4 Tips for Marketing Your Courier Franchise

You’ve decided to enter the thriving delivery market and start a courier franchise. But what comes next? Joining an established franchise network will see you receiving plenty of training and support, but that doesn’t mean you won’t also need some advertising and marketing savvy to succeed. Here are four top tips that will help you figure out how to market a delivery business successfully.

Any contract or investment requires forethought, research and paperwork. A franchise investment is no different. As you build a business plan for your courier franchise and put this plan into action, you’ll likely be asked to lay out your marketing strategies and plans. This article will help you to ensure that those plans cover every important base.

4 tips for marketing a courier franchise

Once you’ve chosen the courier franchise that’s right for you and you’re poised to make your investment, it’s time to recognise that the delivery industry is notoriously competitive, and employs over £110,000 people [IBISWorld]. If you want to thrive in this area and capitalise on ongoing consumer demand, you’ll need to learn how to stand out. These four marketing tips will help your courier business to do exactly that...

1. Create a killer website 

Setting up a website might not feel top of the list of priorities, but it should. A website is vital from a marketing perspective, allowing you to establish trust and credibility while informing and engaging your potential customers. This website will need to tick a few different boxes in order to be considered ‘killer’ and to create the (correct) impression that your courier franchise is at the top of its game. It should be:

• Easy to navigate
• Sleek and professionally designed
• Quick to load
• SEO friendly
• Mobile friendly (57% of internet users won’t recommend a business with a website that’s not mobile-friendly [SWEOR])

If you’re a total technophobe, don’t fear - your franchisor will likely be on hand to support you with website set-up when you make a career change with a courier franchise. Just knowing what your site needs to achieve will put you ahead of some of the competition, even if you need a little help with the execution of the above criteria.

2. Put time into content marketing and blogging

So, you’ve got your website ready to go. What next? Filling that site with useful and quality content, of course. The more there is to see on your courier franchise’s website, the longer people will stick around. And the longer they stick around, the more likely they are to go from a potential customer to an actual customer. 

Blogging and building up a suite of content is not a thing of the past, and if you ensure all that blog content is SEO friendly, it will massively help you to boost your website’s search engine rankings. More than this, it will add value to the customer experience and increase your franchise’s credibility. 90% of businesses that create blog posts regularly acquire customers from their online content [Delivery Master]. As you start marketing your franchise using blogs and content, consider the following important questions:

• Who is your target audience, and will this content appeal to them?
• What keywords should you be targeting?
• Are you subtly incorporating those keywords rather than overstuffing (which could actually damage your search engine rankings)?
• Are you drawing from your relevant experience?
• Are you promoting your services?
• Are you publishing on a consistent schedule that your readers can rely on?

3. Use social media to your advantage

Social media marketing is an important part of getting your courier franchise out there. You can’t simply rely on the brand’s existing presence to serve as your reputation in your local area - you’ll also have to put in some direct effort. Sharing your franchise location’s adventures and experiences with social media is a must-include marketing strategy, and will enable you to:

• Reach new audiences
• Make the right impression on new customers
• Boost your whole franchise network’s level of brand recognition
• Boost your individual franchise location’s level of brand recognition
• Produce cost-effective marketing results
• Share your expertise and increase your credibility
• Advertise your products/services and promotions/offers/deals

In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, with the number projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion people by 2025 [Statista]. With so many potential customers at your fingertips, you should take the time to figure out how to promote your franchise successfully on social media. See what’s working for your courier and delivery competitors. Get to know your audience. Make plans, and adjust them as and when you need to. Plan content in advance. Post on a regular schedule.

4. Research your competitors 

This is something that’s already been touched upon across the first three tips, but it’s crucial. Knowing the following about your competitors - what they sell, where they base themselves, how much they charge, what their marketing messages are - is absolutely necessary if you want to build your own marketing campaign and stand out in the courier and delivery industry.

How can you know how to do things differently without an awareness of how things were previously being done? How can you understand which marketing strategies will work for your franchise without looking at the evidence - at what does and doesn’t work - for your competitors?

What IS different is how you market. It does not matter how good of an operations manager you are, or even how good a courier you are. If you don’t market properly, you will not grow the way you want to, or obtain more courier work. There’s plenty of competition out there. But if you CAN market effectively? The sky is the limit. You can go from “one person, one car, one package” to having several large clients in a very, very short time.
- Courier Expert 

With these marketing tips on your side, you’ll be successfully running a delivery business in no time

There are so many advantages to running a courier franchise, and with these marketing tips in your back pocket, you’ll be even more likely to find success in this growing industry. If you feel ready to invest, start exploring your options with companies like Post & Packing (a full-service post shop for businesses of all shapes and sizes) and World Options (a global courier and delivery services provider).