Lead generation, especially online lead generation, is the bane of many businesses out there. The lion’s share of business income is the result of an established client base, but how does a business get those new clients? Fortunately, with a WSI franchise, half of the problem is on its way to being solved.

From all over the world, there are clients who have already experienced the benefits of WSI’s online solutions; so the foundation for word-of-mouth promotion is out there. By opening a WSI franchise, we can provide you with our resources for generating client leads. There will, of course, still be some additional networking efforts for attracting new local clients. At the same time, however, the very nature of a franchise means you’re taking advantage of a great deal of ground work that’s already been laid out for you in advance.

One of the things we like to explain to our WSI franchisees is the principle of wealth creation, rather than simple profit. Profit is only one part of the wealth-creation scenario, and while it is of course important, it isn’t the whole picture.

Consider the phrase “making money”: This doesn’t just mean taking in money from a paycheck; it literally means the creation of goods and services that have enough value that others will pay more for them. As the goods and services in a market grow, money grows with them to help meet people’s demands.

As a WSI Digital Marketing Consultant, you’re an integral part of this wealth-creation system.

It’s something of a variation on the word-of-mouth business cycle, in a way.

• You work with a client, who then pays you for your time and services provided. That’s the first part — you gain a return on the investment you’ve made in the franchise.
• The client hopefully will, in turn, see their business grow and expand thanks to your expertly-given digital marketing advice, making money as a return on their investment in you.

You see how it works? Right there you’ve affected the money in your market in two distinct ways — you have made money where there might not have been any before. But that isn’t the end of it, either.

Previously, I blogged about the importance of face-to-face contact in generating leads for your WSI franchise. This is a good, long-term tactic to adopt because once you get used to it; the process is very easy to maintain as a habit, and really lets your clientele get to know you in a sense. However, it isn’t the only way to develop such “face time” when promoting your business.

One tactic that can really work out for you is to host small, informal seminars which review what you offer to local businesses who might be interested in your services.

There are really two ways to go about the seminar process today — on-location and online.

An on-location seminar is fairly straightforward: Invite local business owners to an area you have designated for your presentation, be it your office, your town’s conference center or your own home if you have sufficient viewing space. Do make sure you can afford to provide refreshments (even a cup of tea or coffee goes a long way in keeping people content while they hear you out). The advantage of this is it really allows the natural flow of the Q&A that comes at the end of a seminar.

There is a sense of security that comes from owning a WSI franchise.

Anyone who owns their own business will tell you the same:

Even when times are hard, there’s something both personally and practically satisfying about owning your own business that isn’t quite the same when you work with or for someone else.

In a traditional employment arrangement, even fairly high-level employees can be kept in the dark from time to time. Consider what happened with Enron, MCI-Worldcom and so on. For a more humorous example, consider the movie Fun with Dick and Jane starring Jim Carey. Even as the company was imploding all around him, he was “promoted” to be the company spokesman and take the heat. Funny yes, and a bit of a stretch, but really it was only amusing because to at least some extent, we certainly can imagine it happening!

With a WSI franchise, money isn’t the only resource that gets invested. You also invest time and energy into each of your clients, generally in exchange for the payment you’re intending to receive. Again though, money isn’t the only thing returned from each of your clients. Every arrangement made with a client can return a host of other benefits in exchange for a solid investment!

With any client, you will invariably invest:

• Time
• Energy
• Creativity

Some client needs will take longer to address than others. A particular project will inevitably be exhausting to tackle. A particular problem might require every clever idea you’ve ever had about digital marketing. Each of these categories requires an investment of yourself that could have been put to some other task, and it’s natural to want a return on these.

A WSI franchise represents much more than just another job — it represents a totally new set of options you’ll have once you get started. In a traditional employment arrangement, you’d be surprised at just how many of your options are dictated by your employer.

When you’re working for someone else, they dictate:

Your vacation time…Sick days…Bereavement or maternity leave…And, of course, how much money you make!

Sure, there’s flexibility built into any traditional employment system, but the fact is that they have an extensive amount of control over how you live your life. It doesn’t have to be that way, and with a WSI franchise, you’ll not only have more control over when and where you can do these things, but you’ll also have the money to make the most of your new options.

Given that the current economic downturn seems content to carry itself on for at least another year, why would starting a WSI Franchise right now be a good idea? Times are risky… isn’t that the time to play things more conservatively?

The fact is, owning your own business comes with a certain level of security that other options simply can not offer.

With your own business, you can secure better sources of credit, improve your general credit rating by making good investments in your business needs and gain a number of skills that can be of help to you in the future.

