Insights Into the Buyer Search Path to Franchise Development Websites

By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights

October 16, 2024 — The vast majority of prospects who request information on franchise portal websites become a referral visit to the franchisor’s website afterward. In our most recent surveys, about 66% of portal lead submitters made subsequent visits to the corresponding franchise development websites. 

We also routinely ask prospects why they visited franchisor site(s) after submitting an inquiry at a franchise directory website, or portal, to gain insight into this behavior. The overwhelming response, at 49.4%, was “I was very interested and just wanted to learn more.” Another 34.2% wanted to “prepare before having a conversation” with franchise representatives. For 12.8% of respondents, the portals, which are designed to generate awareness and consideration of options and make connections, didn’t provide “sufficient information.”

These highly-interested “referred” prospects may get attributed to the franchisor’s website, even though they originated on the portal. This is a positive outcome, but it may lead to improper attribution of interested prospects to the “last touch” rather than the portal that was the source of the prospect lead.

Almost half of inquiring prospects proceeded to visit the corresponding franchise development websites because they were “very interested and just wanted to learn more.”

What explains this referral phenomenon?

Recent franchise brand awareness data shows that less than 10% of prospects are “very familiar” with the opportunities they inquire about on franchise portals, and about 19% are “somewhat familiar.” About 40% of prospects are introduced to an unfamiliar franchise on a portal visit. 

Brand awareness and referral value are keys to why third-party sites like franchise portals are important to franchise development, especially as consumers spend more of their time on fragmented social media and streaming platforms. Prospects who take the time to research a franchise and visit its website demonstrate a level of interest and intent that can lead to more productive conversations with franchise representatives. 

This additional referral value is a substantial benefit that should be considered in determining return on investment in portals.

More than one-third of portal inquirers said they wanted to better prepare themselves before having a conversation with a franchise representative.

The “Mystery Shop” survey is conducted monthly by FranchiseInsights.com from a sample of franchise inquirers across the FranchiseVentures franchise lead generation platform. The data presented here is from July through September 2024.

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.

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Published on Wednesday, October 16th, 2024.