Finding the right franchisees

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Finding the right franchisees

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Tom Scarda:

We have a great guest tonight, something a little bit different than what we’re usually doing out there on the podcast and we’re working today with Sparktank Franchise Marketing Company. Juliette is with us and Juliette, I’m not pronouncing your last name correctly, so-

Juliette:

It’s a little bit of a tough one. It’s Juliette Schmerler. It’s a tough one to pronounce.

Tom Scarda:

Juliette Schmerler. So Juliette founded Sparktank Franchise Marketing, which is a boutique marketing agency that specializes in franchising proven campaigns and local marketing for franchisees. In business since 2001, so almost two decades solid, Juliette has been working with national and emerging franchise brands across Canada and the US.

And you’re based in Canada, is that right?

Juliette:

That’s right, yeah. we’re in Vancouver, BC.

Tom Scarda:

Cool. I was there last summer.

Juliette:

Oh yeah? Yeah, summer’s a good time to be here. It’s not too rainy. It’s pretty rainy the rest of the year.

Tom Scarda:

I’ve been to Vancouver. Oh my goodness, it was awesome.

Juliette:

Yeah.

Tom Scarda:

A little bit of a foodie town and I’m a little bit of a foodie.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, it is a great place for restaurants. I actually grew up in Toronto, so I love the milder climate out here and being close to the ocean and the mountains, so it’s great.

Tom Scarda:

It is a beautiful spot. Absolutely. So how did you get into this kind of marketing that you’re doing for franchise companies?

Juliette Schmerler:

Well, when we started out we were actually more of a generalist firm doing marketing and website development for all kinds of businesses. But we started to work with franchises and I found that I was really drawn to the franchise model. I come from a pretty entrepreneurial background and I just love the way that the franchise industry creates all these opportunities for people to own their own businesses. I love all the systems and the branding and everything that goes into franchising. So w decided to specialize a little bit more and start working with the franchise industry.

One of the things they say is really important to do with marketing is to figure out what is the problem that you can solve for your audience. I think one of the biggest challenges in the franchise world is finding the right franchisees. It’s a challenging thing to find people who are ready to make a big change like that in their life and consider a franchise opportunity.

I just started to really dig into what was needed to develop programs around recruiting franchisees and it just really took off. There was a lot of demand for that and we were able to combine our knowledge in website development and developing marketing materials with lead generation and lead nurturing and all kinds of things. We developed programs specifically geared to that.

Tom Scarda:

It’s an awesome thing and we say franchising is so different than your regular mom and pop businesses or your big corporate entities that are out there. You have so many local franchisees that lead the franchise war itself. That’s why they bought a franchise, right? It’s a business with training wheels.

So somebody like me, when I bought my first franchise, I had no idea how to do any kind of marketing. I didn’t even know what marketing was. I thought it was advertising. Okay.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah.

Tom Scarda:

So I needed help from people like you.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah. I think the appeal of the franchise model is that you get to some extent a business in a box. You still have to make it work and you still have to make it happen, but you benefit from the franchise or his experience and the relationships they have and where they’ve tested everything out and ironed everything out hopefully before you come along.

And so it’s a nice, slightly less risky way to jump into entrepreneurship.

Tom Scarda:

No, absolutely, and you know that’s what this whole show is about. We have a lot of people that are listening in that want to buy a franchise. Other people that want to franchise that particular business. We have a lot of CEOs of franchise companies that are listening in, not to mention lawyers and suppliers to the franchise industry.

So the content that you are sharing tonight is really just par for the course for the listeners on every level. So I’m excited to have you.

One thing that is on a lot of people’s mind, and I have my notes here, what information and feature should be or share franchise recruitment website have? Franchisee and website is different then the public consumer website. Right?

Juliette Schmerler:

Right. We have a program called the franchise growth program and there are three stages to that. And the first stage that we go through with with our clients is to help them develop their marketing materials so that when somebody is looking at a franchise opportunity, and nowadays this would be internet, people are doing a ton more research before they even reach out to talk to a salesperson. So you really want to make sure all your ducks are in a row when you’re putting your mess judging out there.

So one of the biggest things is obviously having a really great franchise recruitment website and that’s, like you said, it’s separate from your consumer site because the messaging and all the information is geared to a potential franchisee as opposed to a consumer who might be buying your hamburgers or joining your gym or what have you.

