Franchise Lead Generation Portals Drive Discovery and Consideration
January 26, 2022 — Even though over 28% of franchise prospects in January 2022 reported being already “somewhat familiar” or “very familiar” with the franchises they considered, they chose to inquire about them at franchise portal sites among hundreds of other listings. These findings are consistent with our prior data from August 2021.
When you’re looking for information on an unfamiliar subject, you might “Google it.” But what if you don’t know what you are looking for, or what criteria to use to compare the choices, or what options are available in a geography or category or price range? How do you satisfy yourself that you’ve reviewed the best options?
That is the role of franchise directory sites, or portals — they organize information about franchises to facilitate discovery and consideration.
According to a January 2022 survey of interested franchise seekers, online franchise opportunity directories and their associated mobile apps play an integral role in discovery, awareness and consideration during the buyer research process. This is in addition to the vital role they play in information and comparison shopping. Online portals provide:
- Exposure to the breadth of franchise categories
- Comparison and options within a category of interest
- Reminders of familiar category brand leaders, and
- Introduction and consideration of franchise concepts that may not be familiar.
In January 2022, almost three quarters of the respondents chose to inquire about a 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. This very high percentage 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. The sum of “completely unfamiliar” and “vaguely familiar” responses in January was 71.9%, consistent with prior monthly surveys.
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 that is less familiar with consumers
The “Mystery Shop” survey is conducted monthly by FranchiseInsights.com from a sample of franchise inquirers across the FranchiseVentures lead generation platform. The most recent data is from January 15-22, 2022.
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, January 26th, 2022.