clients and adjust as necessary in order to make sure they’re measurably working towards their clients’ goals. nineonenine marketing co.

The Marketing Agency Is Too Big – Or Too Small

Actually, the size of the agency doesn’t matter. The key is to make sure you know who is really working on a client’s account and how many hours they are working every month. And, yes, a franchise marketing agency and its client should communicate daily or almost daily – this is what really matters. By working towards measurable results with a strategic plan in place, involving a team of multileveled staff members, paying attention to scorecards and communicating transparently and regularly with clients, franchise marketing agencies can avoid many, if not all, of these pitfalls. The bottom line, however, is this: If you’re a client who is hating your agency for not meeting your needs, the problem is them and not you. If the relationship cannot be repaired.

Franchise CEO Branding: The 10-Step Process to Become an Industry Thought Leader

Most successful franchise brands are led by CEOs with a clear and compelling vision for the company. They understand the impact effective brand building and brand nurturing have on employee recruitment and retention, franchise marketing performance, franchise sales, franchisee profitability and growth, and maximizing shareholder value.

Yet the majority of franchise CEOs championing brand development fail to capitalize on a critical component of brand building as we move into the new age of franchising — franchise CEO branding.

Staying silent while competitors become trusted industry thought leaders is not an option. It is time to lead the brand from the front, to become a trusted, relatable, and visible chief brand ambassador who personifiesthe brand values and vision that employees, franchise candidates, franchisees, and the media can buy into.

It has been estimated that 44 percent of a company’s market value is attributable to CEO reputation.* This shows you just how CEO reputation and company reputation converge to maximize market value.

*CEO Branding: Theory and Practice edited by Marc Fetscherin

The 10 Step Process to Become An Industry Thought Leader:

1. What Audience Are You Speaking To?

PICK ONE

Current and future investors.
Current and future employees.
Current and future franchisees.
Current and future customers of your franchisees.
Existing influencers and other thought leaders who can help you connect with your audience and expand your reach.

2. What Information Do They Need?

What are the problems or issues that keep your target audience up at night?
What are the opportunities for you to help them achieve their goals?
You need to put yourself in their shoes and understand their needs from their perspective.
Only then can you hone your message to achieve the utmost engagement.
nineoneninemarketing co.

3. What Topics Can You Dominate:

After figuring out the target audience’s needs and objectives, the next task is to figure out your content angle. To do this effectively, you must gain access to content data analytics based on the actual online behaviors of your target audience to make sure you are touching all the right motivational buttons.

How are you going to provide your target audience with the knowledge and information they need that is different and unique from other sources? Study the competition and map out the content topics and strategies they are using. Make sure your content strategy is ownable, compelling, authentic, and sustainable.

When it comes to thought leadership, not only does your message have to be remarkable, but so should the way you convey and deliver that message. Here at 919 Marketing, we always strive to take a contrarian position, challenging status quo approaches, and insisting that franchise marketing decisions be based on real buyer intelligence and clear metrics. See the articles below.

4. Come With A Strong Opinion:

As mentioned above, you need a strong opinion on a topic you can legitimately be an expert on. Be bold, contrarian, against the norms, groundbreaking, most of all, be authentic. For example, see below for several articles I have had published in national media outlets:
Why most franchise brands whiff at organic search
Why franchisors hate their franchise marketing agency
Why your franchisees hate you

5. Pick Your “Go-To” Format:

Once you have established your branding “voice,” it’s time to determine how to bring it to life.
Each franchise thought leader has their preferred method of content creation; writing articles, writing blog posts, appearing in videos, podcasting, speaking engagements, etc.
However, to truly reach and impact your target audience, you need to be able to re-purpose content in the various formats your audience chooses to consume.
Your target audience may like to read short- or long-form articles, while others prefer to watch videos or listen to podcasts or watch live/self-paced pre-recorded webinars.
The key is to be able to deliver the type of content your target audience wants, in the format they favor.
An effective approach is “video-first content creation.” Here at 919 Marketing, we orchestrate TV-style video interviews with former TV reporters on our staff based on a pre-approved roster of topics that our client CEO is comfortable speaking to. When done correctly, this approach pays big dividends — a compelling CEO profile video capturing the CEO’s personality and thought leadership on the interview topics, with the ability to also produce multiple short-form videos, podcasts, webinars, written articles, and blog posts.

