You can learn so much just by chatting to all sorts of people in the franchise sector. Here's what I found out after a few days at at he Sydney Franchising Expo recently...

Franchise 'learning on steroids'

I’m not sure about you, but the last handful of months have been a bit of a challenge due to what I see as simply a lack of confidence across the board.

As you might expect, I have conversations with many different people in many different brands across the sector, where I learn all sorts of things.

But in a franchise expo environment, it is like ‘learning on steroids’ for what is happening in the franchise recruitment market, and what the general sentiment is like.

The Sydney Franchising & Business Opportunities Expo was held recently on 5-6 August.

Sentiment going forward is actually pretty good

When talking about looking backwards on what the previous few months have been like for franchise recruitment, people were lamenting how ‘flat’ it has been.

BUT, when talking about now and into the future, the feeling was pretty good, that we had got through the worst part of the ‘confidence’ issue and the upside was significant.

I am aware that the most recent market sentiment indicator from the FRANdata 'Pulse Check' survey, showed a significant drop in broad sentiment. 

However, anecdotally at the recent expo, I found a positive future outlook. 

Franchise enquiry leads have been significantly down

I cannot recall talking to anyone telling me how great their lead generation has been since around May (or thereabouts).

Large brands that generally have naturally high lead yields, have told me that leads direct to their website had been down up to 50%+ than normal, let alone external lead sources.

Recall in May, we had the Federal election. And for the life of me I still can’t quite figure out why national elections drop lead enquiries so significantly - but it just does in my experience.

Then we rolled into another covid surge, and bang, bang, bang in interest rate hikes and accelerating inflation.

Of course there are exceptions, but if your leads in multiple channels have been down (a lot) recently, I can assure you that you are not on your own.

Leads and interest are heading up again

A few brands did mention that they were seeing some signs of leads building in late July or so, when compared to the previous 6-8 weeks.

As an example, and in  response, we even slowed our own EDM lead generation activity at franchise buyer for a few weeks and focused purely on content. We also pushed EDM lead campaigns back for many, in an effort to find a window of more confident market sentiment than the previous couple of months.

It feels a little like we may be there now.

Franchise web traffic growth

Interestingly, our web traffic has grown significantly across the period.

Our July 2022 traffic was 84% UP compared to January 2022, which by contrast is ‘supposed’ to be traditionally a busy period for franchise interest. 

That's all a little counter-intuitive.

Some of our recent open rates on emails through August have been chalk and cheese to July. In July at times, we were experiencing the depths of a lack of confidence with some open rates as low as 7%.

Jump forward 2 - 3 weeks later, and almost miraculously, we’re hitting 19-23% open rates regularly!

That is an extraordinary shift.

Content is the name of the game going forward

Content has always been the name of the game in my view, but I think it has taken a while for people to truly believe it.

When I’ve said it over and over for years and years, it could sound self-serving, given we are in large part, a content creation business focused on franchising.

I get that.

BUT, the most seismic thing for me at the recent Sydney Expo, was the amount of times franchise executives of all types, said to me;

"We just really need more content".

Previously, in basically every discussion I’d have, it was always about ‘leads, leads, leads’.

And as such, I’ve long said, "franchisors are addicted to leads" - of any type, no matter the quality, as long as there are good numbers of them.

Now, it seems the penny has truly dropped that the path to leads, in quality and volume, is in great content.

Anyway, they are just a few insights that I’ve gathered over the last few weeks and months for you. 

I hope you find them helpful!