Marketing Byte: Who Handles Franchise Marketing and Advertising

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.

What goes into franchise marketing and advertising

Competition in the business world is fierce, and companies must do everything possible to stand out from the crowd. Franchises have the resources to do so in many ways, through marketing, advertising, social media, content creation, and more. With an increased number of platforms able to share a brand’s message, it requires greater work and often involves outside assistance.

In the latest AFMR, Franchise Update asked respondents who managed their advertising, what services they outsourced their marketing resources to, and the number of companies they are working with. The results show a wide range of services requiring a combination of in-house production and coordination with several digital companies.

The AFMR first looked at how advertising buying was managed based on sector. Each group uses both in-house resources and also works with an agency for their advertising. Every retail (non-food) franchise uses an agency, while 68 percent of service (brick and mortar) franchises and 63 percent of retail food franchises work with an agency.

When analyzing responses to the question based on franchise size, three groups – franchises that have yet to open a unit, those with 1,001 to 2,500 units, and those with more than 5,000 units – responded with 100 percent by saying they work with an agency for advertising. Only two groups responded with a higher percentage of working in-house than with an agency – franchises with 501 to 1,000 units, and franchises with 101 to 250 units.

We also looked at responses based on systemwide revenue, which also reflected how most franchises use a combination of in-house resources and an advertising agency for their advertising buying. Every franchise with revenues of $251,000 to $500,000 said they used both.

The AFMR asked franchisees which marketing services they outsourced. Starting by industry, the primary service being outsourced was web design. Eighty-nine percent of both food and retail food franchises outsourced web design, followed by 79 percent of service (brick-and-mortar) franchises. All retail (non-food) franchises in the survey outsourced their digital ad buying. More than two-thirds of two groups – retail food and retail (non-food) outsourced their media buying.

In viewing the responses based on franchise size, web design had the highest percentage of responses across most groups. Almost every franchise that had fewer than 25 units or had yet to open outsourced their digital ad creative. All franchises with more than 5,000 units outsourced both their digital ad buying and media buying.

With so many different resources needing to be outsourced, we asked franchises how many digital companies they are working with. Starting by sector, the largest percentage of responses was generally with 2-3 companies. The only group that said they worked with five or more digital companies was retail (non-food) franchises, who responded with 25 percent of their answers.

When analyzing responses to the question based on unit size, most franchises again either worked with a single company or 2-3 agencies. Each franchise with 1,001 to 2,500 units said they work with 2-3 digital companies. Forty percent of three groups – 101 to 250 units, 251 to 500 units, and 501 to 1,000 units – said they work with 4-5 companies.

Finally, the report analyzed responses to that question by systemwide revenue. The majority of franchises worked with three digital companies or fewer. The biggest outlier was that all franchises with revenues of $100 to $250 million worked with 4-5 companies. Fifty percent of franchises with revenues of $500 million to $1 billion, and 38 percent of franchises with revenues of $250 million to $500 million also said they work with 4-5 digital companies.

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