Advertising Your Franchise Brand In the Dawn of AI-Enhanced Search
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
Only about ten percent of aspiring franchise owners are already “very familiar” with the franchises they inquire about on franchise portals, and another 6.7% are “already somewhat familiar” with them, according to recent surveys of interested franchise seekers on the Franchise Ventures lead generation platform in May 2025.
When seeking information on an unfamiliar subject, consumers will turn to the search function on their phones or web browsers, and increasingly to chatbots or AI-enhanced search. Even with several new offerings for AI-enhanced search since Bing added the Chat-GPT feature in late 2022, Google still retains almost 90% of search traffic as of April 2025. In May 2024, Google began serving “AI Overviews”, which now are included in about 50% of searches, taking away more “real estate” previously given to paid links and organic listings, and likely resulting in as much as 60% zero-click searches. The answer is provided along with citations that don’t get clicked as often.
It is important to understand the user experience of franchise seekers as they enter the sales funnel. What happens when prospects don’t know exactly what they are looking for, or what criteria to use to compare the choices, or what options are available in a geography, category or price range? How can they be satisfied that they have reviewed the best options?
For over thirty years, franchise directory websites, or “portals” have played an important role in the franchise discovery and research process, and their usage is increasing, per the 2025 Franchise Lead Sources Survey. Aspiring business owners come to franchise directory sites to see all that is available, and for the convenience of comparisons in one place, and ease of connection to franchise representatives.
The survey shows that 36.7% were “vaguely familiar” and 46.7% were “completely unfamiliar” with the franchise selections they ultimately inquired about. So the primary function of portal sites is to make an introduction – to generate awareness and consideration of options in a convenient “one stop shop.”
For over thirty years, the primary role of franchise directory sites or “portals” has been to organize and present high-level information about franchises to facilitate discovery and consideration, and make the connection between prospects and franchise development teams.
Online franchise opportunity directories and their associated mobile apps facilitate discovery, awareness and consideration during the franchise buyer research process. This is in addition to the vital role they play in information and comparison shopping. Online franchise portals provide:
- Exposure to the breadth of franchise categories
- Comparison and options within a franchise category of interest
- Reminders of familiar category franchise brand leaders, and
- Introduction and consideration of franchise concepts that may not be familiar.
Almost three quarters of prospects – 83.4% – chose to inquire about at least one 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.
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 (vs. B2C) that is less familiar with consumers
This also helps explain why over two thirds of inquirers at franchise portals proceed to the franchisor’s website for further information, as we reported most recently in October 2024. More than a fourth of those (29% of total submitters) also fill out the lead form on your franchise website right after having requested information via the franchise portal, providing valuable referral leads.
The “Mystery Shop” survey is conducted monthly by FranchiseInsights.com from a sample of franchise inquirers across the Franchise Ventures lead generation platform. The data presented here is from May 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, May 21st, 2025.