WSI franchises offer one of the best things about owning any business — the chance to be your own boss.

Sure, there’s the WSI advanced technologies and practices, and the contract you have with the entire WSI network for properly running a franchise, but at the operational, day-in and day-out level, you are 100 percent in charge.

You get to pick what clients you want to work with. Do you prefer offering consultations for people in technical trades and professions? Or do you want to specifically take on people who have careers in the service industry? Either way, it’s your call. Find out what you’re best at doing, and you can tailor your business to servicing the clients you’re most comfortable with, instead of the ones management says you should be most comfortable with.

Franchising with WSI isn’t just about making profits, though there certainly are enough of those to justify it. It’s also about the flexibility to live a lifestyle of your choosing. One of the ways people can embrace this is by developing a “family business” lifestyle.

We’ve talked before about bringing your family in to work at your WSI franchise, and it’s a wonderful option for a family that wants to make money and still have time to be together.

So let’s consider a few of the advantages that the family-model business can offer.

Vacations — Flexibility to take a vacation at convenient times for you and your family is a big perk of the self-ownership business model. If the money’s there, you go! No waiting on someone else to clear it. What’s also nice is that it doesn’t even necessarily require closing down the business if you have enough employees in the family. The parents can head off for a two-week getaway on their own while the kids hold down shop, or the young student can take an early summer break for a week at the Florida beaches while the operation stays running.

Owning a WSI franchise is being part of the digital revolution.

Digital marketing is not just popular, it’s becoming the new norm.

We live in an age where anyone can become a businessperson with a bit of time, some space and an Internet connection. Ebay and Amazon have allowed the home business model to flourish, and the small-box store is coming back with a vengeance even as larger stores like Circuit City and Borders are declaring bankruptcy.

This is why, when talking about increasing profitability, social network marketing is so vital.

With Facebook, I could be talking to someone in China, Australia and Finland with very little effort. The marketplace is now the entire world, not just the immediate area I can drive or make phone calls to at a reasonable hour. Small businesses are becoming global enterprises with very little effort, and social media is an inexpensive way to do it.

It’s an interesting time to be a WSI franchise owner. Does anyone remember Star Trek, with those touch-screen pads they used? Or the shows with tiny handheld computers that can do everything? Video phones? Voice commands, computers that play all kinds of music, wherever and whenever?

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t wish to alarm you, but it is definitely the future.

Smart-phones, tablet computers, 3D hi-def televisions and motion-sensitive gaming consoles are everywhere. And yet getting to the future doesn’t mean that it’s time to stop innovating — these wonderful inventions are just tools to the next great set of ideas and concepts to be discovered.

So what does this mean for someone who has a WSI franchise?

Well, as a digital marketing expert, it’s good to be up-to-date on concepts and ideas out there. Remember, WSI franchises are owned by people from all walks of life, from newcomers to savvy businesspeople with long track records.

A WSI franchise is the first step in improving your entire financial situation, not just the absolute income you’re receiving.

Many business owners get their start on a certain amount of credit. Whether capital seed money from interested investors, small business loans or loans against collateral such as their home, most people need a bit of help collecting that initial investment.

However, few realize that a small business is more than a way to live your dream or make a lot of money — it can be used to definitively improve your credit standing and overall situation with home equity, personal savings and more.

As a very simplified example, consider someone who takes out a loan against their home to finance their WSI franchise. Most franchises are profitable within three years, meaning that with careful management and hard work, his loan is paid off by that time. So from three years onward, most of the money he makes becomes his to keep.

Part of owning a WSI franchise is that you get to design your own perk structure!

Normally, the perks of a job are dictated by human resources, finances and the needs of the company. When you own your own business, you have power and are in complete control of this situation. Thus, your perks are determined by your needs and your understanding of reality, rather than what some administrator feels is best for you. For example…

Vacation Time — Maybe two weeks every year isn’t cutting it for you. Maybe you don’t want to take a whole two weeks just because some bureaucrat insists on it, and you’d prefer a few small weekend excursions spread throughout the year. Alternatively, maybe you just want a nice month off around Christmas time, or to enjoy the waves in the Bahamas during the summer. If you have the finances and the freedom to do it, it’s yours to do.

One of the most unique things about having a WSI franchise is that while you are part of a larger organization, your franchise is its own entity.

You use the WSI Digital Marketing System, but you will have your own stylistic approach to things, your own way of connecting with your customers. To make the most of this effect, you should consider blogging as a means of developing that personal identity and boosting your credibility.

A blog is an interesting way of promoting yourself and maintaining your own vision, even within a franchising framework. A blog allows you to share your personal thoughts, keep your readers up to date with what you’ve been working on, adds another venue for promotions and information about your business to clients, and so forth.

