Marketing Byte: Looking at the Size and Roles of Franchise Marketing Teams

Franchise Update Media’s 2025 Annual Franchise Marketing Leadership Report highlights key trends shaping the industry. The AFMR is a survey of top franchise marketing executives that provides insights into the latest consumer behavior trends, innovative marketing strategies, technology, and the impact of digital transformation on franchise businesses.

The AFMR is the first and only report dedicated to B2B and B2C franchise marketing leaders. It includes perspectives from industry experts about the evolving market dynamics and how franchises can stay ahead of the competition. This report delivers data collected from franchisors across the franchise community with responses organized by industry, marketing budget, system-wide sales, and more.

The annual report provides franchisors with the ideal resource for studying their marketing investments, benchmarking their sales and advertising budgets against their own industry categories, as well as setting goals and budgets for the year ahead. The AFMR also includes research into digital advertising practices, the growing investment in mobile and social platforms, and best practices in building marketing teams.

Over the last several years, the AFMR has been expanded to include more information about online reputation management and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). It starts by identifying how many franchises are using AI and in which ways, along with their confidence in using the technology. It also looks at how the integration of AI has impacted the customer experience, its challenges and limitations, and its plans for future investment in AI. The report also explores franchisee involvement, franchisee training and support, and customer feedback on the use of AI.

The size of franchise marketing teams

In the latest AFMR, Franchise Update asked survey respondents several questions about the number of people in their marketing departments and some of the primary areas they handle. Generally speaking, most franchises have five or fewer members in their marketing departments. The biggest outlier is with retail (non-food) franchises. Twenty-five percent said they have five members of their marketing team, another 25 percent said they have 10 marketing members on staff, and 50 percent said they have 11 or more.

The roles within franchise marketing teams

Despite the limited size of most marketing staffs, they handle a wide range of responsibilities. When looking at industry sectors, the two primary roles came with digital advertising and social media strategy. Most respondents had a high percentage of their teams dedicated to those roles, including 100 percent of the responses among retail (non-food) franchises. Other areas with a significant percentage of responses included franchise development marketing, customer experience, and field marketing/franchisee support.

Responses to this question were also broken down by number of units. Not surprisingly, the largest franchises with more than 5,000 units had team members dedicated to most areas listed in the survey. One hundred percent of franchises of that size had team members dedicated to areas such as digital advertising, social media strategy, franchise development marketing, broadcast advertising, customer experience, field marketing/franchisee support, and employee recruiting and retention. Once again, digital advertising and social media strategy had a high number of team members responsible for those areas.

The AFMR also analyzed the responses to that question based on systemwide revenue. Franchises with the largest revenues ($1-3 billion) had the most resources to dedicate to most of those categories. While digital advertising and social media strategy again scored high among most franchise systems, field marketing/franchisee support featured five different revenue groups responding with at least 50 percent.

When to add to the marketing team?

As we looked at the various responsibilities of marketing departments, we also asked franchises about when they determined when to add members to their teams. Starting with the industry sector, most said they were influenced by an increase in locations or units. Forty-four percent of retail food franchises indicated it was due to an increase in the number of franchisees in the system, and 33 percent of the same groups said it was due to an increase in locations.

When analyzing responses to that question by franchise unit size, across the board, the most popular answer was an increase in the number of locations or units. However, every response from franchises between 1,001 and 2,500 units said it was tied to sales volume. It is also worth noting that franchises that have yet to open a location said the decision to add people to their marketing department was determined by an increase in the number of franchisees.

Finally, we looked at responses to the question based on systemwide revenue. Collectively, the most popular response was based on an increase in locations or units. Several groups also responded that the decision to add people to the marketing department was based on an increase in the number of franchisees. That included all the respondents from franchises with systemwide revenues between $251,000 and $500,000.

For more information about the current AFMR and how you can purchase the report, read more HERE.