6. Pick Your Platforms:

It is not enough to deliver your content in the format your audience wants, you also need to deliver that content in the channel your audience prefers.
An old client of mine from Nabisco used to always challenge our agency to bring him “fewer, bigger, better” ideas. We have found that most CEOs are comfortable selecting 2–3 of the following platforms to promote thought leadership content:
LinkedIn
Facebook
Regular guest column in a major media outlet (franchising, business, entrepreneurial, trades)
Personal YouTube channel
Promoted or “boosted” blog posts
Speaking (including IFA shows, podcasting, webcasting, conferences, and radio)
Networking
Awards/honors

7: Develop The Winning Plan:

The key to getting ahead is getting started. Now it’s time put together a franchise content marketing plan with goals, action items, timelines, and measurement.
The plan should go deep into the audience, their needs and objectives, your theme, your content, and how we are going to deliver your content.
A great way to start on your plan is to put an editorial calendar together. This calendar will enable you to map out your monthly content strategy throughout the year and ensure that you stay committed to the plan you develop. Again, online data on the topics your target audience is searching for should inform your strategy.
Audit and refine your current social platforms, making sure that each social platform communicates the same personality and uses the right brand symbols to stay on the brand strategy you define in the content marketing plan.

8. Make Real Connections With The Right Influencers:

Once the plan is developed, the next step should be to identify influencers and other thought leaders that can help you attain your goal.
It is a lot easier to be seen as an expert if you are connected to recognized thought leaders.
Influencers may include reporters, other non-competitive franchise CEOs, franchise brokers, portals, category thought leaders (e.g. in-home care experts with large followings), and others that can give you the credibility you need to start your thought leadership journey.
This is not a transactional relationship — you must give to get. Study their body of work, reach out, and be informed about who they are and who they are talking to. Ask for help and advice. Become a trusted connection.
Host a podcast, a Q&A series on your company blog, hold a virtual roundtable event and serve as the moderator, and invite other industry leaders to be guests.
Securing a simple backlink from an industry thought leader, media outlet, or other high traffic websites to content placed on your company or personal website can pay big dividends.nineoneninemarketing co.

9. Enjoy the Journey. Never Stop Learning.

A true thought leader never stops learning. In order to become a true authority, you must continue to enhance your knowledge and learn from others.
Watch and learn from other thought leaders, do research, and read voraciously within your area of interest.
Keep up with the latest trends and explore new ideas and new methods.
Track and analyze the performance of the content you create over time — learn from it.
Use data analytics to validate your content calendar.
Stay on top of your game.
Make it fun!

10. Play For The Long Haul.

You need to make a commitment to be relentless in your pursuit of greatness. It’s like a health club membership — you must consistently put in the time it takes to see real results.
Create an electronic library of on-going ideas and insights where you can store potential story ideas and be able to create great content over time.
Never stop building your eco-system of influencers — it is the difference between running a marathon by yourself or building a track team to run sprints together.
Thought leadership is not something you can buy or take shortcuts with. It is not easy, and it will not happen overnight. But it works!
Investing in an integrated CEO thought leadership and franchise brand building strategy ensures a clear company mission is consistently communicated throughout the organization — including investors, current and future employees and franchisees, and serves as the touchstone for all future sales and marketing programs.
Like how movie stars influence public opinion about an upcoming movie they are in,
CEOs play a similar role in shaping the perceptions of employees, franchisees, and investors.
Importantly,
your personal brand transcends the current CEO role you are in. When you are ready to move on to the next challenge — your brand travels with you. Whether it’s serving on a Board of Directors, starting a new company, consulting, becoming a national speaker, etc.
And you leave the franchise with a solid brand foundation for the next ownership team to expand upon.
Are you ready to create, manage, and accelerate the growth of your personal brand? Done correctly, your franchise’s brand and your personal brand work in tandem to increase brand equity, boost stock prices, and add multiples to future transactions.
Let’s get started. Ready to be included in my next article?

