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This is the 10th and last installment in a series of highlights from the 2021 Annual Franchise Marketing Report (AFMR). Click to see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, and part 9.
2021 marked the release of the 3rd Annual Franchise Marketing Report (AFMR). This report provides franchise consumer marketers with invaluable data and analysis they can use to benchmark their performance against other franchise brands and within their industry sector. In short, the AFMR is a unique resource franchise marketers can use to improve the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and spend.
The ongoing pandemic, on top of franchising’s already competitive and frothy landscape, has strengthened the necessity for marketers to better understand how their brand measures up against the competition, as well as how it is performing in the wider marketplace. The AFMR can help franchise consumer marketers understand how their team compares with their peers and, more importantly, help them direct their limited resources into the most effective channels for achieving their system-wide goals during these uncertain times.
“This annual report was created at the request of our Franchise Marketing Leadership Conference Advisory Board to develop relevant content for CMOs, and to learn more about their needs and challenges,” said Diane Phibbs, executive vice president and chief content officer at Franchise Update Media.
Participants in the AFMR consisted of franchise marketing leaders who completed an in-depth questionnaire. Responses were aggregated and analyzed to produce a detailed look into the marketing practices, budgets, and strategies of a wide cross-section of franchise brands and sectors. The data and accompanying commentary and analysis provide the basis of the 2021 AFMR. Below is the 10th and last in a series of selected highlights from the report.
The onset of Covid in March 2020 presented massive and unforeseen challenges for marketers that persist today. Challenges resulting from the pandemic affected the entire business landscape in the form of temporary and permanent location closures, budget reductions, and furloughs of corporate staff and employees at franchisees’ locations and corporate stores.
For franchise marketers, this has meant a fundamental retrenching as they search not only for new ways to reach consumers, but also for new ways to serve them. The usual and complex challenges they faced in the years and months leading up to the pandemic were magnified, even as new ones appeared.