So some of the things that are really important are, first of all you want to tell your story about your franchise. What is this about? Who is this for? Who’s behind the franchise? Present an authentic story of who started this and who are the key players in the franchise.

I think it’s also really important to have a section where you tell potential franchisees what you have to offer. So what kind of support are you offering? Are you going to give them help with marketing, operations, location, finding a location, if that’s relevant, financing, all that sort of thing to help them feel at ease and understand what the benefit is of joining your franchise.

Another thing that I think is really, really key in a franchise recruitment site is to have testimonials, case studies, ideally videos of franchisees talking about their experience with your brand because there’s really nothing that sells a franchise more than hearing a real life story of somebody who for whatever reason they decided to jump on board and become a franchisee and talking about what a positive experience they’ve had. I just think that just brings, it becomes so much more relatable and real to the prospect to actually hear real stories of people who’ve had a success with the franchise.

And then I think the last thing that’s really important that people often forget is to have a super strong call to action, because you want to make it easy for somebody to take the next step. Because the franchise recruitment site is really just a place for people to get information and reach out to a salesperson.

So just try to not have too many distractions on your website and have it really easy for them to find a place where they can download an information kit or sign up to attend a Webinar or just fill out their information so that they can take the next step. So make it super easy to find, especially for people who are on mobile devices since you just want to easily find that spot to move forward with the process.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. And that’s the way it is now. Everybody’s on mobile.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yes.

Tom Scarda:

Looking at everything that they want to look at. Well I shouldn’t say everybody, but I think the stats are somewhere around 60 or 70% of website views are happening through a phone as opposed to a laptop or desktop.

Juliette Schmerler:

Absolutely. Yeah. You really want to make it so that the information is concise, easy to find, mobile friendly. And especially if you’re sending people to a website through social media advertising, like Facebook advertising, actually the numbers are even higher on there. So as opposed to someone coming right to your site from some other source, if they’ve come from like a Facebook ad, it’s something like 90% of people are actually on mobile devices.

So you want to give them good information and make it easy to find. Not overwhelm them but make it super easy to take action.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, no question about it. And it’s really interesting that you mentioned the whole social media thing. Do you think that Facebook and those kinds of things are good recruiting sites for franchisees and franchise or are they pounding their money into social media to get new franchisees?

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, we’ve actually had pretty good success with digital advertising. We used Facebook and LinkedIn, and Facebook is a great tool for … There’s sort of different ways that you can target people on Facebook. The biggest thing is there’s a lot of data on Facebook about people’s interests, so you can target people according to their basic demographics, like their age and geography where they’re located if you’re wanting to find franchisees in a specific location.

And then you can look at things like interests. You can actually target people according to interests, like if they an interest in business, if they’re interested in franchise operations, you can actually find people who specifically have those types of business interests.

And then you can even go  another level deeper. So if you have, let’s say like a fitness franchise, well you know somebody with a fitness background or has an interest in health and wellness is going to be a little more drawn to a fitness franchise than your average everyday person. So you can layer on that interest in your advertising.

So there’s a lot of really interesting things you can do with Facebook to try to target the right people. And not every lead that comes in through Facebook is going to be a good lead, but it’s a bit of a numbers game. So if you invest enough in your adverting, you’re going to get people that come through that are a good fit and some of them are going to go to your site and they’re not going to convert. But we have found that we definitely get leads through Facebook.

And then LinkedIn is great in a totally different way because LinkedIn being a more of a business B2B channel, it’s a great place to find specific professionals. So for example, we had a franchise that we worked with that was dealing with senior care, so helping in house elderly care. And they found that people who had like a background in nursing, pharmaceutical reps, which is an interesting one that I wouldn’t have thought of, but this franchisor knew that this group were pretty good with sales and business and that sort of thing. And just people generally in the sort of the health and medical background tended to be drawn to this franchise opportunity.

So in their case we thought that LinkedIn would be a better channel and we really targeted people with that specific background. And with LinkedIn you can get that kind of information more so than with Facebook. So Facebook is a little more interest based, whereas LinkedIn you can go after specific professionals. So that was a really good channel for that type of franchise.

So we tend to look at the franchise and go, “Okay, where do we think their audience is? Who’s their ideal franchisee and where’s the best channel to find those people?

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, no question about it. You know, there’s great success on all the social media channels, but it comes down to consistency and also finding the right avatar. Who is the real person that’s going to relate to your franchise-

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah.

