The Importance of Constantly Evolving your Business and Business Model to Help Franchisees
A constant focus on building the brand and helping franchisees to build successful businesses, has made them a fixture as the leading domestic cleaning franchise in the annual Elite 100 Franchise rankings. The company has also recently earned its 5th straight 5-Star Franchisee Satisfaction award from Work-Buzz, an accolade that shows they continue to develop their proven business systems and processes. Case in point is their recent launch of their own branded, eco-friendly cleaning products, through their new on-line shop. Kanika Srivastava, Marketing Manager, says that the shop is the first of its kind not only in the UK but in the world. “There is no other franchise brand in the domestic cleaning industry that has entered the retail cleaning product and tools market and built on the value of their brand like we have.”
Though Srivastava is excited to make the products used by their franchisees available to the millions of homeowners who want to do their part for the environment and clean in a safer and more sustainable way, she is arguably even more excited about how the initiative will help to make the Molly Maid business and business model even more successful for franchisees. “One of the most important considerations in our retail strategy was how this could add value to our franchisees businesses.”
A focus on improving their business model and providing franchisees with more and better tools to attract new customers and staff has been a key factor that has helped them to continue to set new records in annual turnover. Srivastava says that for franchisors wanting to achieve higher levels of success there must be a relentless focus on improving the business model at the franchisee level. It’s this focus that brought about their Government recognised HomeSafe cleaning processes and branding coming out of COVID, their Best Employer in Homecleaning branding to attract new staff and their ‘booster’ advertising programme which saw them pay for increased paid search budgets for all franchisees. “Innovation at Molly Maid starts with us asking, how can we improve the business model for franchisees.”
Back to their new on-line retail shop, selling the same eco-friendly products and tools used by their franchisees and how Molly Maid is aiming to make their award-winning business model even better for franchisees.
A percentage of all sales through the shop will be earmarked for franchisees to use for their own local advertising activities – things like increasing their paid search budget for new customers or leaflet delivery. Srivastava says that this will provide a growing pool of funds to fuel even stronger sales growth for franchisees. They are also aiming to completely eliminate the cost of the eco-friendly cleaning products their franchisees use (the same products of course that are sold through their new shop) which will increase franchisee profit. Finally, many of their existing maid service customers have already indicated their desire to purchase the products and when they do, franchisees will receive a percentage of these sales.
The on-line, eco-friendly cleaning product market is expected to almost double in the next few years as more homeowners switch to products that are safer to clean with and better for the environment, which is one of the reasons why Molly Maid decided to launch this initiative now. “More and more homeowners want to clean their home using non-toxic cleaners which is safer for themselves and better for the environment. They want to do their part for the environment but also want to know that the cleaning products they are using work. Efficacy is hugely important,” says Srivastava. “There is no eco-friendly cleaning product on the market right now that has as much ‘cleaning’ credibility as one that is used by our cleaners in hundreds of thousands of cleans each year. Homeowners purchasing these products can have the confidence to know that they are better for the environment and work.”
Molly Maid have been putting the finishing touches on an aggressive social media campaign that will start ahead of the official nation-wide launch of the products in early November and plans are underway that will also utilise more traditional print-based media. All of this advertising will of course help to increase the awareness of their instantly recognisable brand something that Srivastava says will also help franchisees. “Any marketer will tell you that the best way to attract more customers is to invest more in advertising and with the advertising we are doing for our new retail shop, we are going to be reaching a completely new audience which is going to have a big impact on our brand.”
It’s no surprise that their approach to improving the business model for franchisees has helped Molly Maid become the undisputed leader in the franchised homecleaning sector and take advantage of an industry that has more than doubled since COVID. YouGov research estimates that the UK’s home cleaning industry is valued at over £8 billion annually. It all adds up to a company that knows if you focus on improving the business at the franchise level, success follow.