I’d like a job where I call the shots for a change.

With a WSI franchise, that’s exactly what you get. Once you’re trained in our core approach and become a Certified Digital Marketing Consultant, your franchise is just that — yours. You make the money, you get to decide what to do with it. You’ll set your own hours, make your own decisions about staff, and in general it’ll be your baby.

I don’t want to deal with inventory.

Done deal. The WSI approach to franchising is just what you’re looking for. WSI franchisees provide their clients with expert online marketing and branding consultation services. This approach doesn’t require any kind of supply or physical products, just innovation and dedication.

WSI franchise owners value their independence and direct control over their own business.

At WSI, we recognize that people have their own ideas about things — what a novel concept, right? Some of those ideas tend to involve ways to increase revenues, as is the case with all small business owners, because a profitable business is one that is going to stay around.

The thing is, not every business allows you that kind of freedom. We’re willing to bet that a lot of good ideas for bringing in new revenue got crushed at your prior jobs. These ideas get put down for a lot of reasons — office politics, personality clashes, the management not quite getting the idea or sometimes even because it doesn’t work out due to reasons that the employee knows nothing about. Even when good ideas do get used, the credit doesn’t always go to the one who came up with it so much as their managers.

One maddening aspect of traditional business that we hear about from our non-franchise friends involves things their company does that make no sense at all.

Department shake-ups that come randomly, management saying the client asked for x number of changes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the original product, bonuses being cut for some reason and so on. Honestly, the number of things that seem to happen to people for no adequately explained reason is enough to make our heads spin, and we don’t even work for them. It’s not just that the changes happen — the fact that there isn’t any sense of connection to why they’re happening has to be disheartening.

This is another reason why franchising is such a wonderful job — you don’t have to put up with that kind of thing with a WSI franchise. You’re in direct contact with your clients, so you can talk to them about what they want and why they want it, getting the big picture instead of piecemeal little alterations. You have control of the finances, so there are no surprises at the end of the year. You can make plans for your money in the long term without worrying that betting on your bonus might not pay off.

Owning a WSI franchise is about more than just doing business — it’s about lead generation, knowing how to increase revenues and organizing your life so that you can handle the very real task of doing everything for yourself.

One of the advantages of traditional employment that self-employment tends to lack is division of labor. In a traditional setup, you have marketers, developers, analysts, investors, financing and other departments that break up the task and allow people to get more done overall. If you’re considering going into business for yourself, it’s important that you understand this option is not necessarily going to be available to you. Sometimes several people buy into a franchise together, but by and large the individual operator is the unit of ownership.

A WSI franchise is all about having the flexibility to respond to what your customer needs and desires.

Sometimes they may think they want one thing out of digital marketing, but you can convince them of a more effective strategy or a more important goal. Other times they may clue you in to trying something more ambitious than you had planned. Either way, there are many, many ways to do the digital marketing “thing,” and you will find each of them rewarding in its own unique fashion.

Social Media
Twitter microblogs, Facebook friending circles, StumbleUpon notices, ReddIt campaigns — each of these offers a unique way to reach out and touch someone. Google+ has now joined the scene as well, so you can expect a new range of options that you can help your clients implement there.

When we talk about owning your own WSI franchise., we often mention the security of owning your own business.

There’s a lot to be said for it, including the financial security, the emotional security and many other elements of the idea. However, one of the most important is the security that comes from being able to give a quick response to unexpected changes.

Large businesses end up being very bureaucratic. This is a necessary process, because large businesses have a vast amount of information to handle — financial, personnel, public relations — it all adds up. Thus, large businesses build up a layer of red tape to control and organize the collection of all this information and all decisions that come with operating a business. The problem is, anyone who’s dealt with red tape understands that it leaves very little discretion to any one member of the organization. Procedure must be followed, even if it’s clear that the solution lies slightly outside the manual. This is why when you call technical support places, you always hear, “Have tried turning it off, then on again?”

So, you’re considering a WSI franchise, because you’re a smart and able-minded person who wants to get into the world of business ownership.

But there are the lingering questions, smart questions that anyone with your good sense would ask.

• Is franchising really a viable model of business?
• Is there really a market for these services?
• Does it really work?

Well, rather than just tell you “yes,” let’s take a minute and look at some of the numbers involved in the franchising world in general.

Did you know:

• That there are more than 825,000 franchises operating in the United States alone?
• That these franchises operate within a $2.1 trillion market?
• That 1 in 12 U.S. businesses is a franchise?
• That a new franchise opens every 8 minutes of each business day?