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Local store marketing is a team sport — and most franchise brands are still playing it wrong. Laura Peever and Marci Kleinsasser break down what's actually working at the local level, from playbook design to franchisee activation.

Google and Meta efficiencies keep declining. Two practitioners — a brand CMO and a media vendor — break down connected mail, cable TV, marketing mix modeling, and where alternative channels actually move the needle for franchise marketers.

Digital media costs are rising and attribution is eroding. Three franchise marketing leaders get specific about what's working, where brands are overspending, and how to build a defensible media plan for 2027.

Two franchise marketing operators unpack the real metrics that drive decisions: cash flowable CAC, customer lifetime value, attribution across the tornado, and what one source of truth actually takes to build inside a growing franchise system.

PR, email, and social: what's actually working in franchise marketing right now. Two practitioners break down the 2027 strategy reality — GEO-driven PR, hyper-personalized email, and why local beats national on social every time.

Two franchise CMOs share the frameworks behind brand fund budgets that build franchisee trust — PESO, 60/30/10, and how to stay flexible when the marketing landscape won't sit still.

A CEO said to me recently: "My marketing team sucks." So I gave him a mirror. He was building a product in a crowded category — a smart space, a real problem, a genuine opportunity. But when I asked what made his product unique, who specifically it was built for, and what direction he'd given his team, he didn't have clean answers to any of it. That's not a marketing problem. That's a strategy problem that showed up in the marketing department. A Category Is Not a Position "S

Marketing is franchising's secret weapon. So why does everyone hate it? The answer is momentum — and understanding it changes everything about how you invest in your brand.

Marketing and finance have the same fight in every organization. Marketing wants to run a promotion. Finance starts losing hair. Marketing calls finance a creativity killer. Finance calls marketing reckless. Nobody wins, and the promotion either dies in a committee or runs with no guardrails anyone actually agreed to. I've sat in both seats. And the thing I've learned is that this fight isn't really about creativity versus control. It's about the absence of a shared framework

Let me start with what it's not . Many emerging brands make the same mistake when launching their first FAC. They hand-pick strong operators - franchisees they trust, respect, and enjoy working with. It feels logical. Surround leadership with the best people in the system. But here's the problem: when those members weren't elected by their peers, they often feel accountable upward - to corporate - not outward to the franchisees they're supposed to represent. And that change

Paid media is not going away. Portal listings, digital ads, and paid search still drive a meaningful share of franchise development leads for most brands. But if paid media is the only thing working, you are paying full price for every single lead and you are competing in the same channels as every other brand on the market. The brands growing their pipeline most efficiently right now are not spending more. They are activating channels their competitors are ignoring. Here are

And why most agencies get it wrong. I've been a CMO in franchising for a long time. I've hired a lot of agencies. I've fired a few. And I've watched the same dynamic play out more times than I can count. The agency comes in strong. The pitch is polished. The case studies look great. Six months in, I'm showing up to every call feeling like I have to direct the strategy myself. The franchisees are calling me to complain. And somewhere along the way, the agency stopped being a p