Franchising is a model that allows business owners to grow their businesses and expand the brand. Franchisees buy into a brand that has concept, operations and marketing support. However, franchisees still need to build their own businesses. Successful companies never stop marketing. Consider marketing to be food, not medicine; businesses need ongoing marketing as sustenance, not just a quick burst to cure a problem. Marketing brings in business. So why do so many franchise brands struggle to get franchisees to fully participate in local store marketing?

Although memory lane isn’t a physical street, it’s a place in everyone’s hearts once you reach a certain age.  But for some, memory lane includes reminiscing about a simpler time in history. Before the days of instantaneous uploading, 24/7 access, dings from texts, beeps from Facebook messages, endless emails and a barrage of unsolicited ones too.

In today’s complex and disruptive world, few things are as important to a brand’s success than customer experience (CX). But with customers having more choice and even greater expectations for positive experiences than ever before, delivering on it is sometimes easier said than done. 

In a recent study by Forbes Insights and The Trade Desk, 42% of CMOs identified customer experience as one of their top three challenges, and 36% said improving customer experience is their primary mandate for 2019. Today’s marketers are faced with fragmented media consumption habits, marketing-savvy consumers, and social and political divides at every turn. So, brands have much to gain by strategically balancing their focus (and budget) between customer acquisition and customer retention.

Abraham Maslow created a psychological theory of human motivation in which he espoused that for high-level motivation such as self-actualization to occur, more fundamental levels must first occur. Maslow’s model is a five-tier sequential model, which is hierarchal starting with basic physiological needs, safety, and belonging, and then progressing to self-esteem and self-actualization.