Franchise Marketing: Who Pays, Who Decides and What Works

Franchise marketing is the work of promoting one brand through hundreds or thousands of independently owned locations, and it is paid for mostly by those owners. Franchisees typically contribute a percentage of sales to an advertising fund that the franchisor controls. The result is a system where one group writes the message, another group funds it, and both answer to the same customer.

Updated October 20, 2026

In this guide:

What Is Franchise Marketing, and Who Is It Aimed At?

Franchise marketing is aimed at three audiences at once: customers who buy from a location, owners who run it, and prospective owners deciding whether to join. Ordinary brand marketing has one audience. A franchisor has three, and a message that works for one can damage another.

The scale explains why this matters. The International Franchise Association and the research firm FRANdata projected in February 2026 that U.S. franchise establishments would grow from 832,521 to about 845,000 units this year, employing nearly 8.9 million people. Every one of those units is a local business that carries a national name.

A franchise brand therefore has to answer three questions in public. What does the brand promise a customer? What does it promise an owner who pays for that promise? What does it tell a buyer who has not signed yet?

How Do Franchise Marketing Budgets Work?

Franchise marketing budgets work in layers: a national advertising fund, a required local spend, an optional or required regional co-op, and a separate budget for selling new franchises. Each layer has a different payer, a different decision maker and a different purpose.

The national fund buys brand-wide media and creative. The local layer pays for the advertising an owner places in their own market. A co-op pools money among nearby owners, and it is usually governed by those owners rather than the franchisor. Franchise development spending recruits new owners.

The contribution rules vary widely, which is why a single "average franchise marketing fee" is not a useful number. The table below compares systems where the rule is public.

The percentages are not comparable on their own. A 5% fund at a high-frequency haircut chain buys different things than a 3.5% share at a shipping and printing store. What matters is what the fund is allowed to buy and who decides.

Where Does the Ad Fund Money Actually Go?

Most ad fund money goes to buying media, not to making the creative that locations use. The FTC Franchise Rule requires a franchisor that runs a mandatory fund to disclose, in Item 11 of its franchise disclosure document, how the fund was spent in the last fiscal year, including the percentages for production, media placement and administration.

That disclosure makes the spending visible. Moda's September 2026 reading of four current filings shows how different the splits are.

• Great Clips reported that 2.7% of its Ad Fund went to production and 77.2% to media in 2025, with the remaining 19.4% in other expenses that included a 5% administration fee.
• Anytime Fitness reported 10% to production, 71% to media and 13% to administration.
• Jersey Mike's runs two funds. Its 1% fund spent 67.6% on production and 31.7% on administration, while its 4% national media fund spent 87.2% on media.
• Aire Serv's fund spent 23.3% on production, 72.4% on media, 2% on administration and 2.3% on public relations.

Two readings follow from those numbers, and both are EPR's analysis rather than anything the brands say.

First, a fund that spends under 3% on production leaves the job of making local creative to someone else. Locations either wait for the franchisor to supply it or make their own. Jersey Mike's split shows one way to fix that: a separate fund gives production its own line and its own owner.

Second, administration is a real cost and a visible one. Great Clips disclosed that it was paid $4,568,138 to administer its fund in 2025, which was 5% of the fund's receipts. By EPR's arithmetic, that implies receipts of roughly $91 million. Owners who see that number in a filing deserve to hear the reasoning from the franchisor first.

All of these figures come from secondhand reporting of the filings. Anyone relying on them should check the original documents, which several states publish. Wisconsin's Department of Financial Institutions offers a free franchise search.

Who Controls Franchise Marketing, the Franchisor or the Franchisee?

The franchisor controls most franchise marketing, and the franchise agreement decides how much room the owner has. Authority runs from tight approval rules to wide local freedom, and the disclosure document shows where a brand sits.

At the tight end, Great Clips states that franchisees may not develop their own advertising materials. They may modify approved materials only after submitting the changes for approval, and internet advertising needs prior permission. Jersey Mike's reviews all promotional material and treats silence as a no: if the company has not approved an item in writing within fifteen days, the item counts as disapproved.

Councils rarely change that balance. The same filings describe franchisee marketing councils as advisory, with the franchisor keeping final decision-making authority, and Anytime Fitness reports that it has no advertising council at all.

