Aggressive Sales Goals and Bigger Budgets Set the Stage for Franchise Growth in 2025
I haven’t seen this much excitement and anticipation from business leaders about a new year for as long as I’ve been in franchising.
All the entrepreneurs with whom I’ve recently spoken are optimistic about the changes and opportunities ahead in 2025. They’re optimistic that burdensome federal government regulations and interference will roll back. They’re optimistic about avoiding tax increases and other barricades to success. They’re optimistic that inflation will be coming down. These fears paralyzed most small business owners and franchisors over the past few years.
So, with fears lessened and growth forecasted, how will industry leaders take action? How will franchise development sales pros make the most of this new landscape?
Here are five trends in the marketing and development area of franchising that I am watching for 2025.
5 Franchise Development Trends for 2025
1. Increased Fran Dev Sales Goals
Okay, this is an easy one. No one ever has lower sales goals. But with lackluster franchise development performance in 2024 for many brands, we will see goals jump at a much higher rate than usual. Most franchisor CEOs and CDOs tell me their development goals are very aggressive for 2025, even more so if they had a disappointing second half this year.
Warning: even if your organization hasn’t drastically raised goals, be aware that most of your competitors have. Those development teams are going to be more aggressively marketing to your candidates.
2. Increasing Ad Budgets
If your goals increase, so must your investment. There’s no way around that. Raising expectations without applying more resources is a quick way to fail.
The rising cost of advertising on digital platforms from 2023 to 2024 is mostly attributed to the 2024 elections, inflation and growing competition. Even without an election and if inflation goes down, I don’t anticipate cost per click or cost per lead going down again. Meta, Google, Amazon, and the other channel bosses are not going to go backward on their revenue.
3. Defragmentation of Ad Channels
While planning an increased ad budget, smart franchisors will also continue to revise where those dollars are best spent.
For the past few years, brands have followed marketers’ advice of spreading out their reach across multiple social media and search channels. Touching any potential candidates in multiple places along their buyer’s journey has become standard practice.
While this will continue to be true for consumer marketing, expensive ad rates are making some fran dev marketers pull spend from average-performing channels. They’re going all-in on the one or two channels that have outperformed all others. Along with financial efficiencies, I’m also seeing a trend of franchisors’ rising confidence in the lead sources where they’ve struck a vein.
4. More Professional Sales
You can lead a horse to water … but you can’t make him close a deal.
The past few years have seen an increase in good leads not being worked and budgets being wasted. Franchise Update’s Annual Franchise Development Report shares that half of the leads coming into fran dev websites are ignored. Is it because fran dev teams are understaffed? Are open sales roles going unfilled? Are some sales reps just getting lazier?
Chief Development Officers can’t afford to spend more on leads and see them go to waste. But the industry may be turning a corner. A trend I hope to continue to see is a greater focus on building a professional sales operation inside franchise systems.
Watch for the trend of brands hiring higher-level sales professionals, increasing sales training, and spending more on tools to create a professional sales process and organization.
5. More Job Movement
Staffing at a higher level won’t be limited to fran dev pros. Look for more movement and a hiring spree for marketing and other executives.
Many brands have spent most of 2024 with openings for senior marketing and sales roles for which they couldn’t find qualified applicants in the price range. But now with bigger goals, budgets, and opportunities, brands will realize it’s time to staff up and close deals.
