ex per t advice
Heather Ripley | Founder and CEO | Ripley PR
Reinventing your Discovery Days with PR about how your franchise brand could change things up and meet interested franchise prospects on their own turf instead.
Heather Ripley
While acknowledging that some franchise brands may never return to previous Discovery Day formats to engage prospective franchise owners, there are still many opportunities to achieve success with a little help from PR and ingenuity. In the past, larger franchisors created entire teams to create and promote Discovery Days in order to close interested franchise buyers. Some brands even created dedicated training rooms and produced programs and workshops specifically to give potential franchise partners an immersive experience. Although these activities could see a resurgence, think
Franchising USA
I’ve had some very successful results for my franchisor clients by helping them hold Discovery Days “Road Shows.” Rather than trying to persuade wouldbe franchisees to spend a lot of money and time making travel arrangements, booking places to stay, being away from their businesses and families, developing traveling road shows might be a worthwhile option.
How can PR can promote your road show?
“Discovery Days are a great way to seal the deal with new franchisees, but being able to be flexible and adapt to changing times can be one of your franchise brand’s best assets.”
Recently, a wireless franchise client expressed its interest in expanding its franchise territories in the Orlando, Florida market. But rather than flooding the Orlando area with promotions trying to get enough people to sign up for Discovery Days at the franchise headquarters, we decided to try something new. A few experienced team members brought a Road Show to Orlando.
to that brand’s target audience. Keeping that in mind, here are some tactics that worked:
Although the brand wanted to expand with a handful of new franchises, to get a financial return on the cost of hosting a road show, the franchisor only needed to sell one new franchise territory. We developed a PR plan that ended up being so successful, we used this concept for other franchise brands.
• Deliver the press releases to media channels that are most appropriate, using previously established relationships with the industry’s local media and journalists.
How we did it Every franchise brand is different, and the Road Shows should be designed to appeal
• Craft engaging and focused press releases that announce the franchise brand’s Road Show and the opportunity to attend a smaller-scale discovery days event right in the prospects’ back yard.
• Invite local area media (including radio, TV and print) to interview the brand’s franchise experts about the potential for bringing the brand to the area. Bringing new employment opportunities is always
