3rd Annual Franchise Marketing Report (AFMR), Part 4

Editor: This is the fourth installment in a series of highlights from the 2021 Annual Franchise Marketing Report (AFMR). Find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

2021 marked the release of the third 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 fourth installment in a series of selected highlights from the new report.

Digital Marketing: Spend & Effectiveness

With people forced or choosing to stay home, spending on digital marketing rose. Out-of-home advertising, from in-store campaigns to billboards, fell in tandem with commuting, spurring a shift to digital campaigns to reach people where they were: at home on their computers, tablets, and phones.

• Pay per click and social media saw an increase in spend in the 2021 report.

• All digital marketing efforts saw an increase in effectiveness, with the exception of social media.

• PPC saw a solid increase, as did SEO, which jumped about 7 percentage points over the previous year.

• Email marketing may be the biggest surprise of all. After a low score in 2020, email increased by almost 15 percentage points this year. With so many virtually trapped at home, marketers appeared to show renewed attention to email.

It’s interesting to note that social media’s effectiveness dropped almost 10 percentage points this year, Phibbs said. This contrasts with her observation last October that “social media has become very effective at a higher rate than spend.”

Next time: Social Media: Spend & Effectiveness.