Brands can be quite influential with the right approach to community- and relationship-building. And if you’re able to build an iconic brand, you may even be able to translate it into another longstanding Aussie franchise.
But (and to use a somewhat cliched phrasing here) with great expansion comes great responsibility. The more your brand grows, the stronger your trust signals will need to be to ensure your brand reputation stays consistent across all franchise stores.
So what trust factors should you be accounting for when scaling your brand into a franchise? Here are 10 of the most crucial you’ll need to consider when setting up not only your physical storefronts but also your marketing campaigns, signage and advertising, and your wider online presence.
1. Licensing & Certification
Your company website will oftentimes be the first port of call for curious consumers who want to learn more about your brand. As such, you’ll want to make sure your website boasts potent trust signals like certification badges (i.e. industry accreditations and ISO certification).
Specifically, ISO 9001 Certification in Australia is widely recognised as a foundational trust signal in virtually all enterprises, namely because it speaks to an internationally standardised level of quality management. ISO 14001, 45001, or 27001 may also be great trust signals for your franchise brand.
Alongside internationally recognised certification, franchisors can also benefit from ensuring all their staff and franchise holders secure the relevant industry licensing and qualifications to work in your market or industry. If you’re operating a restaurant that’s serving drinks for instance, make sure all your staff hold valid RSAs, alongside any other necessary food handling or hospitality certification.
2. CSR (Company Values)
On top of displaying certification badges on your website, franchises can also benefit from including a strong CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) page that outlines their business values and mission statement. Your CSR messaging should ideally include values that drive your brand, as well as CSR initiatives that showcase how your company puts those values into action every day. This could be local initiatives like sponsoring community football clubs, or even participating in international initiatives like donating to disaster relief funds.
Note too that CSR is a prime tenet of purpose-driven franchising, which is gaining a lot of traction in Australia. If you’re looking to establish a franchise brand that gives back akin to a social enterprise model, be sure to familiarise yourself with some of the key elements of purpose-driven franchising to help drive your business development planning.
3. History & Reputation
Every good brand starts with a story, and your customers being able to connect with that story can help drive interest in your business as it grows. Plus, having a great ‘About Us’ page or even an ‘Our Story’ page on your website can be great for driving engagement metrics on your website.
The history of your franchise can also greatly go on to shape your reputation, so you can set the tone for how you want your brand to be perceived both in the present and even in the future. Recording the evolution of your business over time (i.e. with an interactive company timeline on your website) can also provide your customer base with a stronger sense of longevity in your brand that will also help to cultivate consumer trust and loyalty.
4. Value Transparency
Consumers value brands that are respectful towards them, and the foundation of respect in any commercial context is maintaining fair and transparent dealings. If your products or services are fairly valued and your brand also communicates a commitment to maintaining this value transparency, you’ll be better positioned to build a loyal customer base for your franchise brand.
For franchisors, make sure your value systems for products and services also stay consistent from shop to shop. This is where having robust policies for franchisees and other operational documents can help maintain a sense of consistency in your customer experience across your brand.
5. Customer Service Systems
Speaking of your customer experience, what does your complaints process look like? Ideally, nobody should have to use it at all but on the off chance that somebody does, you want to make sure that they’re met with genuine empathy and understanding at every stage of the process.
In the same vein, if you rely on booking systems for your franchise, then you’ll need to make sure that these systems provide a satisfying user experience for your customers. Otherwise, you may be hurting your conversion rates.
Simply put, customer service systems are foundational to consumers interacting directly with your brand. Everything from your website and booking or appointment portal to your phone etiquette and customer compensation processes can help shape someone’s perception of your business over the long term. So get your customer service systems standardised and keep them updated at all times.
6. Referral Program
Yes, digital advertising can develop strong returns – but for Aussie consumers who love to shop local and build connections, word of mouth still reigns supreme even today. The best way to strengthen your brand through word of mouth is to offer referral programs.
Not only do these provide value to your customer base, but they also present your franchise as a customer-centric brand, or a business that’s determined to keep finding new and dynamic ways to offer value to their community.
It’s also not too difficult to set up a referral program that sticks. You could trial knocking a few dollars off the next purchase for a referring customer and their referral, and you can even offer fun incentives for customers who surpass a set number of total referrals. Experiment!
7. Digital Security
So much of business is done online now, to the point where we may not even bat an eyelid anymore when a website asks for our card details. But if your customers are sharing their sensitive financial data with you, you have a responsibility to protect this information for them.
Data breaches are a surefire way of tarnishing your brand reputation irreparably – but they can also end up being very costly mistakes if they evolve into insurance claims made against you. So invest in security measures for your domain and implement a cybersecurity policy for your franchise brand that helps to safeguard your company information too, both across your website as well as your marketing channels (i.e. social media, email marketing, etc.).
8. Strong Brand Assets
Have you ever seen a poster with pixelated or low-quality images? Chances are you walked away without a very strong impression of the brand behind the ad. The same goes for your franchise’s brand assets.
If you’re working with low quality files for your website and social media content, your brand can start to look quite spammy and generally untrustworthy. So it pays to make sure all the assets in your brand bank are of a high quality. This means using PNG files for transparent logos, branded images, and even ensuring your font usage is consistent so that customers can tell the difference between your brand’s authentic messaging and potential copycats. In short, strong brand assets can even be regarded as foundational for your digital security too!
9. Consistent Web Presence
Just as your brand assets must be consistent, so too should your brand visibility as well as the way your brand interacts with people online. A great place to start here is simply by making sure all your franchisee’s social media accounts (i.e. location-specific accounts) are adhering to the same brand tone of voice guidelines.
If you’re utilising Google Maps listings and posting business updates across all stores here as well, you’ll also greatly benefit from maintaining a strong company calendar for managing these updates. That way, all your franchisees are sharing consistent messaging at the same time.
10. Google Reviews
And finally, there’s no better method for measuring your brand’s reputation than looking at your Google reviews. These are often the first trust signal that consumers find when they look you up online, so it’s imperative that you maintain a strong rating and respond to all your Google reviewers accordingly.
Yes, 5-star ratings can be notoriously difficult to maintain. All it takes is one bad review to take your business from a perfect score down to a 4.5 or even lower. But so long as the good reviews outweigh the bad ones, you can ensure that your brand’s Google presence inspires confidence.
Build your Franchise on a Foundation of Trust
Ultimately, investing in trust factors for your brand really revolves around thinking about what consumers are most likely to value – and meeting those expectations. With a conscientious, user-focused approach, you can make sure that interactions with your franchise brand are always positive and satisfying for your customers. And that’s the recipe for creating a franchise that becomes iconic.
