The Secret Weapon to Print and Sign Franchise Success

Owning a company that’s a member of a franchise family is providing more and more people across North America with the opportunity to start and run their own business – supported by an operating model that has already been proven to work by the parent franchisor. As a franchisee, you proudly wear your franchisor’s “coat of arms” – the brand – and benefit from on-going business, operations and marketing support.

Countless jobs are created and supported by franchises, reducing unemployment rates and supporting the national GDP through billions of dollars in products and services, payroll and jobs. Local economies benefit from franchises by providing jobs, tax dollars and community involvement. Franchises offer stability for owners and consistency for consumers, who recognize and value the brand’s quality.

One of the many benefits of buying a franchise is its brand – from an easily recognizable name and logo – to its menu of products and/or services.

In 2016, franchises in the U.S. brought in $868.1 billion, 29% higher than the decade before, with franchise revenues sitting at $675 billion. As of 2019, 7.6 million jobs had been created and 13.3 million jobs were supported by franchises. In 2019, franchises supported nearly 8.4 million direct jobs, $787.5 billion of economic output for the U.S. economy and represented 3% of the total GDP. Franchise growth is expected to increase in 2020 by 1.5%. That’s a total of to 785,316 businesses, 232 thousand new jobs and 8.67 million total employees. 

According to the International Franchise Association, 60% of new jobs are created by small businesses like franchises – 45.5% of franchise-created jobs are in the quick-service restaurant sector. Every state has at least 6% of its non-farm workforce employed by a franchise with 33 states at 10% or higher. Jobs in the franchise industry are the second highest in the U.S., with the financial sector coming in first. On average, 300 new franchise brands are created annually.

“The franchise industry is responsible for creating tens of thousands of opportunities for small business ownership across the country and millions of jobs for Americans,” said IFA President and  CEO Robert Cresanti.

Half of all new businesses fail within their first year, whereas a typical franchised business is still open after five years. Parent companies support franchisees with online ordering options, food or grocery delivery services and apps. Franchises are often fierce competitors to independent corporations. With their parent’s bench strength, they can ramp up quickly, leveraging established workflow and technology solutions, and integrating usable technology in-store like touch-screen ordering, QR code scanners and virtual assistance. 

Print and Sign Franchise owners are profiting from customer experience expectations.

Print and sign buyers are looking for ways to enhance their customers' experience by transforming their digital world into a physical one. With a voracious appetite for print and signs, brands like Netflix, Amazon, Shopify and Nike are using physical stores, merchandise branding and “pop-ups” to provide memorable immersive experiences. These “phygital” approaches enable brands of all sizes to bridge the physical-digital gap and engage customers with an experience that transcends platforms, devices and location. One of the major growth drivers for the print industry is the increasing need to keep customers engaged through communication over various channels. Seven of the Top 100 forecasted print consumers for 2020 are billion-dollar-plus buyers. 

The franchise industries with the most expected growth this year are personal services, quick-service restaurants (QSR) and full-service restaurants – and they’re embracing print and sign as an integral part of the customer acquisition process. It explains why today’s hottest revenue drivers for the print and sign industry include packaging, embellishments, direct mail, textiles, signage and wide format. The main sectors capitalizing on print’s customer journey value are: healthcare (24.5%), food/beverage (19.9%), technology (12.9%), publishing (11.3%) and retail (7%).

Constant technological change has resulted in business-optimizing digital, automation and data-mining solutions lurching to the forefront of many industries. The print and sign industry in particular, has seen more industry shifts happening since the 1950s, than in the five centuries before. Today’s print and sign franchise owners can produce a wider variety of products with more speed, higher quality and more customization options than ever before. Self-service, branded portals, powered by robust web-to-print software, are feeding a hungry consumer appetite fixated on brand – busines and personal. Franchise owners are profiting by shorter turn-around times, shorter learning curves and new markets willing to pay for a brilliant customer experience. Digital finishing, personalization and other experience-enhancing options, once reserved for outsourced binderies and highly specialized equipment, can now be offered in-house.

Delivering a memorable, positive experience is vital for companies hoping to attract today’s print and business buyers. Print and sign, a proven premium channel, is being embraced as an integral part of the customer acquisition process. In addition to providing new print and brand experiences to their customers, print and sign franchises are in a unique position to leverage these same online and offline customer acquisition strategies that include direct mail, signage, POS and more. Printers, notorious for being “cobblers with no shoes," are convincing their customers to invest in print by showing them – with print-fueled, lead-generating and customer-engaging marketing programs – developed and optimized by their franchisor.

With your franchise parent’s marketing support, print and sign franchise owners are capitalizing on its power to deliver engaging, customer-generating experiences. 

One of the biggest challenges facing today’s print marketers and sales teams is delivering the right customer experience at the right time – and how to figure out when that is – throughout the buyer journey. 

Industry-leading franchise brands, like Allegra Marketing Print Mail and Signarama, provide access to all the resources needed to plan and execute marketing plans and projects for their customers – and themselves. These parents help with sales, marketing and public relations support, produce turn-key marketing materials and programs, and provide access to strategic planning experts, copywriters, designers, digital technology experts and media analysts. They help new owners spend their early days focused on sales and production functions by providing marketing resources for any or all the services they don’t have in-house. This encourages new franchise owners, often with little or no experience in the print industry, to confidently build brand awareness, generate sales leads and develop key accounts. 

Alliance Franchise Brands LLC and its subsidiary, KK Printing Canada ULC are the franchisors of more than 600 print and sign services locations in North America. Their operating brands include Allegra Marketing Print Mail, Image360, Signs Now, Signs By Tomorrow, KKP, Insty-Prints, American Speedy Printing Centers and RSVP.

With first-hand knowledge of how the industry has evolved, Allegra provides seven initiatives to help new printers generate profit. These programs include Solutions and Advanced Solutions-based Sales Training, Sales Skills on the Road Sessions, Sales Training Webinars, Sales Leadership Training Workshops, a Virtual Sales Manager for Hire Program as well as One-on-One Sales Coaching Sessions.

The Secret Weapon

It’s not all wine and roses. For franchises that break loose from the pack and achieve enterprise-level annual revenues beyond $10 million a year – a space typically reserved for their commercial print cousins – capability and capacity conversations become part of the sales process. And while training and support are provided, onboarding times vary. Six weeks is not uncommon and not much time to soak in an entire industry whose roots date back to the 1400s, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Whether you want to purchase an established franchise brand or you’re an independent print or sign business owner looking to grow your company, staying current within the industry, attending events and optimizing your underlying workflow and technology, become important success drivers. Add in the secret weapon – marketing support – and drive an exceptional, money-making, customer experience.

As they say in the franchise world: “You’re running a business for yourself. Not by yourself.”