How to Keep Your Franchise on Brand

Young business owner at coffee shop wearing branded apron.

 

Maintaining brand consistency is one of the most important, if not most difficult, responsibilities of any franchise. Without it, you risk creating customer confusion that weakens brand recognition.

When a brand is consistent, across its multiple franchisees, it becomes easily recognizable by both new and returning customers. And if customers have already associated a positive emotion with that brand, they will come to expect that same experience across all store locations (and marketing touch points). To put it simply, consistency helps build trust with customers and boost their loyalty.

In contrast, when a brand struggles with consistency, it spoils the relationships you’ve worked so hard to build with customers, as well as undermines your brand’s integrity.

According to Forbes, “…consistency…is the lifeblood of your franchise network – franchisees will join you and customers will come to you because of the surety factor of being part of an established and recognized brand.”

Of course, there are many ways to help keep your franchise consistent, including:

  • Creating a brand style guide
  • Establishing core values and customer service practices
  • Offering brand training to new franchisee partners
  • Staying connected with franchisee partners
  • Providing approved copy/messaging for advertising needs
  • Monitoring franchisees for consistency across social media platforms

Those are all effective strategies, but once you have the style guide and messaging in tow, a better way to ensure your franchisees are using your brand’s approved fonts, logos, and color schemes is by creating a digital storefront for them to purchase gear and other essential franchise merch to stock their stores and dress their team.

At Foxtrot Marketing Group, we help franchise owners build and manage their digital storefronts to improve consistency across every store that carries their trademark!

By customizing your storefront, you can ensure franchisees only use your approved brand merch. You also allow them instant access to new items, as they become available. 

3 Franchise Merchandise Essentials

Though your options are endless when it comes to customizing your storefront, we wanted to provide a few franchise accessories and merch items that we know your franchisees will love.

Custom Employee Apparel

If your brand prides itself on ensuring employees look uniform in front of customers, our storefront makes it fast and easy for franchisees to choose from your approved brand colors and logos to get the gear they need!

Retailer Gear

We also offer popular retail brands to sport your logo. That means if you decide to offer Nike®, Under Armour®, or The North Face® apparel items that feature your brand’s logo design, your franchisees will have access to these items, as well.

The best part? Our storefronts allow you to ensure consistency right down to the last stitch. That means if wearing your brand’s logo on the right sleeve of a polo t-shirt goes against your guidelines, we won’t make it an option to choose from in the store. However, if employees are allowed to wear the logo on the right sleeve for yellow shirts only, we’ll ensure this option is ONLY available for this particular color. 

“It is sometimes tempting for the franchisee to use the logo on unapproved marketing material, but this practice should not be allowed. Any change in color, font or even inappropriate usage of the logo may weaken the brand image and cause brand confusion,” (International Franchise Association).

Custom Drinkware

Staying hydrated on the job is important! But rather than have employees bring in water bottles or travel mugs that advertise other company logos, why not provide them with your own branded drinkware. 

Don’t forget, employees are likely to take their drinkwear to the store, and around town when they’re not on the clock. This is free advertising for your brand and a great way to boost brand loyalty—not just for your customers, but for your franchise’s employees, too.

Let’s also not forget that when you offer the type of gear employees want to wear, and carry around, they’re more likely to stick to your franchise’s dress code and improve consistency. 

Need Help Keeping Franchisees Consistent?

Ensuring brand consistency across multiple locations is a challenge for anyone. But at Foxtrot Marketing Group, we make it fun and easy to provide your franchisees with easy access to brand-approved merch and accessories, while at the same time, allowing you to control the look and feel of the brand:

“Quality control systems for a company’s products or services are perhaps the most important area of consistency, ” (IFA).

To learn more about how we can help, contact us for a free live demo of our storefront solutions!