Client-Agency Relationships: Love is a Two-Way Street.

The reasons marketing agencies get fired are well chronicled, from the well-deserved (lack of effort, lack of results, poor communication, etc.) to bewildering Bermuda Triangle reasons (new marketing director cleans house 80% of the time regardless of results, CEO’s cousin or wife is a marketing expert, etc.), and everything in between.

On the other side of the coin, it’s hard to fire a client, akin to breaking up with a neurotic, abusive supermodel. Every founder starts an agency thinking, “If I do great work, clients will be happy, more business will flow to the company, employees will be happy, and life will be good.”

However, sometimes what starts off as a beautiful account turns into an ugly, toxic relationship that erodes employee morale and on top of that is unprofitable.

Here’s when you need to fire your client:

They hire you for your marketing expertise, then ignore your advice and dictate every decision.
They hire you to do work under stressful, compressed timelines, then complain about costs.
They are verbally abusive to your staff, have unrealistic expectations, and never acknowledge the great work of your staff.
They aren’t loyal – shopping every project even though you have committed your best people to their account and given them amazing results.
They incessantly change the rules of the game – goals, targets, project timelines and specs.
They string you out for payment, yet are paying everyone on their staff including the marketing contact we work in tandem with every day.
Give the agency poor direction, refuse to consider alternative options, then blame the agency when senior management comes down on them.
They aren’t open, honest and candid about the relationship, the account person assigned to their account or the work.

Trust me, we’ve ignored all of these issues and many more, thinking that we were being paranoid or that we could turn it around with candid conversations. And the reality is that it’s downright painful to turn down money, particularly in today’s world.

However, it’s a pay now or pay later reality. These relationships inevitably end badly, so why not cut ties on your terms so you can lavish your attention on your best customers and retain your best employees?

The 7 Things PR Firms Don’t Want You To Know

There are a number of myths and false perceptions surrounding the practice of public relations today and many PR agencies would like to keep it that way. By exposing and discussing several of the greatest kept “secrets of PR”, I hope you will have a clearer understanding of the way PR should be approached and executed to maximize coverage of your organization in your target media.

There is no getting around it. PR practitioners need to be phenomenal sales people. The problem is that very few actually are. Just like any form of cold calling, picking up the phone to pitch a member of the media can be a terrifying exercise to go through. Reporters and journalists are bombarded daily with several dozen phone calls and hundreds of emails and faxes – it is no wonder they have a tendency to be skeptical, harsh and at times downright rude even when you’ve done your homework.Many practitioners today lack the dedication to think strategically to break through the barriers and lack the thick skin to turn rejection into results. Developing a strategy takes time and thought; thick skin takes persistence. Rather than developing these skills, many practitioners abandon ever picking up the phone and rely on email blasts, blanket releases and other less effective, impersonal forms of communication. Sure this route is less scary and much easier, but it never produces the same results as biting the bullet and picking up the phone.

Press releases are very important tools in the PR trade. They are critical to keeping your customers, partners, employees, investors and other key audiences informed about important news in your organization. However, issuing press releases should only represent a portion of your PR efforts. The majority of your efforts should be focused on tracking current and emerging trends in your industry and selling your story as part of the news current.High impact feature coverage is secured by identifying opportunities to link your organization, products and services with emerging trends. It takes a skilled and seasoned PR practitioner to turn your news into relevant, customized story pitches for key media. Assuming press releases will consistently produce significant feature coverage would be like assuming you could build an entire house with just a hammer.

