Managing a 7-figure marketing fund across 150 franchises

Managing a 7-figure franchise marketing fund across 150 offices is one of the hardest jobs in franchising. Rhianna Clavering does exactly that as National Marketing Manager at Caremark, the UK's BFA Franchise of the Year. In this episode of The Franchise Marketer podcast, Joel Kleber sits down with Rihanna to break down how she runs franchise marketing at scale. Caremark operates 150-plus offices across the UK and Ireland, and Rihanna oversees both a seven-figure national marketing fund and a full franchise recruitment marketing strategy. She covers exactly how she balances national brand-building with local area marketing, why she built a 60/40 awareness-to-activation budget split, and how she explains ROI to franchise owners who just want leads. With an average customer lifetime value of 16,000 to 18,000 pounds, the business case for every campaign is significant, and getting franchise owners to understand that math is a big part of the role. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN How Caremark structures a 7-figure national marketing fund across 150 offices Why local marketing (the fifth channel) is what makes national campaigns actually work The 5-channel, 7-touchpoint strategy they use for brand awareness How to explain marketing ROI to franchise owners who don't trust the numbers Why referral traffic to their franchise recruitment page grew 300% in under 6 months How Rihanna ghostwrites CEO content for LinkedIn and how Joel grew Jim Penman from 3,000 to 45,000 followers in 3 months What authentic video actually means and how to get unstaged content from your CEO TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction 1:35 How Rihanna got into franchising 3:21 Caremark overview and BFA Franchise of the Year 4:11 Inside the 7-figure national marketing fund 5:48 The fifth channel and local area marketing 9:14 Average customer value and the ROI case 11:45 Quality over quantity strategy 15:13 The 60/40 awareness to activation split 16:29 5 channels and 7 touchpoints explained 17:50 TV and radio vs digital debate 20:13 Managing franchise owner opinions on marketing 21:22 How the consultative group approves strategy 27:37 BrightEdge SEO and AI overview strategy 33:42 Franchise recruitment marketing approach 36:01 Email nurture funnel for franchise prospects 40:29 What authentic video actually means 42:48 Ghost writing CEO LinkedIn content 51:41 Getting young people into franchising careers I’m Joel Kleber — CMO of Jim’s Group, Australia’s largest franchise network with 5,700+ franchisees. Australia's number one franchise executive in 2024. On this channel, I share proven strategies on: Content marketing for franchise growth Using AI to create and scale content Building brands with social-first thinking 🎁 Download the Free 60-Page Franchise Growth Playbook Get the exact strategies we use at Jim’s to grow brands, generate leads, and recruit franchisees: 👉 https://www.franchisemarketer.co/ 🌐 More About Me + My Work From foster care to CMO — read my full story and learn how I help businesses grow through content: 👉 https://joelkleber.com/about 📱 Let’s Connect Facebook:   / joelklebermedia   Instagram:   / joelmkleber   TikTok:   / joelklebermedia   LinkedIn:   / joelkleber   Twitter:   / joelkleber_   🌍 Website: https://joelkleber.com/