The Secret to Better Brand Consistency Across Your Franchise Company

The Secret to Better Brand Consistency Across Your Franchise Company

Do you feel like your franchise company has a strong brand with clear guidelines for its look, feel, and messaging, but adoption and execution of the brand standards across your company’s locations is inconsistent at best? Are your brand managers fretting that some storefronts are still handing out business cards with the old logo printed across the top, while others aren’t using the updated campaign flyers?

 Encouraging better brand consistency across your entire company is no walk in the park. Your first instinct to solve the problem might be to lock a bunch of brand managers in a conference room until they create an exhaustive list of rules regarding the proper use of your brand, and then unceremoniously dropping it off on the desks of your franchisees. (They can handle it, right?)

Unfortunately, this tactic will make you feel like you have the weight of brand enforcement on your shoulders, while your franchisees will grumble about managing the branding at their locations all by themselves. Not to mention all this work still won’t guarantee the guidelines are successfully put into action. Luckily, there is a tool that makes managing your brand standards 1000% easier – brand management software.  

How Does Brand Management Software Work?

Brand management software is an answer to headaches for franchisors and franchisees. The software provides an online portal everyone in your company can access for their needs across the entire marketing journey. Users can access the company’s brand guidelines along with (approved!) branded marketing collateral and vendors for production of these items.

On the corporate level, brand managers can upload every brand asset in its 100% vetted and approved format and easily update or remove outdated pieces. Items ranging from business cards, flyers, brochures, company shirts, pens, mugs, tradeshow items, and more can be managed from the system, allowing brand managers to instantly disseminate them to franchisees with the click of a button.

Franchisees will have an easier time running campaigns as well. Rather than franchise owners finding their own materials, (such as a coffee tumbler), submitting a request to corporate to purchase branded versions, then being refused for being off brand, (the tumblers are the wrong color), you can have approved tumblers uploaded to the system. All a franchisee has to do is log on to the system and order the tumblers from there, no questions asked.

More Time to Perfect Your Brand

Once your company implements brand management software and your marketing team no longer has to be the brand compliance police, you may find yourselves with more time on your hands for taking your brand to the next level. Now that all your branded materials are stored in one place, it’s easier to see where you have gaps in your branding. Do you need to update some assets or create a new type of campaign? Just check your platform.

 It’s also easier to collaborate with your franchise owners on brand updates and changes. Your franchise owners are experts in how your brand is perceived in the real world. Listening to them for suggestions can reveal opportunities you never knew you had for your brand (a partnership with a local influencer?), as well as messaging issues you may not be aware of at the corporate level (is the St. Patrick’s Day campaign falling flat with customers?). If you take their opinions into account, your franchisees will feel more ownership of the brand – a win-win.

Choosing the Right Brand Management Platform

There are a lot of marketing platforms on the market to choose from, but when it comes to franchise marketing, Xpressdocs’ platform knocks it out of the park. Xpressdocs has been a trusted marketing partner for many well-known franchise brands for over 20 years, and we offer tools for marketing consolidation and brand consistency that are used daily by franchisors and franchisees all around the country. The customizable platform allows for easy curation and dissemination of approved branded collateral to your company’s locations – no matter where they are.