Community involvement can help franchise businesses stand out in the local business landscape. It’s a way to demonstrate that you’re an active part of the community and want to help it grow and flourish. Our last article encouraged you to get involved by sharing 12 community involvement ideas for franchise business owners. But today, we want to follow up on that article to discuss strategic community involvement and share our top tips.

What Is Strategic Community Involvement?

Community involvement is good in and of itself. However, you’ll enjoy more benefits from your activities if you approach them strategically. Strategic community involvement will greatly increase your impact on the community and the impact on your business, in terms of increased awareness, customers, and sales. If your franchise will be doing community projects, it’s wise to go about them strategically.

When you engage in strategic community involvement, you think about how you can boost your brand every step of the way, before, during, and after the event or activity. You then make strategic decisions that will make your work bigger, better, and more impactful. To demonstrate what we mean, check out the tips below.

Tips for Strategic Community Involvement

The tips below will demonstrate how you can become more strategic with the community projects your franchise selects.

1. Choose Your First Project Wisely

Or actually, every project, but the first is arguably the most important because it sets the tone for your future community work and defines what you want to be known for in your community. Start by selecting a topic or issue that is top-of-mind for your community. Ideally, it should be something that connects with your brand, whether related to the product/service, industry, or just something that matches your core values. By choosing your first project carefully, you signal to your community that “we care about this too, and we want to help.”

2. Get Customers Input

A clever way to choose your community involvement projects is to get input from your customers. What do they care about? How are they using their time, resources, and money to help the community? Using this information to choose a strategic community involvement project communicates clearly that you share a unique identity and interest with your customers.

To get customer input, consider sending out a survey to get their feedback. You can either have them vote from a list of options or ask an open-ended question to get their ideas. One of the simplest (and free!) tools available is Google Forms (and this tutorial from Zapier will get you started). You can share your survey via email and on your social media channels. You can even use a QR code to share the survey on store signs and flyers.   

3. Invite the Community

Whatever you select for your strategic community involvement project, you can greatly boost the impact you have by getting your customers involved. 

For example, telling your customers that you’re donating money to the local homeless shelter is one thing. It’s another thing entirely to:

  • Ask for monetary donations to the shelter when customers make a purchase.
  • Set up a box in your store for customers to drop off canned goods for the shelter.
  • Plan a service day and invite customers to help you prepare and serve meals.

The more involved your customers are in your community involvement project, the greater impact it will have on their lives and their impression of your business. Strategic community involvement will mean thoughtfully considering how you can invite the community to participate with you. 

4. Promote Widely

Strategic community involvement isn’t quiet. The point is to get the word out there and generate buzz, so people know what you are doing and are excited to join you. Even something as simple as having a table at a local community event is something you will want to tell your community about, early and often. Here are some ideas:

  • Blog: Write a blog post about the upcoming event or activity (and then engage in strategic content marketing by sharing that blog post by email, social media, etc.).
  • Social: Post about it on social media, and not just with one post. Use a free tool like Canva to create some branded images and create a series of multiple posts leading up to the event.
  • Signage: Post signs about the event in your business. Share a flyer when you hand customers their receipts. 
  • Get Creative: Consider all creative marketing approaches. For example, did you know that you can use your VoIP cloud phone system to record custom messages while the phone rings or while the caller is on hold? This is a great time to tell customers about your community activities and invite them to join you. 

5. Make the Most Out of Partnerships

In our article, 12 Community Involvement Ideas for Franchises, we mentioned that you could partner with nonprofits or other local businesses when doing work in the community. If so, you’ll want to make the most out of those partnerships and agree to promote each other and the event with the methods in tip #4.

6. Dress for Success

So now it’s the official day of your community event. Whatever that event is, remember that your body can be a ‘billboard’ for your business. Not to go overboard with the idea, but representing your franchise with a branded t-shirt or hat is a great way to remind people in the community that your business is present. This is especially impactful if you’ve decided to volunteer as a company. What an impression you’ll make with a whole team of people sporting your business name and logo!

7. Bring Swag

You want people to remember your presence at the community event. But even better? Give them something to take home. It could take the form of printed materials, such as a brochure or a business card. Or you can have fun with it and share branded items like magnets, bookmarks, pens, or t-shirts. Use company branding or create something for the specific event to give out as a souvenir.

8. Document Your Activities

Strategic community involvement is not something you ‘complete’ and move on. It’s something that you want to live on forever. So, don’t let the opportunity slip by. Document the event or activity as it’s happening. 

Take out your phone and snap multiple live photos and videos during the event. Capture the moments and the real people participating. Take advantage of photo ops with other business owners or local celebrities. You can use the photos and videos later on, but you’ll also want to post live social media updates on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. That way, people can see what is happening in real-time, and you can encourage them to stop what they’re doing, head over, and join you.

9. Remember Follow-Up

Too many businesses engage in community involvement that ends when the event or activity is over. With strategic community involvement, you’ll want to continue the story after it’s done. Following tip #8 above, you have plenty of footage from the event. Use it to create blog posts, emails, and social media posts. Tell the story of what happened and what impact you made. Thank those who helped out and the community for making it possible.

10. Create a Community Involvement Page

Our last tip for strategic community involvement is to engage in it regularly, so much so that your website warrants its own Community Involvement page (or at least a subsection of About Us). Use the page to share the things you’ve done and the community projects, causes, and organizations important to you. Link over to your blog posts so people can read about past events. Include a calendar so customers can see the upcoming community activities you have planned.

Strategy Matters

Strategic community involvement demonstrates that strategy matters with everything you do in your franchise business, including your work in and with the community. Use this list of tips (along with our list of community involvement ideas) to plan the next high-impact event that will benefit your community and help you grow your franchise!