Do Business Well

Creating a public image has become an essential part of any sales effort. Advertising and promotion/public relations are usually the means of making this happen.

Advertising is fairly straightforward. You decide where youwant your business to advertise, determine the rates, and calculate the costs. For well-established companies, advertising can be very important, and the business plan should account for how much will be spent.

For start-up and early-stage companies, advertising is often too costly. Fortunately, promotion and public relations are much like home remodeling—they can be done either by outside professionals or by business owners on a do-it-yourself basis. When done in the latter way, the cash outlay can be minimal. Of course, even companies that advertise are well advised to use promotion and public relations techniques. What follows are some approaches for planning your promotion and public relations effort as part of the sales section of the business plan. Continue Reading »

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• Aggressive brand building. Marketing efforts in the widest sense of the word must surely rank among the franchisor’s prime obligations. Market research and product development are of equal importance. All these activities, if performed diligently, will result in tangible benefits for franchisees and go a long way towards ensuring harmonious relations.
• Clear channels of communication. Franchisees hate it if they have a problem and cannot reach anyone who has the knowledge and / or the necessary authority to offer an immediate solution, as this can cost them business. They expect a system to be in place that is capable of taking care of all foreseeable problem-solving needs, promptly and efficiently. Moreover, franchisees like to be kept informed of new developments within the network before the public gets to hear about them. Few things can be more unsettling for a franchisee, especially if he is relatively new in the business and not all that sure of himself, than to be told by a prospective customer about new developments within his network of which he had no prior knowledge.

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