The Role of Franchise Lead Generation Portals in Awareness and Consideration
June 8, 2022 — A minority (6.4%) of aspiring franchise owners are already “very familiar” with the franchises they inquire about, and another 23% are “somewhat familiar” to them according to surveys of interested franchise seekers to portal sites collected January through May 2022. They likely come for the convenience of comparisons in one place, and ease of connection.
But the same surveys show that 40% are “only vaguely familiar” and 30.6% are “completely unfamiliar” with their ultimate selections. So the primary function of portal sites is to make an introduction – to generate awareness and consideration of options at a “one stop shop.”
When you’re looking for information on an unfamiliar subject, you might “Google it.” But what if you don’t know what you are looking for, or what criteria to use to compare the choices, or what options are available in a geography or category or price range? How do you satisfy yourself that you’ve reviewed the best options?
That is the role of franchise directory sites, or portals — they organize high-level information about franchises to facilitate discovery and consideration, and make the connection between prospect and franchisor.
Online franchise opportunity directories and their associated mobile apps play an integral role in discovery, awareness and consideration during the buyer research process. This is in addition to the vital role they play in information and comparison shopping. Online portals provide:
- Exposure to the breadth of franchise categories
- Comparison and options within a category of interest
- Reminders of familiar category brand leaders, and
- Introduction and consideration of franchise concepts that may not be familiar.
In this large sample from January to May 2022, 70.6% of respondents chose to inquire about a franchise brand with which they had very little or no familiarity prior to the portal visit — the concept was introduced to the prospect during the visit. This very high percentage underscores the unique value of these directory resources in giving introduction and consideration to franchise concepts that may not be on the radar screen of prospects. The sum of “completely unfamiliar” and “vaguely familiar” responses in January was 71.9%, consistent with prior monthly surveys.
Why might the franchise options be unfamiliar? These are among the likely reasons for an unfamiliar brand:
- Emerging franchise that has not yet established brand recognition
- Franchise with regional concentration, or lack of a national footprint to gain exposure
- Established B2B brand that is less familiar with consumers
The “Mystery Shop” survey is conducted monthly by FranchiseInsights.com from a sample of franchise inquirers across the FranchiseVentures lead generation platform. The data presented here is from January through May 2022.
Franchise Ventures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.
Interested in more insights from our proprietary data set? Subscribe here to make sure you hear about them first.
Contact Franchise Ventures to get your share of today’s aspiring franchise owners.
Published on Tuesday, June 7th, 2022.