Body Fit Training shares its secret to branding success

Your brand's personality can be the secret sauce to your franchise success, says Body Fit Training founder, Cameron Falloon

In today’s crowded market, establishing a distinct brand identity is crucial for franchise success. Customers are looking for brands that resonate with their values, aspirations, and lifestyles. By developing a unique brand personality, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors and foster a greater connection with their target audience.

Cameron Falloon, the founder of Body Fit Training (BFT), Australia’s fastest-growing fitness franchise, explains why it’s so important to create a brand personality for your franchise and how it’s such a critical element of franchising to get right as it can make or break your business.

A franchisor’s brand is the single most important investment they can make in their business. It represents who you are, what you believe in and how you want to be perceived by your audience.

A brand goes far beyond a fancy logo or a catchy tagline and gives you a credible voice that people want to listen to. It’s vital to get the key visual parts in place from the outset – a logo and name that represent your service or product and can be transferable and simply translated to different geographical territories, countries or continents.

Having a captivating brand story will also help to bring together like-minded franchisees and create a community of customers. In franchising, the success of your business relies not just on the quality of the product or service but being able to create a lasting impact on consumers, which will then pave the way for growth.

Developing a clear and defined personality is step one, but being able to visually and verbally articulate who you are as a brand and what you stand for, underpins everything you do and is your barometer on everything you put out into the market.

Consistency across the network

Investment in branding is all the more crucial for someone looking to enter the world of franchising. When a franchisor begins to open new physical locations, such as a fitness studio or restaurant, and expand through a network of franchisees, it is vital to have consistency across every franchise branch, to retain quality and meet the needs and expectations of customers. It’s that consistency that will be the lifeblood of a franchise network and will be attractive to prospects looking to join a franchise.

Protecting your brand

To ensure the franchisor’s brand is protected, there needs to be clear rules and guidelines, style guides and set processes and procedures to ensure that franchisees know what they need to do, what is expected of them and what they can and can’t do.

A franchisee cannot be expected to stay on brand if they don’t know what it is - from the brand values to the tone of voice to the use of logos, colours, fonts and all visual components. Having some clear examples of what is good practice will be really valuable for those franchisees who have no prior experience of running their own business.

Training and guidelines

It’s necessary that all franchisees understand exactly why brand protection is so important and how to recognise the brand guidelines they are expected to follow. They also need to be aware of the benefits it will bring to their business, their customers and to the rest of the franchise network by being brand consistent.

Franchisee training should outline the significance of brand consistency and what the impact will be if they fail to follow them. Having franchisees fully engaged and on board at the start of their franchise journey is the secret to franchise branding success, and it will make them feel supported and engaged.

At BFT, it provides all new franchisees with in-depth training to ensure they understand the brand’s personality and voice, from taglines and brand messages, to fonts and brand guidelines. They also learn about all of the touchpoints that a customer or potential customer will come across in their interaction with the BFT brand and how it should be communicated to everyone.

A library of marketing materials is also given to each franchisee which they can use in their local communities and across social media, and this gives them a great start for their new businesses. This not only saves valuable time and money, but it enables them to get on with running and growing their franchises from day one.

Staying on-brand

On the whole, franchisees are encouraged to reach out to their local community market and raise the profile of their brand, i.e., putting their name, face and personality at the forefront of their businesses. In such situations, it can sometimes be tempting for franchisees to go astray from the brand guidelines and do their own thing.

To avoid this taking place and ensure that franchisees remain on brand, franchisors can create a bank of templates and content for them to use, which can then be tailored to their different localities and cultures.

For some brands, such as BFT where there are physical locations and a service product, staying on brand also relates to the delivery of product and the standards of service within the studios. Keeping franchisees within the framework of its programming is integral, otherwise it could open the door for them to go rogue.

Educating franchisees and coaches is paramount in driving this framework, which is why BFT has its Level Up education arm and bootcamps to learn and understand the BFT brand guidelines.

Monitoring

To maintain a successful franchise brand, franchisors must continually monitor their franchisees and take measures to address episodes where a franchisee falls away from what is expected or on brand.

Providing additional training and support and rewarding those as and when required is an ongoing part of franchise brand protection. Ultimately, the franchisor has a responsibility to the whole franchisee network to ensure everyone is compliant.

For example, BFT carries out a quarterly brand standards audit across every single studio globally. This ensures its franchisees are always on brand, as well as highlighting any areas that may need addressing.

In summary, the key to sustaining franchise branding success is for the franchisor to be very clear with expectations from the start and to have open lines of communication with their franchisees.

When franchisees are operating their own businesses individually in different geographical locations and frequently spread across the world, this can be a big challenge from time to time.

No matter the industry, product or customer, a franchise’s brand is its single most important asset. Your brand is how you interact with the world, from your customers to your employees, and it all comes from the brand – a true differentiator that creates unique value for franchisees. 

About the author
Cameron Falloon is the Founder and Joint CEO of global fitness franchise, Body Fit Training. With over 25 years in the health and fitness industry, Cameron has travelled the world and worked with varying populations from general to chronic rehabilitation patients to elite athletes as well as the rich and famous. Recognised as Australia’s fastest-growing fitness franchise with 56,000+ members across 245+ studios, Cameron has a passion and dedication for delivering world-class training programmes, practices and education to the broader fitness industry.