Last updated: 12 September 2026
The modern franchise buyer journey takes 12 to 20 touch points before someone enquires.
I know because I have asked hundreds of new Jim’s Group franchisees how they found us.
Not one of them said the website. They said YouTube. They said the podcast. They said Reddit, ChatGPT, and Instagram messages to franchisees they had never met.
I am Joel Kleber, CMO at Jim’s Group. Since 2019 we have sold 8,400 franchises and grown by a net 2,100 franchisees. Almost all of that came from content, not from a better landing page.
I call the research sequence the Trust Lap. Here is every step of it.
What are the 13 touch points in the franchise buyer journey?
The Trust Lap is the circuit a prospect runs before you know they exist.
This is the order I see it happen, over and over, in new franchisee training:
- An ad or a word from a friend plants the idea.
- They Google your brand name instead of enquiring.
- The results page hands them Reddit, your articles, your podcast and your videos all at once.
- They find your YouTube channel and start clicking.
- They search inside the channel for their division, then watch other divisions too.
- They find the podcast and listen for hours.
- They read the Reddit thread asking whether your franchise is a good idea.
- They read the Facebook groups.
- They message your existing franchisees on Instagram.
- They ask ChatGPT for a pros and cons table on your system against your competitors.
- They Google the name of whoever is handling their enquiry.
- They check your founder on LinkedIn and scroll back years.
- They go back for more videos, then finally hit your enquiry form.
Twelve of those thirteen steps happen without you knowing. Only the last one shows up in your CRM.
If your entire recruitment budget points at step thirteen, you are paying for the moment after the decision. Not the moments that made it.
Why did the old franchise buyer journey stop working?
The old way had four steps.
Someone saw an ad. They called a number or filled in a form. An information pack went out in the post. Then a franchisor sat at their kitchen table and went through it with both partners.
We owned every piece of information in that room.
Honestly, I wish it still worked that way. It was cheaper and far simpler than what we do now.
But control is gone. Your prospect now builds their own picture from dozens of sources you do not own, cannot moderate, and mostly cannot see.
Our answer at Jim’s was volume. Put so much real content into that research process that the brand shows up inside their homework rather than outside it.
How many touch points happen before a franchise enquiry?
Twelve to twenty, in our experience at Jim’s Group.
That number changes two things.
First, if you judge a campaign on cost per lead from a single ad, you are measuring the last click of a very long sequence. The ad gets the credit. The other nineteen touch points did the work.
Second, someone who arrives after eighteen touch points arrives qualified. Our content screens people before a human ever speaks to them, and the quality of candidates coming into the system reflects that.
The ones who enquire early are the ones who ghost you. They keep researching after the enquiry, find something that puts them off, and you never hear why.
What does a prospect see when they Google your brand?
Search “Jim’s Mowing franchise” and you get a Reddit thread that is often not flattering, our articles, our podcast and our videos.
Reddit is not a fringe result any more. It held 10.24% of Google’s top three positions after the May 2026 core update, according to SE Ranking, after a 1,328% jump in visibility reported by eMarketer.
That page is your real first impression. Not your homepage.
Most franchisors have never once looked at it.
Why do prospects binge YouTube channels and podcasts?
Because they want proof from people who already handed over the money.
Our YouTube channel has more than 3,200 videos. Prospects search inside it for “Jim’s Mowing interview” or “Jim’s Cleaning interview” and work through the results over days.
Here is the part that surprised me. They listen to divisions they have no interest in joining.
Someone looking at Fencing will sit through Dog Wash episodes. They are not researching the division. They are researching us. They want to know what it is really like to be a Jim’s franchisee, from as many angles as they can find.
Length is the point. A 45 minute unedited interview is hard to fake. A 30 second testimonial is not.
How do Reddit threads affect franchise recruitment?
“Is buying a Jim’s franchise a good idea?” That thread exists. It ranks. You can imagine how it goes.
I reply in there from the corporate account. So do our franchisees, off their own bat.
The mistake is pretending the thread is not there. It ranks whether you show up or not, and an unanswered claim reads like an accepted fact.
If your brand is not mentioned in those communities at all, that is an awareness problem. If it is mentioned and nobody from your side is answering, that is a choice.
Do prospects message your existing franchisees?
Constantly. And it is one of the strongest things that happens in the whole journey.
They watch an interview. They find that franchisee’s Instagram, often through the accounts we follow. They send a message asking for a few minutes.
And our franchisees answer them.
Think about what that does. They heard the story in the interview, then got it again unscripted from the person who lived it. Nobody planned that. We did not ask for it.
This only works if you treat your franchisees well. The moment prospects have a direct line to them, franchisee satisfaction becomes a recruitment asset.
How are prospects using ChatGPT to research your brand?
They ask it straight out whether buying into your system is a good idea. Then they ask for a comparison table against your competitors.
This is not a niche behaviour. 49% of US adults now use AI chatbots and 44% use ChatGPT, per the Pew Research Center.
To be fair to the models, the answers are fairly balanced. They give pros and cons. Some of the cons I would argue with, but at least I can see where they came from and go and change the source.
Here is the one that catches people out.
