Annual Franchise Marketing Report: Measuring the Customer Experience

2019 marked the debut of the Annual Franchise Marketing Report (AFMR). For a short time, we will publish highlights in this newsletter. Ordering information is below.

This new annual report provides franchise consumer marketers with invaluable data and analysis they can use to benchmark their performance against other brands, within both franchising and their industry sector – a resource they can use to improve the effectiveness and ROI of their marketing efforts.

Franchising’s increasingly competitive landscape has strengthened the need for marketers to better understand how their brand measures up against the competition and is performing in the wider marketplace. The AFMR is intended to help franchise consumer marketers understand how their team compares with their peers and, more importantly, help them allocate their limited resources to the most effective channels for achieving their system-wide goals.

Brands participating in the first AFMR represented more than 13,000 locations, $8.3 billion in annual revenue, and $131 million in annual marketing budgets. Diane Phibbs, EVP and chief content officer at Franchise Update Media, presented highlights from the report this past June at the 2019 Franchise Marketing Leadership Conference.

Participants consisted of franchise marketing leaders who completed an in-depth questionnaire online. 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 2019 AFMR.

Measuring Customer Experience

Customer perception of brands is no longer simply transactional. Today’s consumers want to have an experience with your brand, to feel they are part of something special. Accordingly, customer experience has become a huge focus for brands looking to identify the processes, metrics, and responsibility for the guest experience.

While nearly half (45%) reported that multiple departments manage this, slightly more (47%) said they had no process or model for measuring the customer experience. About a third (35%) said operations had sole responsibility for the customer experience, but only 15% said marketing was responsible.

Next time: Top challenges for marketers.

Ordering Information

For more information and to order the 2019 AFMR, click here. The price is $299 for the full report.