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5 Questions for Your Franchisor

Crisis Management

By Shawn Saraga

It is often said that in times of crisis, cooler heads prevail. This statement is easy to make before disaster strikes—but how do you actually keep a cool head when an emergency pops up? As a new franchisee, you will inevitably encounter difficult predicaments. These can vary from personal crises (e.g. losing a loved one) to business emergencies (e.g. fire, floods, robberies, etc.).


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Success Stories

3 Tips to Deliver Effective Local Store Marketing

A huge priority for our chain is our increased focus on working with our franchisees to develop and implement effective local marketing programs.   “Our franchisees know their customers and communities best, and we need to provide them with the tools to strengthen this relationship” says Melanie Correia, Marketing Manager.    “Our goal for Local Store Marketing is to strengthen and expand the relationship between the local Shoeless Joe’s restaurant and its immediate community.”  

Here are 3 Tips to deliver effective Local Store Marketing.

1) LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

The first step in creating meaningful offers is to listen carefully to customer feedback.   Our in-store Customer Comment Card is an effective vehicle to collect this feedback.   This feedback is critical to improving our current offerings and creating new programs, to increase customer satisfaction.   We should also ask our customers to provide us with their preferred mode of communication.   On an ongoing basis, we can then communicate our latest offers and program to our customers through their preferred means of communication (eg. Email, SMS texting, Social media, etc.).   This will allow you to effectively and efficiently communicate your latest promotions, contest prizes, food and drink innovations to our loyal customers in a timely manner.  

 2) SUPPORT YOUR COMMUNITY

Sponsoring local sports teams supports our brand’s alignment to sports and is a great way to support your community.  Local teams take advantage of our very successful Home Team Advantage program, which encourages them to use their local Shoeless Joe’s locations for team meetings and parties.   In addition, Shoeless Joe’s also partners with leagues like the Ontario Minor Hockey Association.  We provide over 300,000 Player of the Game certificates every year that offer Free Meals to the winner!   In addition, hosting local charity events, partnering with the Local Chamber of Commerce and Town Hall, and planning other special events all provide great opportunities to further engage and support your local community

3) MEASURE YOUR LOCAL CAMPAIGNS

Whether you are spending your local marketing funds on newspaper or radio advertising, billboard signs, direct mail or other promotional offers, it is essential that you track and measure your results.   You need to know that your hard-earned dollars are working for you.   Compare your results against the dollars spent for all your campaigns.   Identify the winners and discard the losers.   This will help you identify the most effective campaigns to deepen your relationship with your customers. 

We hope these tips help you enjoy a very successful year!