58 Franchise Statistics to Know in 2024

The U.S. Census Bureau surveyed 4.3 million businesses in 2020. Out of these, 10.5% of all businesses are franchised or franchisor-owned. This may seem like a tiny fraction of all U.S. businesses, but in this small fraction, veterans control 14% of franchisees, and they contribute $41 billion in GDP. This is almost two times Georgia’s GDP in 2022.

Franchise statistics aren’t just numbers; they’re powerful resources to fuel your marketing initiatives. By leveraging these insights, you can tailor your strategies to your service area and maximize your business’s potential.

Why Are These Franchise Statistics Important?

Franchises operate a market-tested business model; the only difference when you’re licensed is that you’re setting up the business in a new, unproven location. When this is the case, understanding what data say about franchising deals and digital marketing options helps you optimize for short-term and long-term goals. If you still wonder why franchise statistics are important, read these:

To Understand Competitor Strategies

There are businesses in your service area that are already targeting your specific audiences. You need to know their approach to capturing demand and converting visitors through competitor analysis so you can optimize your marketing efforts for success. 

Understanding your competitors’ strategies is not just about keeping up, it’s also about staying ahead. By learning from their ad bidding strategies, SEO strategy, and use of user-generated content, you can gain a competitive edge. 

As a business targeting a local audience, franchise statistics can provide you with the insights you need to understand what makes each community tick. This knowledge can be the key to increasing conversions and foot traffic, giving you a strategic advantage in your market.

To Understand Local SEO

Local SEO relates to geolocation targeting so you can market your business to new, specific audiences in your service area. Franchise statistics will help you understand your ideal customers, their interests, online behavior, and the best way to get your brand in front of them through digital marketing.

The data will also guide you on effective SEO, PPC, or social media marketing strategies so you can get started on the approach with a high chance of converting fast. After all, the bottom line goal is higher engagement and conversions.

58 Franchise Statistics for Business Success

Every company that leans on data doesn’t regret it, especially if they optimize their operations to scale based on relevant data. Here are some data you can layer in to improve your marketing strategy and services:

General Franchise Statistics

1. According to Entrepreneur’s 2024 Franchise 500 list, the U.S. franchise industry has over 3000 business categories, with Taco Bell leading the pack in 2024.
2. A typical franchise agreement lasts about 10-20 years. This term length gives you enough flexibility to establish and grow the business in a way that inspires customer loyalty.
3. McDonald’s is the largest franchise in the world, with $25.49Bin revenue in 2023. 
4. A new franchise opens about every 8 minutes of each business day. This has helped many franchises capture foot traffic and win the hearts of early customers, even in competitive areas of operations. 
5. About 80% of franchises are local or regional brands, while only 16% are global or national franchises.
6. Franchisees pay about 4%—12% royalties every year. In 2023, McDonald’s generated around $5.53 billion in royalty revenue from franchisees worldwide.
7. An average franchise owner is about 44 years old. 
8. 10.5% of U.S. businesses are franchises, and 14% of these franchises are controlled by veterans who generate $41 billion in annual GDP. 
9. Quick-service restaurants contribute $288 billion to the franchise industry’s economic output. They are considered the largest contributors, followed by the retail food, product, and services business line. If you’re starting, this could be an industry to try out. 
10. U.S. franchise establishments generated an economic output of about $859 billion in 2023. 

Source for section statistics:

• Fortunly
• Stock Analysis 
• Reference For Business
• Frankfart Global
• Statista
• Zippia

Statistics on Local SEO for Franchises

Most franchises focus on local consumers. One of the effective marketing strategies to reach these consumers is understanding (and dominating) local SEO and using the information to promote your business. Here’s how, according to data:

11. Google Maps searches for “shopping near me” grow over 100% globally annually. This means you need to have a digital presence in Google’s map pack and dominate local searches.
12. Google handles 8.5 billion searches daily, and considering that an average user searches about 3-4 times a day and over 2 billion people use Google daily, optimizing your website to rank on Google can never go wrong. 
13. 60% of smartphone users contact businesses directly after finding them through a search engine through features like “click to call.” Therefore, if you include your contact details on your local business websites, you’ll gain valuable leads. 
14. 76% of mobile users who conduct local searches visit a store in 24 hours, with 28% of those searches converting into purchases. 

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15. 46% of web users are looking for local businesses. Most Google searches are for local information like addresses, hours, and directions. This means a solid local SEO agency can put your business in front of a vast audience who will visit your physical store (or request your services) if these details are available online.
16. Local and organic searches contribute to 69% of website digital traffic.
17. Local searches make up 22% of that website traffic. 
18. Product videos are as important as brand videos. 43% of all business videos are product videos. Producing more product-focused videos that showcase your offerings can boost conversions on your website and social media platforms.
19. 88% of local businesses use social media as a vital part of their marketing strategy. This means you can reach your target audience fast if you post entertaining and informative content regularly on social platforms with your target audience.
20. More than 71% of local businesses have websites, making ranking for near-me searches easy. It also optimizes its content for PPC ads and SEO to gain organic traffic and convert traffic to sales more efficiently. 
21. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 28.8% of businesses have been conducted online. This reinforces the logic that ranking online for specific keywords will bring visibility to your brand and promote traffic to your store.

