Tips & Tricks: Marketing to Franchise Brokers

Treat Franchise Brokers Like Your Franchisee Prospects

Franchise brokers are your customers. They are a critical franchise sales marketing channel that you need to market to brokers as if they were franchise prospects and customers.

The reason is simple. It’s not the broker’s job to sell franchises for you. It’s their job to connect qualified franchise buyers with good fit brands. When a deal closes the broker earns a commission. When the franchisee succeeds, the franchise broker’s business gains momentum, referrals, influence, and long-term value.

So, how do you market to franchise brokers? You help them achieve their goals. You close deals and you create successful franchisees. Your marketing should reflect your process and what a successful working relationship looks like when working with your brand.

Franchise brokers need to be marketed to in a similar way to franchise prospects for very similar reasons as a prospect:

1. Education of your why you/why now
2. Support in understanding the value proposition of your franchise brand
3. News updates to create excitement

In many cases, franchise brokers don’t have a relationship with your brand. Even if they have placed a few candidates with your brand, they still don’t live and breathe your brand the way you do. So, as a part of your marketing strategy to the broker networks/broker communities, here are some things you should make sure are in your arsenal of communication:

1. Do you have a franchise broker landing page on your Website? 
   1. On this landing page, do you offer resources to the franchise broker — like successful franchisees, press & news, content on your value proposition?
2. Have you built an email database of brokers who could push your brand? 
   1. Are you emailing them an updated newsletter?
   2. Do you email them every time you close a broker deal?
   3. In that broker deal announcement, are you interviewing the broker who placed the deal about why they thought you were a fit for your newly minted franchisee?
   4. Are you emailing them an update on franchisees placed through brokers in the past — who may be celebrating a milestone with your brand?
3. Do you send anything in the mail to the brokers — swag, letters from the CEO?
4. Do you offer educational Webinars for brokers and their candidates?
5. Do you set-up special in-person experiences?
6. How do you celebrate brokers who have placements? 
7. Do you have any special incentives to push brokers to introduce your brand?
8. Have you asked the broker community why not? Designed to gain insights into what you could do better in telling your story?

Once you have answered these questions, then, you can build out a marketing calendar/plan to help tell your story to the broker community.