Marketing Byte: Most Effective Ways To Drive Customer Traffic and Leads

Franchise Update Media’s 2025 Annual Franchise Marketing Leadership Report highlights key trends shaping the industry. The AFMR is a survey of top franchise marketing executives that provides insights into the latest consumer behavior trends, innovative marketing strategies, technology, and the impact of digital transformation on franchise businesses. The AFMR is the first and only report dedicated to B2B and B2C franchise marketing leaders.

It includes perspectives from industry experts about the evolving market dynamics and how franchises can stay ahead of the competition. This report delivers data collected from franchisors across the franchise community with responses organized by industry, marketing budget, system-wide sales, and more. The annual report provides franchisors with the ideal resource for studying their marketing investments, benchmarking their sales and advertising budgets against their own industry categories, as well as setting goals and budgets for the year ahead.

The AFMR also includes research into digital advertising practices, the growing investment in mobile and social platforms, and best practices in building marketing teams. Over the last several years, the AFMR has been expanded to include more information about online reputation management and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). It starts by identifying how many franchises are using AI and in which ways, along with their confidence in using the technology.

It also looks at how the integration of AI has impacted the customer experience, its challenges and limitations, and its plans for future investment in AI. The report also explores franchisee involvement, franchisee training and support, and feedback from customers regarding the use of AI. How Franchise Marketers Drive Traffic and Customer Leads Of the many questions asked in the annual AFMR, one of the most fundamental topics when it comes to the bottom line is how to drive traffic and customer leads.

Franchise Update asked survey respondents this question and received a variety of methods in which franchises reached their customers. With digital marketing being the most effective approach, we further analyzed which of those strategies were most successful. The AFMR analyzed the first question based on business category.

Sixty-seven percent of each of the five categories said digital advertising was the most effective way of driving traffic and customer leads. That includes 100 percent of retail (non-food) franchises and 95 percent of service (brick-and-mortar) brands. Two other methods said to be effective were through social media and franchise websites.

Each of the five business categories responded with 44 percent or more with social media. Service, non-brick-and-mortar (53 percent), and retail non-food (50 percent) had the highest response rates for franchise websites. When analyzing the digital marketing efforts based on business category, two methods stood out.

Pay-per-click on search engines was the most popular response, particularly with retail non-food franchises (75 percent), brick-and-mortar service franchises (63 percent), and non-brick-and-mortar brands (40 percent). Sixty-seven percent of retail food franchises said social media advertising, followed by 33 percent of food franchises, and 32 percent of brick-and-mortar franchises. The AFMR also analyzed these two questions by franchise size.

Digital advertising was again the most popular answer, with seven of the nine categories responding with 80 percent or more, including four groups with 100 percent. While several other franchise groups responded with 100 percent to some methods, social media and franchise website were the other categories with popular responses. Four separate franchise size groups responded with at least 60 percent to social media.

Eighty percent of franchises with 251 to 500 units and 100 percent of franchises with 1,001 to 2,500 responded with websites. When looking at digital marketing strategies based on franchise unit size, a few areas received the most responses. Although consumer-facing sites did not score high collectively, they received 100 percent of responses from franchises between 1,001 and 2,500 units.

Pay-per-click on search engines was the most popular response, with five unit-categories answering with 30 percent or more, including two groups – 251 to 500 units and 501 to 1,000 units – at 60 percent. Social media advertising was most popular with several categories of franchises with fewer than 250 units. For more information about the 2025 AFMR and how you can purchase the report, read more HERE.