With Lots of Options to Choose From, How Do Prospects Find Your Franchise Brand?
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
August 28, 2024 — Only about seven percent of aspiring franchise owners are already “very familiar” with the franchises they inquire about on franchise portals, and another 19% are “already somewhat familiar” with them, according to recent surveys of interested franchise seekers on the FranchiseVentures lead generation platform in July 2024.
When seeking information on an unfamiliar subject, consumers will turn to the search function on their phones or web browsers. Even with several new options for AI-enhanced search since Bing added the Chat-GPT feature in late 2022, Google still retains over 91% of search traffic. And in May 2024, Google began serving “AI Overviews” to all U.S. search traffic, putting more pressure on search “real estate” and likely resulting in more zero-click searches.
What is the consumer experience for franchise seekers? What happens when consumers don’t know exactly what they are looking for, or what criteria to use to compare the choices, or what options are available in a geography, category or price range? How can they be satisfied that they have reviewed the best options?
Franchise directory websites, or “portals” play an important role in the franchise discovery and research process – certainly, no one uses them for entertainment. Aspiring business owners come to franchise directory sites to see what’s available, and for the convenience of comparisons in one place, and ease of connection to franchise representatives.
The survey shows that 35.7% were “vaguely familiar” and 38.1% were “completely unfamiliar” with the franchise selections they ultimately inquired about. So the primary function of portal sites is to make an introduction – to generate awareness and consideration of options in a convenient “one stop shop.”
The primary role of franchise directory sites or “portals” is to organize and present high-level information about franchises to facilitate discovery and consideration, and make the connection between prospects and franchise development teams.
Online franchise opportunity directories and their associated mobile apps play an integral role in discovery, awareness and consideration during the franchise buyer research process. This is in addition to the vital role they play in information and comparison shopping. Online franchise portals provide:
- Exposure to the breadth of franchise categories
- Comparison and options within a franchise category of interest
- Reminders of familiar category franchise brand leaders, and
- Introduction and consideration of franchise concepts that may not be familiar.
Almost three quarters of prospects – 73.8% – chose to inquire about at least one 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.
The very high percentage of “unfamiliarity” 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.
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 (vs. B2C) that is less familiar with consumers
This also helps explain why 72% of inquirers at franchise portals proceed to franchisor’s websites for further information, as we reported most recently in May 2024. More than a fourth of those (27% of total submitters) also fill out the lead form on your franchise website right after having requested information via the franchise portal, providing valuable referral leads.
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 July 2024.
FranchiseVentures 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, August 28th, 2024.