Referrals Are A Key Source of Value in Franchise Lead Generation
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
July 16, 2025 — With AI-induced changes to consumer behavior and the search marketing ecosystem, alternate channels of lead referrals become even more essential and valuable. Referred visits to your franchise development website yield informed prospects who demonstrate clear intent – they are aware of your offering, and want to learn more.
Cost per lead is a key decision factor to franchise development teams when evaluating franchise directory websites (portals), along with satisfactory quality standards. But leads submitted at franchise directory websites also result in substantial referral visits to franchisor websites, in addition to being a significant source of leads submitted at development websites.
Almost Two-thirds of leads from franchise portals result in additional ROI through referred visits to your franchise development website, in addition to the leads they provide.
When interested persons submit inquiries at a franchise portal, only a minority end their searches there. The vast majority of prospects who are exposed to and inquire about your brand go on to continue their research while awaiting your response.
Consistent with our earlier looks at the referral value of franchise portals, data from February through June 2025 show that 64.3% of them went on to visit franchise development websites. Of those who visited, 29.3% (or 19% of total submitters) also fill out the lead form on your franchise website right after having requested information via the franchise portal.
Data show 29.3% of the referred visitors from portals also submit an inquiry at the franchisor’s website shortly thereafter.
“Referral value” and “pass-along value” are terms used to describe this benefit, which is in addition to the immediate “conversion” value of a franchise lead. These very interested prospects get attributed to the franchisor’s website, even though they originated on the portal. Despite the error in attribution, these follow-up visits are very valuable, providing more informed prospects.
These referrals must be considered in calculating the return on advertising spend (ROI) at franchise lead generation portals. Regularly reviewing sources of referred traffic on your website analytics platform (e.g. Google Analytics) is the best way to know what sources are the most productive. You can set up a dashboard or recurring email to yourself showing the sources (referring sites and advertising platforms) for your referral visits.
Set up a dashboard in your analytics platform showing sources (referring sites) for your referral visits so that you can track and quantify them.
The “Mystery Shop” survey is conducted monthly by FranchiseInsights.com from a large sample of franchise inquirers across the Franchise Ventures lead generation platform. The data presented here is from prospect surveys from February through June 2025.
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, July 16th, 2025.