Send a prospect an information pack and expect them to paste it into an LLM and ask what it thinks. Every document you send is now read twice. Once by them, once by a machine they trust.
Do prospects Google your franchise development manager?
Yes. Which is why I will not outsource our sales process.
If a brand cannot put its own person in front of me, that tells me something before we even talk.
So if you are a franchisor dealing with a prospect, assume they have already searched your name. What comes up?
Our franchisors who sell the most have the strongest digital footprint. Interviews, indexed videos, a profile on the company site, articles elsewhere. That is not a coincidence.
Someone who searches your name and finds nothing will not walk away. They will just hold a quiet reservation through every conversation you have with them.
Why does the founder’s LinkedIn matter?
Search Jim Penman and you get his LinkedIn plus a stack of news coverage. Years of posts, and a genuine entrepreneurial story sitting there before we have said a word to the prospect.
I run that as a recruitment channel on purpose.
Corporate people scrolling LinkedIn are exactly who we want. Plenty of new franchisees have told me in training that LinkedIn was their first touch point. A few have told me it was my profile that made them look at Jim’s in the first place.
Consistency is what does it. People follow quietly for months without ever commenting, and that slow drip builds the trust.
Where does the website enquiry actually sit?
Dead last.
In six years running marketing and new franchisee training at Jim’s, nobody has ever told me the landing page was fantastic, the video sales letter meant so much, or the information pack got them across the line. It has never been the website.
It has always been everything else in this article.
That does not make your website worthless. It makes it a conversion surface, not a persuasion surface.
Polishing a landing page while your YouTube channel sits empty is spending at the wrong end of the journey.
What should you do if you have none of this?
Run the lap yourself. Take an hour and be your own prospect.
Google your brand with “franchise” and “franchisee review” on the end. Read the Reddit threads. Read the Facebook groups. Ask ChatGPT whether buying into your system is a good idea, and look at what it is citing.
Then count what you actually own. How many franchisee interviews are on your channel? Is there a podcast? How much on your site is useful information rather than sales copy?
Structure matters as much as volume. The Princeton and IIT Delhi paper on Generative Engine Optimization found that adding citations, quotes and statistics lifted visibility in AI answers by up to 40%.
If you do not like what you find, change it. That is the whole exercise.
Every franchise brand needs a video-first component in 2026 and beyond. Video is the ultimate trust builder. It is the number one thing people tell me when they walk into training.
What I would do first
- Audit your branded search results before you spend another dollar on ads. That page is your first impression and you have probably never read it.
- Build a franchisee interview library on YouTube. Prospects watch across divisions to find the honest version.
- Answer the Reddit threads with a named account. Silence reads like agreement.
- Give every person on your recruitment team a findable footprint. Prospects search their name before the first call.
- Post your founder on LinkedIn consistently. People follow for months without saying a word.
- Write every document assuming a model will read it. Because one will.
- Stop treating your enquiry form as the persuasion step. Persuasion already happened, twelve steps earlier.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Trust Lap?
The Trust Lap is my term for the 13 touch point research circuit a franchise prospect completes before contacting a franchisor. Twelve of those steps run across Google, YouTube, podcasts, Reddit, Instagram, ChatGPT and LinkedIn without the franchisor seeing any of it. Only the final website enquiry reaches a CRM.
How many touch points are in the modern franchise buyer journey?
Twelve to twenty touch points before a prospect enquires, based on what new Jim’s Group franchisees tell me in induction training. Those touch points span Google search, YouTube, podcasts, Reddit, Facebook groups, AI chatbots, social comments, LinkedIn and direct messages to existing franchisees.
Where do franchise prospects research a franchise brand?
Google, YouTube, podcast apps, Reddit, Facebook groups, Instagram and LinkedIn, and increasingly inside ChatGPT. The Jim’s Group YouTube channel holds more than 3,200 videos, and prospects work through franchisee interviews across several divisions before they contact anyone.
Does the franchise website landing page close the sale?
No. In six years running marketing and new franchisee training at Jim’s Group, no franchisee has named the landing page, the video sales letter or the information pack as the deciding factor. The website is the final enquiry step of the franchise buyer journey, not the persuasion step.
Why does Reddit matter for franchise recruitment?
Reddit threads about a franchise brand rank in Google and shape opinion before any franchisor conversation. Reddit held 10.24% of Google’s top three positions after the May 2026 core update, according to SE Ranking. At Jim’s Group I respond inside those threads from the corporate account, and franchisees respond independently.
Are franchise prospects using ChatGPT to research franchises?
Yes. Prospects ask ChatGPT and Claude for pros and cons comparisons between franchise systems, and paste franchisor information packs into those models for a second opinion. Pew Research Center found 49% of US adults use AI chatbots and 44% use ChatGPT in its Americans and AI 2026 report.
What should a franchisor do with no video or podcast content?
Audit branded search results, Reddit threads and Facebook groups first, then build a franchisee interview library. Every franchise brand needs a video-first component in 2026, because video is the trust builder new Jim’s Group franchisees name most often during induction training.
Where to go next
The franchisee interviews behind everything in this article sit on the Jim’s podcast, which has more episodes than any other franchise brand in the world.
I write about content-led franchise recruitment every week at The Franchise Marketer.