Source for section statistics

• Think With Google
• SEO.AI
• Seroundtable
• HubSpot
• The Manifest
• TopDesignFirm
• IbisWorld

Statistics on Google My Business Profiles

22. Businesses with complete Google My Business profiles are perceived as 2.7x more reputable. Potential customers can shop through all they do and act based on the information. 
23. 70% of customers are most likely to visit a business with a complete Google My Business profile, and 50% will consider buying from them. 
24.  76% of consumers will read online reviews before choosing a local business to buy from. 
25. 88% of consumers would use a business that replies to all its reviews. 47% say they won’t even try checking out a business that doesn’t respond to reviews, let alone patronize it. 
26. 44% of consumers use search engines to find information about businesses and services in a particular location. Using the best franchise SEO agency can skyrocket your visibility for these searches to increase conversion and sales. 
27. Over 56% of local retailers still haven’t claimed their Google My Business listing. This means they’re leaving dollars on the table as they cannot convert the clicks that could come from every visit to their profile. 
28. An average local business receives 1,260 views monthly from Google My Business. These views are potential customers who want to know more about your business on Google Search or Maps. You can track your views and create posts with the GMB dashboard to stay visible to these customers.

Read more on optimizing your Google My Business profile for visibility and success.

29. An optimized Google My Business profile can get 80 to 300 quality clicks monthly. The average number of calls could be as much as 48 per month, and clicks to the website were 59 per month. Aside from brand awareness, a complete GMB profile can convert leads faster. 
30. 45% of companies receive appointment requests through Google My Business. With a detailed GMB profile, customers can access instant information about a business, like their opening hours and contact details. Google My Business also has appointment scheduling abilities that let customers book appointments straight from a business’s profile.  

Source for section statistics:

• Google Support 
• Visual Objects
• BrightLocal
• Local Marketing Institute 
• Publer

Statistics On Localized Content for Franchises

31. 73% of consumers want product reviews in their language. It helps them understand what people say better. For example, if your target market is Mexican-Americans or any other mixed race, consider having reviews in their language as much as you have reviews in English. 
32. Also, 76% of online shoppers would rather buy products with information in their native language. You need to speak in the language the community understands, and sometimes, this may mean speaking in languages other than English. 40% of these respondents say they will never buy from websites in other languages. 
33. 66% of businesses use online machine translation (MT) to automatically translate their webpages based on users’ IP addresses or language preferences. 
34. 75% of respondents will patronize again if customer care is in their language. 
35. However, 66% will buy a product if it’s cheaper, regardless of the language. The percentage drops as their Language literacy drops. In the end, 48% will still prefer buying cheaper products, even when it’s not in their language.
36. 79% of people believe user-generated content (UGC) significantly influenced their purchasing decisions. You can use this content to create more buzz around your products or services. 

Source for section statistics:

• CSA Research 
• Nosto

Statistics on Social Media Marketing For Franchises 

37. Facebook is the most used platform, with Instagram following closely behind it.
38. 91% of businesses have a Facebook presence, but only 62% of these brands invest in Facebook for conversions. This means you can use Facebook ads location targeting feature to “buy” new users to your website or local business pages. 
39. 27.4% of U.S. Instagram users are between 25 and 34 years old.
40. Instagram’s engagement rates are four times higher than Facebook’s (0.70% to 0.15%).
41. Since 80% of Instagram users follow a business, this proves that Instagram is an excellent platform for your small business to gain visibility on social media and win in marketing.

Some content ideas for Instagram include single videos, carousels, slideshows, story ads, and more. However, if you’re not in the food, hospitality, beauty, health, fashion, or real estate industries that perform really well on Instagram, don’t spend a lot of marketing budget on the platform.

42. Pinterest has about 518 million monthly users.
43. Pinterest’s users are mostly women, 76.2% of whom are women, and 17.2% are men.
44. 27% to 35% of all U.S. adults use Pinterest regularly. The platform is the fourth most visited after Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, with even TikTok behind it.  
45. Out of all these regular users, nearly half— about 46%— say they regularly buy luxury brands and products on Pinterest. 
46. 70% of Pinterest’s luxury shoppers are under 35 years old. 
47. Pinterest recorded 1.2 billion user visits to the sites through both mobile and desktop between July and December 2023. Having a business profile on Pinterest gives brands access to these 1.2 billion people. 
48. TikTok is expected to reach over 2 billion users in 2024. 
49. X (formerly Twitter) has over 611 monthly active users globally. 
50. 63% of social media users say they use X for at least an hour or more, although 17% plan to stop using the platform in 2024.
51. YouTube has 2.5 billion active monthly users. 
52. Most of YouTube visits, about 90%, are mobile users.
53. YouTube users spend about 28 hours every month on the Android app, which is less than the 34 hours per month a typical Android user spends on TikTok.

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One thing every social media marketing strategy has in common is video marketing.  This is what research says:

54. 91% of businesses in this study use video as a marketing tool. 
55. 88% of video marketers agree it is an important part of their marketing strategy.
56. The 12% of marketers who don’t use videos are unsure of the ROI of video marketing.
57. The other 15% who don’t use videos don’t know where to start. 
58. However, 68% of marketers who don’t use videos say they plan to start in 2024. 

Source for section statistics:

• Statista
• Hootsuite
• Benchmark Email
• Pinterest
• HubSpot
• Datareportal
• WyzOwl

Conclusion 

Marketing to a local target audience has never been easier with statistics. They offer a quantitative analysis of what’s working so you can adapt them to your marketing philosophy and efforts.

If you’re a franchised brand looking for a way to promote your business while retaining the franchisor’s brand tone, speak to us. With our franchise SEO services, we’ll get your locations ranking at the top of the search engines so that you can attract more paying customers. 

We’ve done this for many franchises — it’s how we helped Fitness19 generate over 36,000 leads in just 2 years. We’d be thrilled to achieve more results for your brand because we know what works and what doesn’t.