When it comes to self-employed opportunities, the options are endless, entrepreneurs have the opportunity to try their hand at anything. This can feel extremely exciting, but daunting at the same time.

Nationwide research shows that 20% of start-ups fail in the first year whilst 60% won’t survive beyond year three. These figures would understandably put many people off trying and relies only on the brave among us to give it a shot. 

Here at activ, we believe that supporting our franchisees with ongoing training makes a real difference to the longevity of their businesses and helps to place them as a marketing expert to their clients. Training can often be taken for granted when you are in employment, but branching out on your own means funding training yourself or having the time to spend reading, researching and staying on top of the current trends.

As one of the UK’s top digital marketing franchises, we offer our franchisees a training ‘huddle’ once a fortnight to cover marketing topics from SEO to influencers and technical topics from web design to user experience. We know that this training has allowed our franchisees to secure clients, feel more confident in their service offering and contributed to overall business success. 

Today, we take a look at the importance of ongoing training for business owners, whatever their industry.

1. Gaining a deeper understanding of running your business – there’s lots to think about when you setup on your own and it can feel overwhelming not to have the same safety net of employment. Ongoing training can support you to understand just what it takes to manage finances, handle HR issues and how to develop a long-term plan for the future.
2. Improving decision making – sometimes it’s more about having a sounding board than specific training of any kind. However, specific decision making training can help to support business owners to improve their decision making processes in order to complete important tasks and move the business forward.
3. Enhances communication skills – if you’re an entrepreneur for a franchise marketing company then you understand how often you have to communicate with both clients and your head office team. Training can support you to do this effectively, whether it’s looking at specific tools you can use to manage communications or ways to manage your growing inbox.
4. Identifies opportunities – Training can offer a business owner the opportunity to approach something in a completely new light. For example, LinkedIn training can help you to reach out to a new audience, advertise yourself and your services with the goal to secure new clients.
5. Stay on top of trends – marketing franchises will know this challenge well – the marketing landscape is constantly changing with new social media channels launching, like TikTok, to the new Google Analytics 4 tool. There’s a lot to stay on top of and it can feel unsettling for those who are opposed to change! Regular training can help you to stay ahead of the game as and when a new trend arises making you both more knowledgeable and expanding your service offering to clients.

Whether your sector is marketing, finance, leisure or even training itself, there is always an opportunity to expand on your personal development. Identifying gaps in your own knowledge can help you determine what training might be relevant to you so that you can ensure your business is successful to year three and beyond.

To find out more about what training we offer when you become a franchisee with activ and what level of investment you need to make to run a successful digital marketing franchise, take a look at our website.