PR for Franchise Opportunities
How Strategic PR Turned Awareness Into Better Franchise Leads
The Challenge
Kumon Learning Centers help children master math and reading, and Kumon’s recruitment team focuses on Kumon’s franchise development efforts. When Kumon came to Curious Jane, they wanted to raise awareness of their franchise opportunity and get more and better leads into their sales pipeline.
The Results
Approach & Insight
Curious Jane recognized a number of factors that we could use to Kumon’s advantage. They had not been doing much recruitment advertising, so we knew public relations could go a long way in raising awareness. Third-party stories about the Kumon brand and its franchising opportunities would be seen as newsworthy, trustworthy and compelling to potential franchisees.
We had plenty of positive news to share: A Kumon franchise offers its owner-operators personal fulfillment, freedom and flexibility. Kumon has the lowest franchise fee in their category and generous incentives. They’re the oldest company in their industry and the largest in the U.S., with 25,000 locations worldwide. Entrepreneur magazine has awarded Kumon several impressive rankings — including being a top low-cost franchise and a top global franchise.
Strategy
From our 20 years of franchise development experience, Curious Jane knew how important it is to demonstrate to prospects what their life could be like as a franchisee. So we decided to highlight real-life, passionate Kumon instructors and tell their stories, making the experience of owning a Kumon franchise feel relatable and appealing.
We made a plan: The experienced journalists on Curious Jane’s PR team would write and distribute articles to highlight Kumon’s strong reputation, ongoing accomplishments and excellent franchise opportunity. We would publish and push out monthly blogs. We committed to distributing news about all of Kumon’s awards, events and announcements to local, regional and national media sources. We would use native articles and organic content on LinkedIn to ensure that Kumon news always felt natural — never salesy.
Execution
We carried out our PR plan and kept the steady stream of good news about Kumon and its franchise opportunities flowing. As with all our public relations endeavors, we reported on every one of our tactics. And through this reporting, it was easy to see that every time one of our stories went live, it resulted in an immediate increase in inquiries and traffic to Kumon’s franchise development website.
Powerful Partnerships