A blasphemous claim made all too often about PR is that its benefits are “intangible”. True, it can be difficult to quantify results in a discipline based largely on shifting market share and awareness, but tangible effects on the bottom line are the hallmark of any well planned, executed and tracked campaign. Practitioners who cast the “intangible” excuse when discussion turns to results are not holding themselves accountable for their work and are unworthy of their retainers. Before launching any PR campaign, all stakeholders must agree on tangible results and tracking methodology. Without measurement, improvement is impossible.If impressions, or the number of people who see your message in the media, is a measurement you track, be sure only those impressions in your target markets and sales channels are included. Advertising cost equivalency is another commonly used benchmark of campaign effectiveness; however, this does not take into account the invaluable benefit of third party validation and the clarity of your message.Do not be timid when setting your expectations. It is not unreasonable to set goals in terms of sales, leads or new partnerships. Results should be about what matters to you and your business.

A lot of PR agencies will try and blind you with a roster of big, brand name clients. I’m not suggesting that the work performed and the experience gained working for big name brands isn’t relevant. I am suggesting that you dig deeper and perform due diligence. For example, ask about the scope of work done for that client, the results achieved and if they can supply references with whom you can speak. More importantly, ask what types of results they achieved for smaller, unknown clients. This is the true test of an agency’s abilities. Securing coverage for an emerging or lesser known company takes a much different skill set than achieving results for a giant, established brand (and advertiser) such as Coca-Cola.

Perhaps one of the dirtiest myths regarding PR is that it’s all about who you know. I have been in the business for over two decades. I have worked with, and in several cases become very good friends with journalists and reporters from many of the world’s largest and most respected media outlets. The reality is, my email contacts contribute very little to my success in placing high impact stories for clients. Success stems from the ability to think strategically and deliver a timely, well thought out story in a professional manner. Journalists care very little about previous experiences. They are not in the business of making friends or doing favors. They have a charge – to inform and educate their audiences. Regardless of your personal relations and past history, if you bring something to them that does not support this charge, no dice. However, bring something of significant value for their audiences and you will achieve success whether it’s your first contact with them or your fiftieth.

Above all, PR agencies are businesses and as such, only the most experienced and polished players are presented during the sales process. Often when the sale is final and it’s time for actual account work to begin, these practitioners are nowhere to be found and you are expected to work with a JV team whom you’ve never met; the varsity team is off selling services to someone else. Before engaging with any agency, you should know how much regular time and attention you can expect to receive from the senior members of your team and have the skills and credentials of your daily account management team validated. You must demand to know, meet and engage with every person that will be working on your account. Your team is only as strong as its weakest link. You should feel completely confident in your entire account team’s ability, from CEO to account coordinator.

Most practitioners would sooner cut off their own tongues than utter the words “You have no business engaging a PR agency right now.” However, I have found that it is best to have an open and honest dialog with clients and potential clients about what PR can and cannot do for them. Don’t be fooled. Engaging a PR agency is a lot of work and is very time consuming. And don’t assume that once the contracts are signed that your obligation as a client eases up in the slightest. A good agency will demand your time and attention. A good agency will require regular face time with you, your executives, your sales people, your customers and your partners. They will need regular and consistent communication with all important client contacts. If your organization is not structured to support your PR team, the relationship will only result in hard feelings and time wasted. PR is the most powerful marketing medium there is and nothing worth having is ever easily had. Just as much as the agency must commit to projecting the client to the media, so must the client commit to communicating with the agency.

There you have it. Call me a tattletale, but misperceptions about PR only damage the profession and the truly talented practitioners of it, not to mention the clients who deserve quality work. By putting some of the most alarming myths surrounding PR to rest, it is my intention to arm you with the insight needed to make sound, proactive decisions regarding your own initiatives.