Importance of marketing process in franchising

Marketing is a strategic tool to develop every business. A strong marketing strategy is the need of the hour, without which a business cannot run successfully in the market. A franchising business is a twofold marketing strategy, in one way it boosts the sales of the parent company and in another way it also takes care of the franchised outlets. A franchisor is involved in the promotion of the brand at the national level while its franchisees at the local level. According to Rajeev B. Sharma, Country Head, Unicon Investment Solutions India says, “A good marketing plan is a written document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives.” In this article, we have discussed a number of factors that must be taken into consideration to plan the marketing process efficiently.

Marketing Process

The concept of marketing is of a great help to the franchisor and the franchisees to bring value and assure profitability to the franchising business. The marketing plan is customised to understand the needs and demands of the customers and satisfy them equally. The process of marketing involves situation analysis, marketing strategy, marketing-mix decisions, implementation and control.

• Situation Analysis: A thorough analysis of the situation is required to flourish successfully in the fierce competitive market. Every business needs to have an edge over other rivals to achieve sustainable growth.  As customers are the driving force of a business, therefore, a franchisor or franchisee has to analyse the customers’ requirements on regular intervals.  
• Marketing strategy: A franchisor or franchisee has to strategically plan to pursue the required business proposition. It is necessary for you to conduct market research as it provides specific information about the market. Not only this, market information makes it easy for you to target the specific customers and make changes according to the market.
• Marketing-mix decision: Marketing-mix is the basic and tactical element of marketing plan. It includes four Ps i.e. product, price, place and promotion. One can modify the offering (to the customers) by varying the elements of marketing mix. For instance, if your product or service is high profile, then you need to focus more on the promotion part rather than focussing on the price. Similarly, if your offering is meant to the lower middle class then you need to highlight the price tag to allure the target customers. So, marketing-mix holds the most important part of marketing process.
• Implementation and control: Once you have placed your product in the market and promoted it through various mediums of communication, the next step would be to monitor it closely. Monitoring the marketing process is necessary in order to incorporate the necessary changes. As the market keeps on changing it becomes essential to accommodate the changes to ensure the sales at various franchised outlets.

Thus, we see that marketing process is an integrated process through which companies operate and fulfil its business targets. It’s well said that business and marketing are interdependent and complementary to each other and when done tactfully can help you meet the desired business targets.