Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2013 | Page 28

Grow Market Lead

How do you manage costs and
budgets for the marketing department? We establish our market-

ing budget in September for the next
calendar year. This process involves
establishing line-by-line budgets for
each of the initiatives and programs to
support the promotional calendar. The
budget is reviewed and reconciled on a
monthly basis and adjusted for variations
in revenue. We also keep a portion of
the budget in a contingency bucket to
capitalize on unforeseen opportunities
or address unplanned issues.

We’ve been
scrappy,
and thankfully
the positioning
of the brand
has been
a nice fit with
social media.

media. We’ve been scrappy, and thankfully the positioning of the brand has
been a nice fit with social media. We
are now dipping our toes in the water
with national cable advertising, but the
most effective campaigns are those that
will continue to leverage all facets of the
media mix and are inherently sharable
and organic.

vendor partners we do business with.

Do you see vendors as business
partners? Why/why not? Abso-

How have marketing strategies/
tools changed over the past decade? How have you adapted?

lutely. We have to. We need vendor
partners who understand our current
scale, and that also see our industryleading growth trajectory. That way,
when we grow, they grow. It took us
13 years to get to 500 restaurants. We
are on track to get to 1,000 in only 4
more. That’s attractive for a lot of the

Social and digital media are the two
biggest areas of change we have used
and benefited from. Because Moe’s is
only 13 years old, we have just recently
grown our national budget to a place
where we can scale traditional national
media. Everything we have done to this
point has been through PR and social

How is your marketing/branding
strategy developed, and how does
it flow through the system? Our

brand strategy is developed collaboratively with several members of the Moe’s
executive leadership team and franchise
advisory council. We used an outside
facilitator to help us shepherd this process. Once the strategy is developed, we
follow a thorough communication plan
to both the internal organization and
the franchise partner system. Some of
the most effective communication channels have been regi ۘ[