Franchise Statistics Bureau · 2020-06
What share of franchise leads come from online portals?
Figures are published by third parties, compiled as-is, and may change. We do not independently verify the underlying data — check the source before acting on it. For reference only; not legal, tax, or investment advice.
38%
of all lead sources
Franchise portals produced 38% of all franchise lead sources in the first half of 2020, up from just over 13% of leads in 2019.
The 38% comes from FranConnect's analysis of franchise sales data from more than 600 brands, published on Franchising.com in September 2020, which named portals the #1 source of franchise prospects. The 2019 figure is reported by Entrepreneur. Both figures predate AI search.
Original publisher: FranConnect 2020 Franchise Sales Index (January–June 2020), reported by Keith Gerson of FranConnect on Franchising.com / Franchise Update Media, 16 Sep 2020 ↗
What this figure measures
The figure is the share of franchise leads that came from online franchise portals during the first half of 2020, among the lead sources in the dataset. It counts leads, meaning enquiries from prospective buyers, not completed franchise sales, and it is an observed share for that period rather than a forecast. The underlying data describe franchise sales activity at more than 600 brands.
How it was produced
The Entrepreneur article is a contributor opinion piece that credits Franchising.com. The Franchising.com article, published by Franchise Update Media, was written by a FranConnect executive and draws on FranConnect's 2020 Franchise Sales Index, which analysed franchise sales data from more than 600 brands for the first half of 2020. Neither article explains how the brands in the dataset were chosen.
What it does not tell you
The period includes the onset of the Covid pandemic, and portal lead volumes fell from 55,000 in the first quarter to 49,000 in the second. A lead is not a sale: in the same data, portal leads converted at 0.3%, or about 350 leads per sale. The Entrepreneur piece also reports critics' view that portals have a conflict of interest in the data they provide.
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