Changes in Usage of Major Platforms for Franchise Development Lead Generation
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
February 9, 2026 – For lead generation sourcing in 2025, franchise development teams coalesced around four major platforms, after much experimentation in 2024. From the 2026 Franchise Development Lead Generation Sources Survey, however, respondents reported abated experimentation in TikTok, while LinkedIn continued to grow in usage.
Despite challenging business conditions and the distractions of tariffs, policy changes and ongoing wars, more than 79% of franchise development teams either maintained or exceeded their expansion plans to pursue growth. Franchises increasing their expansion budgets (18.5%) included all tiers of system sizes.
Meta attained the highest usage at 76.9%, though at almost exactly the same penetration as last year. Google, which was the most used platform in 2025 fell the most in 2025 from our 2024 survey, from 87% to 75.6%.
Franchise directories or “portals” as a category grew the most in absolute percentages, from 68.6% to 74.4% (a difference of 5.8%). Franchise Insights is sponsored by Franchise Ventures, the largest lead generation platform.
Brokers or Referral Networks notched a slight percentage gain from 73.9% to 74.1% and ranked fourth in usage in 2025.
Franchise directory sites, or portals, grew the most in usage in 2025 among the top sources of franchise lead generation.
LinkedIn grew the most in relative percentage, from 52.2% to 57.0%, and maintained its fourth place ranking.
TikTok shrank in usage, from 21.7% in 2024 to 20.8% in 2025 and was the smallest in usage overall for franchise lead generation. Legal and ownership challenges plagued the Chinese-owned company through 2025, though a U.S. consortium gained control of the company in January 22, resolving a pending legislative ban on access by U.S. consumers.
Supporting the validity of data from the Franchise Insights 2026 Franchise Development Lead Generation Sources survey, a broad cross-section of franchise development teams participated, from emerging systems to well-established franchises with many thousands of units.
FranchiseInsights.com surveys franchisors periodically to get a pulse on the industry, provides benchmarking and identifies franchise development best practices. This survey was conducted in late December 2025 and early January 2026.
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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 Monday, February 9th, 2026.