2026 Forecast for Usage of Top Franchise Development Lead Generation Sources
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
February 18, 2026 – Franchise systems responding to the 2026 Franchise Development Lead Generation Survey reported increased overall spending on lead sources in 2025, along with changes in usage. When asked about 2026 plans, more than 45% reported increasing budgets for one or more of their chosen sources. Among sources surveyed, only Google is expected to decline in usage in 2026.
Franchise directories or “portals” as a category grew in usage to 74.4% (a difference of 5.8%) and are expected to be used by 78.8% of franchisor respondents in 2026, a difference of 4.4%. Only TikTok is poised to grow more, at 4.9% growth in usage, with the purchase by U.S. owners in January 2026 resolving the pending total ban of the app in the United States.
Franchise directories or “portals” as a category are expected to grow the most in usage among top sources, though TikTok is projected to grow by the highest percent share.
Meta (Instagram and Facebook platforms) is poised to grow a modest 1.6% in usage to 78.5%, from 76.9% in reported 2025 usage.
Respondents to the survey see the “brokers and referral networks” category growing from 74.1% in 2025 to 76.3%, a difference of 2.2%.
On the other hand, franchise development teams using Google expect a decline in reported usage from 75.6% in 2025 to 74.7% in 2026, a drop of 1%. Moreover, this is a decline from expected usage (vs. actual) of 87% in 2025 from the January 2025 survey. Many changes in offerings at Google, including AI Overviews and competition from chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity, along with experimentation with less mature sources like LinkedIn and TikTok may have contributed to that difference.
LinkedIn is projected to be used by 60.3% of franchise development teams in 2026, up from 53% in 2025, an increase of 3.3%.
TikTok was used by only 20.8% of franchise developers in 2025, down from 21.7% in 2024, but is expected to grow to 25.6% with the resolution of its Chinese ownership concerns by U.S. officials.
Google is the only source expected to decline in usage in 2026, though by only one percentage point.
In summary, all but Google among the major franchise prospect lead pipelines is expected to grow in usage in 2026. While the percentages are small, the dollars are huge, and represent a significant franchise development cost
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, provide benchmarking and identify franchise development best practices. This survey was conducted in early January 2026.
We will continue to share more nuggets about optimizing your franchise development lead generation results in upcoming articles at Franchise Insights.
Subscribe here to make sure you hear about them first.
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.
Interested in more insights from our proprietary data set? Subscribe here to make sure you hear about them first.
Contact Franchise Ventures to get your share of today’s aspiring franchise owners.
Published on Wednesday, February 18th, 2026.