Franchise Your Business: Doing Competitive Research

by Franchise Marketing Systems | Case Studies
4 minutes
Franchise Your Business Research

When considering how to Franchise Your Business, the process requires a significant amount of research and planning in order to make the right business decisions. Franchising is an extremely unique market niche and requires a detailed understanding of it in order to not only decide whether to get into the business, but also how to develop a successful franchise expansion strategy. Similar to if you launched a new business, new product or a new service offering, you should know and understand the market you are getting into when you franchise your business model and how best to position your brand for success as a franchise offering.

If you were to Franchise Your Business, one of the first steps would be to conduct a series of franchise research studies to truly understand what your particular industry segment looks like in the franchise marketplace. Knowing your franchise comps and understanding who you will be competing with from a franchise industry standpoint is instrumental in having the right platform to franchise your business model. If you are in the sandwich business, the fast casual sandwich franchises should be reviewed and understood as to how they implemented and executed their franchise expansion strategy. There should also be a legitimate study done on the financial dynamics of your franchise competitors. What are the other franchise model’s ROI, typically unit cash flow and franchise fee structure? Where have they marketed and how have they closed new franchise acquisitions?

In order to Franchise Your Business, the research should be all inclusive. Every element of the franchise competition should be reviewed to best position your franchise concept. Territory is always a key variable, how big or small of an area will you provide to a franchisee when they invest in your franchise concept? What is the initial investment? Particularly in today’s market, the initial investment can be one of the largest single influencers in a new franchise’s ability to get off the ground and launch the franchise model.

How can you research your competition when you franchise your business model?

  1. Start with the public information. Through franchise sites such as www.Entrepreneur.com, www.FranchiseConduit.com, www.TheFranchiseCourier.com and www.FranchiseIndustryBlog.com you have access to a lot of great industry data and background on franchise brands and the franchise industry you can use to build your franchise business plan.
  1. Next, go to the franchise state sites that list franchise industry information, the California state site (https://docqnet.dfpi.ca.gov/) offers a fully functional franchise portal where you can download any FDD’s, Franchise Forms and get information on any franchise brand that has registered their franchise in California. The franchise registration site for Indiana (https://securities.sos.in.gov/public-portfolio-search/) also has information on this in addition to the Minnesota state site.
  1. Third party franchise databases and portals are also available where you can pay for a FDD download or pay a membership to have access to all FDD’s they have collected and stored in their databases.
  1. Make some phone calls. Call people who own franchises, the franchisor, act like you might invest in a franchise (Who knows, you might!) and do some in person research to understand what others are doing in the market and how you can best compete with your franchise offering.
  1. Look at the consumer research to understand what the market potential is and how much growth/upside might be if you franchise your business. You want to make sure that the consumer market is there to support your franchise growth.

For more information on how to Franchise Your Business and Franchise Research, please contact the corporate office:

(800) 610-0292

or

Email Chris Conner to discuss the franchise research process in more detail: [email protected]

Franchise Marketing Systems
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