Tom Scarda:

And has money.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, it is a bit of a screening process and you know there’s some trial and error that happens when you do advertising and not just figuring out well who is this the right market and who do we want to target? But also like the messaging and what connects with people. So what do you say in your ad that maybe makes somebody take action?

We noticed that video ads do super well. They just, again, it’s that whole telling that story, showing a franchisee telling their story, it’s super engaging. You know, you’re on your mobile phone, you see a nice video, it just grabs your attention. So we’ve learned over the years what type of messaging and what media you can use to really get people to engage more.

Tom Scarda:

Absolutely. Every once in a while, if you’re watching a video on Facebook live, we’re having a freeze screen problem every once in awhile, but that’s the darn internet. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, true enough.

Tom Scarda:

When I have a complaint, call Al Gore.

So what are the challenges in really finding a great franchisee for a concept regardless of the type of genre that they need?  How do you find the right franchisees?

Juliette Schmerler:

Good question. There’s definitely challenges because you’re asking somebody to basically invest their money, change their life to start a business. So it’s not like selling a pair of shoes where somebody can make a quick decision. There’s a really long, generally speaking, there’s a pretty long buying cycle with franchise sales.

But yeah, I think that, it’s about finding people who are ready to take action, who have the money in some cases. I mean there are some franchise concepts that are more expensive than others. Like if there’s, now there’s a lot of mobile businesses where somebody can get in for 40 grand or something like that and then you can go up to 300 thousand or 1 Million including retail set-up.

So finding people, obviously if it’s a little bit more expensive concept it’s a little harder to find people who financially are able to do it.

I think suitability too. I think a good franchise is not going to just take anyone who just wants to join. They want to find somebody who’s going to be that right fit, who has good managerial skills, good people skills, who is suitable to run a business.

So there’s so many things that you’re looking for in that person and they have to show that they’re really committed and take all those steps to sort of get to the next level. So it is kind of a tricky thing. I mean they say that one in a hundred leads in franchise recruitment actually become franchisees. So you do have to filter through a lot of people before you find that right person.

Tom Scarda:

No question about it. And you know, I don’t share that with my candidates cause I spend my days matching people with franchise opportunities, and I’ve been doing it since 2005. I found my first franchise doing franchise consulting back in 2000. And I always share with folks, aside from having all the experience and having the money to do it, your choice is not franchise A or franchise B. Your choice is always a choice between uncertainty or unhappiness.

Juliette Schmerler:

Right.

Tom Scarda:

Right? So many people you know want to do something and like you said, a hundred people will contact the franchise company. Only one person will buy the franchise. And it’s mostly because of fear of the unknown. Fear of taking a chance on themselves. And it’s kind of sad in my opinion. But that’s what I help people do, is discover their own self confidence because they’ve done great things in their life. They just feel like I’m just a regular guy.

But people have done great things in their career, and they finished all sorts of college and MBAs and whatever, and that ain’t easy. So running a business is not easy either.

But for some people it’s fine, just working a job. But for other people it’s just not good and they need to make a change. And so that’s what we help people do, is change. That’s the main.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah. I agree. And I think starting a business can be a really scary thing. And I think franchising bridges that fear a little bit because you have somebody who’s going to guide you, hopefully, and you have support. And so I think it helps people who are a little bit scared to go on their own.

And it’s also a proven model, right? So it gives you a little bit more security than if you completely started from scratch. Right?

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. A franchise is a business with training wheels. I got that phrase from my friend and mentor Brooke [00:15:37] Schroeder. And I am always saying that phrase because I don’t think there’s anything that describes it better.

But at the same time there’s some ways around 4000 franchises available and United States and Canada and they’re not all good franchises. That’s the thing. You got to know how to do your due diligence and understand what a franchise agreement is really, know what you’re really signing, really understand franchise disclosure document. So helping people through that process is really paramount for people like me and the folks I work with at my company.

I wanted to change gears a little bit. Since you’re an entrepreneur, I want to talk to you about entrepreneur stuff-

Juliette Schmerler:

Sure.

Tom Scarda:

That you’ve experienced in your own life. Is there one crazy story or challenge that you ran into where you overcame to make your business work?

