Franchise Update Unveils New Annual Franchise Marketing Leadership Report (AFMR)

Franchise Update Media recently released its 2025 Annual Franchise Marketing Leadership Report. 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 was 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 their plans for future investment in AI. The report also explores franchisee involvement, franchisee training and support, and feedback from customers regarding the use of AI.

Franchise Update EVP & Chief Content Officer Diane Phibbs discussed some of the top-line items in the latest AFMR at the Franchise Customer Experience Conference (FCXC) in June. Here are a few of the main takeaways Phibbs shared from the new AFMR:

• Nearly 80 percent of respondents said their leads have either increased or remained the same over the past year. Only 21 percent said their leads were down, while two percent were unsure.
• How are franchise marketing teams spending their money? Digital advertising is the highest marketing spend at 42 percent, followed by social media at 22 percent. Within digital marketing, pay-per-click is the highest with 36 percent, with social media ads the next most popular (29 percent).
• This is the first year that 100 percent of the respondents said they have a customer experience program or process in place.  
• There is also an increase in tracking metrics for how franchises monitor their customer service or online reputations. The two most popular methods for doing so are by reviewing monitoring platforms (68 percent) and with social media monitoring tools (59 percent).
• The AFMR also asked survey respondents about the biggest challenges they face, and the two most popular responses were maintaining consistency (33 percent) and managing negative feedback (32 percent).
• Sixty percent of franchise brands responding to the survey said they are using AI to enhance the customer experience in their systems. 
• The survey asked respondents how confident they felt in their teams’ ability to effectively use AI tools. Seventy percent said they were very confident, a significant increase over last year, when only 26 percent reported the same level of confidence to the question.
• Seventy-five percent of survey respondents said they planned to invest in AI to enhance customer experience in the future.
• Seventy percent of respondents said they would need to upskill to keep pace with the increased use of AI in their field.

For more information about the 2025 AFMR and how you can purchase the report, read more HERE.