What do McDonald’s iconic golden arches and Krispy Kreme’s doughnuts have in common? They are both shining examples of brand consistency for multi-location businesses or franchises. The two brands rely on these attributes to differentiate themselves from the competition. However, at the same time, many customers use the golden arches and doughnuts to quickly identify the two brands, no matter where they are in the world.
So, how do franchises get to this status of recognition? Through brand consistency. This article will discuss why a branding strategy for franchises is important, how to achieve brand consistency for franchises and how to market a franchise business.
Why Brand Consistency is Core To Franchises’ Success
Brand consistency across your franchise is essential for a few critical reasons.
1. It earns trust and loyalty
Maintaining brand consistency is crucial for building and retaining customer trust and loyalty.
Consider your brand as your customers' expectations regarding your products or services. If the customer has an experience (at any franchise location) that doesn’t meet these expectations, it would negatively impact their perception of your brand. Ensuring consistency across all branding and customer interactions helps protect your brand’s reputation by reducing the likelihood of any damage.
2. It makes franchise marketing more effective
A consistent branding strategy for franchises also enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of franchise marketing efforts. By ensuring that all promotional activities reflect your brand’s unique personality, convey a cohesive message and adhere to your brand’s distinct design style, your brand achieves instant recognition. This is particularly valuable in crowded marketplaces. Also, a uniform branding approach removes the necessity for creating expensive, location-specific marketing campaigns.
3. It appeals to potential franchisees
Finally, brand consistency is key to a franchise’s success as it appeals to potential franchisees. It indicates that your brand is stable, unified, and possesses well-defined systems. On the other hand, inconsistent branding could lead potential franchisees to question your capacity to offer effective guidance and support to franchisees.
The Key To Achieving Brand Consistency For Franchise Businesses
Now that you know why brand consistency is important, how can you effectively portray it?
1. Establish clear brand guidelines
The first step to achieving brand consistency is clearly defining your brand guidelines, such as logo usage, messaging tone and customer service goals, and communicating them to your franchisees.
2. Implement training and support programs
The second step to providing and maintaining brand consistency is to offer in-depth training for franchisees and their employees on the brand’s values, voice and visual identity to foster consistent customer experiences. You should also offer your franchisees and their employees the tools and resources, such as templates, manuals, and checklists, to help them implement your brand standards.
3. Monitor and measure brand performance
The third step to ensuring brand consistency is regularly reviewing franchisee operations and marketing efforts to ensure adherence to brand guidelines. You can do this through surveys, audits, mystery shopping, online reviews and analytics.
4. Celebrate success
The fourth step to achieving brand consistency is to reward and share the achievements of franchisees who exemplify brand consistency, inspiring others to follow suit. You should also provide franchisees with incentives and recognition programs to motivate them to deliver a consistent brand experience continuously.
5. Collect and act on feedback
The fifth and final step to achieving brand consistency is to collect and act on feedback. By regularly gathering feedback from customers and franchisees, you can identify areas for improvement and ensure the brand remains relevant and consistent across all touchpoints. Through this, you can improve your brand consistency and satisfaction and build trust and engagement among your franchise network.
How To Measure Brand Consistency in Franchises
Measuring brand consistency within franchises involves evaluating how well each franchise location adheres to the established brand guidelines and contributes to a cohesive brand image and experience across the network. So, how can you measure brand consistency in franchises?
While it’s hard to use a metric to track levels of brand consistency, there are a few indicators that you can monitor, such as:
- Brand guideline views: If your brand guidelines are online, the analytics section can give you an indication of how many times people view them.
- Template usage: If you have templates for your teams, the analytics can show you how often a template is viewed and used. You can also look at which teams or individuals use them more frequently.
- Brand audits: Conduct brand audits across all franchise locations to assess adherence to guidelines, messaging tone and customer experience standards.
- Customer feedback and surveys: Collect and analyse customer feedback and surveys to indicate the consistency of customer experiences across different franchise locations.
- Mystery shoppers: Employ mystery shoppers to experience the service and brand representation at various franchise locations. This can provide insights into how well each location upholds the brand’s standards from a customer’s point of view.
- Evaluate the digital presence: Review the franchise’s digital platforms, such as websites and social media accounts, for consistency in brand messaging, visual elements and user experience.
Achieve Brand Consistency Within Your Franchises with Anchor
Brand consistency is extremely important no matter your business, but it’s even more important regarding franchises. When you visit a McDonald’s, you always expect to see the giant golden arches outside with the same branding and interior design inside the restaurant. If you walked into a McDonald’s and saw something completely different, how would that impact your perspective of the brand?
Brand consistency is important for customer satisfaction and loyalty, and that’s where we come in. If you have a franchise network or are considering starting up one, look no further than Anchor.
Our branding and design specialists are here to help you create cohesive branding guidelines to ensure consistency across all of your locations. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your franchise achieve consistency in your branding, drop us a line today.