Juliette Schmerler:

One thing that happened with my business, because I’ve had it for 20 years like you mentioned, when I started out in 2001 we were basically was just doing websites. And in 2001 when you made websites, you were golden basically. There were not that many people out there doing it. It was super easy to get yourself on the first page of AOL. There wasn’t even Google back then if you wanted to get on the search engine it was a super easy process. There just weren’t a lot of people around doing it.

So when I started out there weren’t a lot of people doing what I was doing and it was a really open market. And then over the years, I think what I realized is that it’s super important to become an expert in something, otherwise you become more of a commodity.

So I started to really take all the skills we had and really think about what I wanted to specialize in and build our expertise in. We had already been working with a few franchises so it seemed like a natural fit. I think that was one of the best decisions that I made as a business owner. Sometimes you have to reinvent yourself. And especially in the world of marketing and technology, it’s always changing and there’s so many more people doing it.

So I think you have to find an area that you really understand well and enjoy which for us was franchising.

Tom Scarda:

It really is. And it’s interesting because there’s certain steps that someone needs to take in order to become an expert. And I often share with folks that buy a franchise through me that they need to be an expert in whatever field it is that they just bought into. And a lot of times, most times, they have no experience in that field at all, but it doesn’t really matter. You need to get quoted in a couple of articles. We need some word of mouth going around the neighborhood about your basics. That’s the first step to becoming an expert in whatever field it is that you’re in.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. And I think that it compounds over time because the more you work with a specific audience, the more you really understand what they need and the more you figure out what works for them and you feel good about it cause you get to know your service and your market really well. And then the people you work with, it builds their confidence in you as well. So it’s a win win.

Tom Scarda:

What’s the greatest piece of advice that you’ve ever gotten in your business life?

Juliette Schmerler:

The best piece of advice I would say just always … I guess creating systems. I think that was probably one of the biggest pieces of advice because I think when you start a business, and I mean this is one of the benefits of having a franchise is a lot of times the systems are kind of built for you. But when I started my business, I remember somebody told me to read the Book E-Myth because at the beginning, like many entrepreneurs, I was doing everything. I was wearing so many hats. And I think that you realize after a while that you can only go so far with that type of a model.

So when you start to develop systems in your business and that allows you to delegate and to make sure that everything gets done the right way. And now I have a team and you know, we are always building systems. We have a have coal project management tool with all these great little systems that we reuse. And it just makes everything flow so much better, everybody on the team knows what it should be done. It allows me to focus on running the business a little more.

So I think that’s a big thing, learning how to delegate, learning how to create systems. That’s really key.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, I agree with that. Delegation was a major thing. It took me years to learn how to delegate when I had my own businesses.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah. And it can be counter intuitive because as a business owner, you always think no one else can do this as well as I can.

Tom Scarda:

Right.

Juliette Schmerler:

But you only have so many hours in a day. So you have to learn to delegate and actually find out that some people are actually better at certain things than you are. So it’s a bit of an eye opener.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, yeah, right. It’s humbling sometimes, isn’t it?

Juliette Schmerler:

Yes, definitely.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. And it’s great, and if you’re listening to this and you’re a business owner or even if you’re not a business owner yet and have not read the book E-Myth, E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, definitely need to check that out.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah.

Tom Scarda:

Stop whatever you’re doing and go buy that book.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yes, definitely.

Tom Scarda:

Right?

Juliette Schmerler:

It’s one of those classic starting out your business books and I think, you know, like he talks about in the book a lot of times people start a business because they’re passionate about something. I think he has an example in there of a baker who loves to bake. So they think I’ll start a business and I’ll get to bake all day. Well actually running a business has very little to do with doing the baking. It’s good that you have a passion for it, but you have to know how to run a business too. Right? So yeah, it’s a great book.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s the biggest problem. It’s like he talks about an auto mechanic and the auto mechanic is like the best mechanic ever. And one day he wakes up and says, I don’t want to work for this jerk anymore. I’m going to go start my own thing. So he goes and he opens up his shop and then he has a couple people follow him over and now he’s doing great, but he doesn’t know how to market.

So one of two things happens either he plateaus and he essentially bought himself a job or he goes out of business because he has no new customers coming. That’s where marketing, marketing, marketing 101 comes in.

Juliette Schmerler:

Absolutely. Yes.

Tom Scarda:

Any other books that come to mind since we’re on the subject of books, because I’m like the audio book person myself. Anything come to mind that you would recommend to the listeners now?

