How Franchise Marketers Can Use Local Visibility Benchmarks to Dominate Local Markets

The Franchise Challenge: Executing on Local Marketing Priorities

As a franchise marketer, you know that it can be incredibly challenging to execute consistently on digital marketing priorities across the brand. Getting all of the stakeholders in a complex franchise organization to march to the same drumbeat can be a daunting task, even if leadership recognizes the importance of priorities such as ranking in local search, managing online reputation at the local level, and engaging local audiences in social media.

With the advent of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode, there are more opportunities than ever to make consumers aware of your brand in digital channels – which means even more missed opportunities if your brand can’t capitalize on them. With franchise owners kept busy running their businesses and serving local customers, attending to priorities like updating local listings, posting on social media, and responding in a timely manner to online reviews may fall by the wayside. So what can you do?

What Is a Local Visibility Benchmark?

Let’s talk about local visibility benchmarks and how they can help franchise brands get a handle on digital marketing priorities.

First of all, what is a local visibility benchmark? A local visibility benchmark is a measurement of the performance of the average brand in your industry. More specifically, a benchmark is the minimum performance level you must exceed in order to outperform the average competitor. 

A local visibility benchmark can tell you, for instance, that:

• The average food brand in the fast casual & QSR space responds to 50.9% of its reviews on Google
• The average brand providing local education services posts 4.5 times per month on social media
• The average hardware & home improvement retailer appears 59.9% of the time in the Google 3-pack for “hardware store near me”

Armed with these insights, franchise brands are no longer in the dark when defining local marketing priorities. Performance targets and KPIs can be set not by throwing darts at the wall, but by measuring each of your franchise locations, and your brand as a whole, against the performance of your most relevant competitors. 

How Your Franchise Brand Can Start Using Local Visibility Benchmarks Today

Local visibility benchmarks belong at the center of your local marketing strategy. When defining goals for the coming quarter, for example, consider the following steps:

• Gather relevant local marketing benchmarks for your brand related to AI visibility, search performance, reputation management, and social media presence at the local level.
• Gather performance metrics for the brand overall and for individual franchisees.
• Compare benchmarks to brand performance and identify areas where greatest improvement is needed.
• Bucket franchisee performance into three groups: top 25%, bottom 25%, and middle 50%.
• Set improvement targets for each group relative to prioritized benchmarks; for example, the bottom group’s target might be the benchmark itself, whereas the middle and top groups would each have reasonable targets for improvement above benchmark levels.
• Execute, measure results, and repeat for the next quarter.
• Set an overall goal for all franchise locations to exceed industry benchmarks in all channels.

Details of this plan will differ according to each franchise brand’s performance relative to the local visibility benchmarks for its industry. Most franchise brands, however, will find at least some areas of local marketing performance that fall below the level of the average competitor. Addressing these opportunities should be a franchise brand’s top local marketing priority.

Why Are Local Visibility Benchmarks Relevant to Franchise Brand Performance? 

SOCi research shows that 80% of U.S. consumers search online for local businesses at least once a week, and 32% do so every day. With the Census Bureau reporting that nearly 82% of purchases take place offline in local stores, we know that a huge driver of sales for franchise brands is online to offline conversion. 

The factors measured by local visibility benchmarks, such as search ranking, AI recommendation rates, review count, and social engagement, are the same factors that make it more likely a consumer will find your business when searching online and will be convinced to choose your brand over the competition. 

Where Can I Find Local Visibility Benchmarks for My Franchise Brand?

You may hear claims from various providers that they offer local visibility benchmarks. When evaluating these offerings, be sure to ask the following:

• Do benchmarks cover all relevant areas in local marketing, including AI, search, reputation, and social?
• Is the underlying data biased toward a provider’s own clients, or does it offer a truly objective view of all relevant industry competitors?

SOCi’s Local Visibility Index (LVI) offers benchmarks for franchise brands that meet these key criteria. This long-running annual benchmark report, originally launched in 2018 and recently updated with new benchmarks for 2026, offers performance benchmarks for traditional search and social channels as well as AI platforms. 

The LVI covers 42 local industry categories in retail, local services, financial services, food and beverage, and property management. A free Local Visibility Audit, available upon request, can help you take control of your local marketing priorities today.