Control also shows up when a brand wants to move money. Domino's franchisees amended their agreements in 2009 to contribute 5.5% of retail sales to national advertising, according to the company's fiscal 2009 annual report. Planet Fitness announced in January 2026 that its franchisees agreed to shift part of their contributions into the National Ad Fund. In both cases the franchisor needed owner agreement to change the structure, which tells a brand something useful: the fund rules are a negotiated settlement, not a switch the franchisor can flip.

The practical rule for a franchisor is simple. Every right you take away from a location becomes an obligation to supply it, on the location's timeline. A system that bans local authorship and takes three weeks to answer an asset request has the costs of control and none of the benefits.

How Do Franchise Brands Market to People Who Might Buy a Franchise?

Franchise brands market to prospective owners through a regulated disclosure process, which limits what they can say and when. Under the FTC Franchise Rule, a buyer must receive the franchise disclosure document at least 14 days before signing a contract or paying any money to the franchisor.

That rule turns the disclosure document into the main sales document. Item 11 covers advertising support. Item 19, which covers earnings claims, is optional, so a franchisor that chooses to publish figures takes on the duty to back them up.

There is also a link back to the ad fund. The FTC rule requires the franchisor to disclose the percentage of the fund, if any, used mainly to solicit new franchise sales. An owner paying into the fund can therefore see whether their contributions are paying to recruit the next owner.

For communications teams this is the audience that gets least attention. A prospective owner reads claims about system sales, support and marketing, then checks them against reviews from existing owners. A franchisor whose consumer story and owner story disagree will lose that comparison.

What Do the Strongest Franchise Marketing Programs Have in Common?

The strongest franchise marketing programs write the brand promise into the system rules, tell owners what their fees buy, and give local owners real work to do inside a fixed brand frame. EPR's case studies on four brands show each pattern.

Planet Fitness writes the promise into the rules. It keeps its Judgement Free Zone promise the same across about 2,900 clubs, roughly 90% owned by independent operators, using an owner financial test, a 7% local advertising requirement and a national ad fund. The company reported that franchisees and the company together spent over $360 million on advertising in 2025. The full breakdown is in EPR's Planet Fitness franchise marketing case study.

The UPS Store tells owners what the fee buys. Its public franchise FAQ lists what the 3.5% marketing share covers: localized advertising materials, center-specific websites, in-store collateral, public relations and seasonal campaigns. A prospective owner can check whether the support they expect is in the deal. See how The UPS Store built its franchise marketing.

Orangetheory gives owners a job inside a fixed frame. Every studio looks the same, and franchisees are trained to lead local social content with member stories rather than corporate graphics. The consistency sits in the look and the heart-rate screen, and the local voice sits in the stories. EPR covers it in Orangetheory's franchise model.

Domino's kept owners inside its plan. After its 2009 video crisis, it relied on standing structures, including franchisee advisory boards, supply chain profit sharing and a defined advertising fund. Its fiscal 2009 annual report listed a domestic franchise renewal rate above 99%. The detail is in franchise crisis recovery.

How Should a Franchise Brand Measure Its Marketing?

A franchise brand should measure marketing by results the owner can see in their own location, not by reach alone. Four measures appear in the public record of the brands above.

What Happens to Franchise Marketing in a Crisis?

In a crisis, franchise marketing has to work on three clocks at once: the affected store in hours, the brand's public statement in days, and owner economics over months or years. A brand that handles only the statement has addressed one of three problems.

Domino's identified the store behind its 2009 video crisis in about six and a half hours and posted its president's apology within two days. Subway's 2015 spokesperson crisis ran on a slower brand clock, with statements six weeks apart. The decisions a brand makes before a crisis, including who calls the owner and how owners would fund a national response, determine how fast it can act.

Fund rules matter here too. If public relations is a permitted use of the advertising fund, the brand can pay for crisis communications from it. If the agreement is silent, the brand may need owner approval at the worst possible moment.

What Is the Takeaway on Franchise Marketing?

Franchise marketing is a question of who has the information, the money and the authority, and the best programs answer all three on purpose. The fund usually buys media, owners usually have less say than they expect, and the disclosure document shows both. A franchisor that tells owners what their money buys, supplies what it forbids them to make, and measures results they can see is building a system owners want to stay in.

Related Franchise Case Studies

• How franchises run social media across locations
• Subway franchise PR
• Domino's turnaround case study