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, actually I just read a really great book called WTF, which is not what you think it stands for. It’s Willing to Fail and it’s written by Brian Scudamore who started the franchise 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which actually started in Vancouver, funny enough. And that’s a huge success story. They started the number of brands inside of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, but 1-800-GOT-JUNK is spread out all over Canada and the US. They’ve got a ton of locations. I think they’re totally sold out now, but they’ve actually started some other brands as well.

But Brian Scudamore writes this book about it’s WTF?! (Willing to Fail), and it’s about his journey into starting a franchise and then building other brands. He just gives a really honest account of his experience in building his company. I just loved it. I think I read it all in like one day and it’s just really easy to read and it’s a great story. It’s very inspiring. He talks about all the ups and downs. He’s really honest about it.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Tom Scarda:

Well that’s great. Yeah. I know Brian personally and we placed many people in 1-800-GOT-JUNK back in the day 15 years ago. They were just breaking out.

So that’s what we do. A lot of times we would help companies that have 25 to 30 franchisees and they want to go national or international. That’s where we come in.

Juliette Schmerler:

Oh yeah. That’s neat that, yeah, he’s really quite a success story.

Tom Scarda:

Great story, super great story. And a super nice guy, giving back all the time to franchisees and the franchise community. So yeah, kudos to Brian and the whole team over there.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah. Yeah. I remember years ago, there’s a bridge in Vancouver called the Burrard Bridge and he put up little 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs all along the bridge, and I’d never seen that before. He was really clever with PR and that kind of thing and yeah, he just got the name out there really well. So yeah, it’s been really neat to see his company evolved.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. If you ever notice if there’s 1-800-GOT-JUNK in your area, they never park their trucks in the yard.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yes.

Tom Scarda:

They will park at the gas station, on the curb, or somewhere where they’re going to be seen. They’re just a standing billboard for the day.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Tom Scarda:

Guerilla marketing, right?

Juliette Schmerler:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom Scarda:

Love that, love it.

What is a myth about franchising? Better yet for you, what’s the one myth about marketing that you would like to break hearing?

Juliette Schmerler:

Myths about marketing? I think one of the things that I think happens sometimes is that this … I see this happen sometimes when I’m working with a new franchise that’s just starting to look for franchisees, is I think that when you have your own business, you’re really in love with your own business and you are passionate about it. And I think sometimes they’re surprised when not everybody is jumping on board immediately, right? They think, “Who wouldn’t want to own this business? This is such a great opportunity.”

So a lot of times when I work with new franchisees, there’s a little bit of coaching. I tell them it’s going to take a while and you’re going need to talk to a lot of people and then people are gonna be skeptical. They’re, they’re gonna ask you questions and don’t take it personally. They don’t have that connection to your brand necessarily, especially if you’re a smaller brand.

So I think one of the things I try to tell new franchises, because I get a lot of times I talk to newer franchises and they say, “I’m going to get like a hundred franchises in the next year, and I tell them, “First of all that’s logistically going to be really challenging for you.” But also it’s going to take you a while to find people who are going to invest and trust in your opportunity. And so I think it’s just a little bit about understanding that marketing takes time, it takes experimentation and especially with something like franchise sales if there is a lot of lead nurturing that needs to go in.

That’s one thing that we talk about with our program too is the whole lead nurturing side of things. It’s not enough to just put up an ad and have somebody  look at your website and maybe fill out an inquiry form. First of all, the salesperson needs to keep following up and checking in and talking to that person. It can take multiple conversations, but you also want to have messaging that goes out like we use automated drip messaging that will send out messages to somebody who’s interested in a franchise with extra information or stories about franchisees, little information likes maybe a charity that your franchise supports. Just keep building that trust with a prospect.

So it’s not an instant thing, it’s a trust building thing. It’s about selling your brand and doing it over time and building that relationship with a prospect. So I think that’s the biggest thing, is just knowing that it just takes time and it there’s a lot of facets to getting somebody to a point where they’re ready to buy.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, no question about it. And especially in this business of franchising, it’s a very emotional, emotional decision and I’ve found in my own marketing that it will take me five to seven emails or videos or whatever to get somebody to say, okay, I’ll talk to you on the phone.

Juliette Schmerler:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.

Tom Scarda:

Especially since there’s so much that’s going on in the buyer’s head.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, absolutely. And people are busy, and maybe they’ve inquired and then they’re not ready to talk about it right away. But I think that’s where that follow up and the lead nurturing and all that kind of thing just helps to get people in that mindset of wanting to at least have a conversation and think about next steps.

Tom Scarda:

No question about it. I think that with the whole marketing thing, I think one mistake that business owners make all the time is they think that they can market to a certain extent and then stop and that’s very counterintuitive. When things start slowing down what you need to do is double up on your marketing. But they’re trying to conserve money. They think marketing is the last thing I need to be doing. And that is just in a great way to crashed the business.

I use an analogy. As a pilot if you ever stall on a plane and the plane starts going down, your instinct is to pull back on the controls to bring the nose up. And actually the method and the procedure is to point the nose down, double down.

Juliette Schmerler:

Right.

Tom Scarda:

So when you doubled down and you wind under your wings, now it gets you some coast time so you can restart the engines.

And that’s I think so incongruent to marketing. When things are slowing down, you have to double down and you’ll get the wind under your wings in your business and you start taking off again.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it’s really interesting how sometimes you’re working on … You’ve got a lead that’s interested and it could be six months later that something happens. Like, maybe their job is driving them crazy and they keep getting those emails from you. So you’re staying top of mind and they’re opening them, they’re reading them. Maybe they aren’t taking action right that minute, but they keep seeing your email or they saw that video you sent to the franchisee talking about their experience.

Then one day their boss pisses them off. They’re like, “You know what, I’m going to call that guy that keeps emailing me and maybe I should do this franchise thing.” But if you didn’t keep in touch with them, they’re just going to forget about you. Because people are just bombarded with messages these days.

So the thing is, if somebody keeps getting your emails and they’re not unsubscribing, that probably means that there’s something there that they’re interested and they want to keep hearing from you. We had a client that sold a franchise eight months after they first advertised to them and through the lead nurturing sequence that they were getting, because all of a sudden the timing was right.

So you’re totally right. You need to keep in touch with people. You need to build that relationship. And you just never know when somebody’s going to jump on board.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, no question. My record I think is first contact to most recent contact was ten years.

Juliette Schmerler:

Oh wow. Really?

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. Yeah, been ten years. So the record so far ten years. That just happened about two months ago.

Juliette Schmerler:

Really?

Tom Scarda:

Yeah. It’s amazing. So you’re so right. And I’m just learning to do that drip campaign stuff. That’s new to a lot of people in my industry, and it’s so effective.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yeah, it is. Especially if your messaging is really authentic, like we try to write really nice customized messages for each franchise so it’s something that doesn’t just sound like it’s a boiler plate messaging. But if you really talk sincerely about what they have to offer and share stories and keep it going and personalize it, I think it is really effective.

Tom Scarda:

Absolutely. Can you tell us how people can get in touch with you if they want some marketing advice?

Juliette Schmerler:

Absolutely. So our website is a sparktankfranchisemarketing.com which is a bit of a long one so I’ll give you an easier URL that we also use, which is findfranchisees.com. So that takes you to our website, findfranchisees.com and then you can see all the information about our business and you can get in touch there.

Tom Scarda:

Findfranchisees.com. That’s [inaudible 00:31:24]

Juliette Schmerler:

Yes I know, I’m surprised that Lee was able to nab that web domain. I was very excited about that.

Tom Scarda:

Yeah, that’s so cool. So cool. I appreciate that. So all that information will be on our website, thefranchiseacademy.com so you can reach out to Juliette directly and if you need anything just get to our website thefranchiseacademy.com and all of Julliette’s information will be there with the web address and emails and all that good stuff. So Juliette I want to thank you for being on The Franchise Academy today.

Juliette Schmerler:

It was my pleasure.

Tom Scarda:

This is great. So as things develop, because you know every ten minutes marketing on social media changes.

Juliette Schmerler:

Yes, that’s true.

Tom Scarda:

We’ll have you back to talk about some more stuff, some new stuff that’ll be happening maybe at the end of this year.

Juliette Schmerler:

That’d be great. I’d love to come back.

Tom Scarda:

Okay, well thanks Juliette. We’ll see you as the ins and outs of franchise association someday soon.

Juliette Schmerler:

Okay. Take care. Nice talking to you.

The above is the full transcript of Sparktank’s onTom Scarda’s ‘The Franchise Academy’ Podcast to discuss finding the right franchisees.