AI search is changing how consumers discover and evaluate businesses, but for franchise marketers, the challenge goes beyond understanding new technology. It’s figuring out what these changes mean for hundreds or even thousands of local markets, and how to turn emerging strategies into something franchisees can actually execute.
In Netsertive’s October webinar, Franchise Marketer Panel: AI Search Strategies in 2026, we brought together Christina Parsons, Chief Marketing Officer at United Franchise Group, and Ashleigh Beckwith, Sr. Manager, Digital at Stellar Service Brands, for a discussion about how their organizations are navigating this shift.
The conversation explored how AI search is influencing consumer discovery, which strategies marketing teams are testing, what they’re learning, and where they’re focusing their attention as they prepare for 2027.
Here are five key lessons from the discussion.
For franchise marketers, AI search isn’t just a future consideration. Early indicators are already showing up in the ways consumers discover and engage with brands.
One example discussed during the panel was the growing presence of AI-driven discovery in franchise development lead attribution. As more prospective franchisees began identifying AI-powered platforms as part of their discovery journey, it raised a broader question: If consumers are using AI to research franchise ownership opportunities, how might they also be using it to find local products and services?
This shift creates an opportunity for franchise marketers to evaluate where their brands are appearing across an increasingly fragmented search landscape.
But it also creates a challenge. Traditional search isn’t disappearing, and AI-driven discovery doesn’t follow one standardized customer journey.
Consumers can now encounter brands through search engines, AI-generated answers, recommendations, citations, and local listings, often across multiple platforms before ever reaching a website.
The takeaway: Start paying attention to where AI-driven discovery is already appearing in your business. Existing attribution data, customer feedback, and emerging AI visibility reporting can help identify where consumer behavior may be changing.
One of the strongest themes from the panel was that adapting to AI search doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning existing local marketing strategies.
In fact, many of the foundational elements franchise marketers have prioritized for years remain important as AI-powered platforms gather information about businesses.
That includes:
The panel also explored why review consistency matters just as much as review volume.
A business with hundreds of reviews but little recent activity may present a different picture than one consistently generating new customer feedback. Review recency and ongoing engagement can provide valuable signals about whether a business is active and relevant.
While the exact influence of these signals varies across AI platforms, maintaining a consistent flow of authentic reviews helps keep a location’s online reputation current and useful to prospective customers.
For franchise systems, that means review generation and local listing management should be treated as ongoing operational priorities, not one-time optimization projects.
The takeaway: Before investing in entirely new AI search tactics, evaluate whether every location has the foundational information, content, and reputation signals needed to support local discovery.
Content strategy was another major focus of the conversation, particularly how franchise brands can make their existing website content more useful for both consumers and AI-powered discovery.
The panel discussed the importance of structuring local website content so that search engines and AI systems can more easily interpret what a business offers, where it operates, and how its services relate to consumer questions.
But content structure is only part of the equation.
One particularly interesting discussion centered on the relationship between educational blog content and core service pages.
As brands identify blog posts appearing in AI-generated answers and citations, there’s an opportunity to connect those high-value educational resources to relevant service pages through thoughtful internal linking.
For example, a blog post answering common homeowner questions might link directly to a local service page explaining how a nearby franchise location addresses that need.
This creates a more connected website experience, helping consumers navigate from education to action while giving search systems clearer context about the relationship between different pages.
Rather than producing isolated pieces of content and hoping they perform independently, franchise marketers can focus on building an interconnected content ecosystem.
The takeaway: Audit how your educational content, local landing pages, and service pages connect. Strong internal linking and clear website structure can help make existing content more useful without requiring an entirely new content strategy.
Even the strongest marketing strategy has limited impact if franchisees don’t understand it or know how to put it into practice.
Throughout the discussion, both panelists emphasized the importance of education, particularly as franchise owners increasingly ask questions about AI search and what it means for their businesses.
For corporate marketing teams, the challenge is translating a rapidly evolving and sometimes confusing topic into clear, practical guidance.
That might include developing franchisee playbooks outlining content best practices, testing new approaches at the corporate level before recommending broader adoption, or helping owners understand why everyday activities like collecting reviews and capturing local photos remain important.
But the responsibility doesn’t have to fall entirely on marketing teams.
The panel also explored the role of franchise business coaches and operations teams in reinforcing local marketing best practices.
Regular franchisee check-ins and location visits can create natural opportunities to discuss local visibility, encourage photo and video collection, review online reputation activity, and help owners understand what actions they can take.
Equipping operations teams with enough knowledge to confidently reinforce these practices can help make local marketing part of the ongoing franchise support process.
And as brands look ahead to 2027, the next challenge may be less about creating new playbooks and more about ensuring franchisees actually adopt and use the resources already available.
The takeaway: Treat franchisee enablement as part of your AI search strategy. Clear guidance, practical resources, and reinforcement through existing operational relationships can help turn corporate recommendations into consistent local action.
As AI-powered discovery becomes a larger part of the customer journey, measurement remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges.
Traditional digital marketing reporting has generally focused on metrics like impressions, clicks, website traffic, leads, and conversions.
Those metrics remain valuable, but they don’t necessarily capture every interaction consumers have with a brand inside an AI-generated answer.
During the discussion, we explored several emerging metrics that can help marketers better understand their presence across AI-powered platforms.
Five AI search metrics worth understanding:
These metrics provide useful directional insights, but they shouldn’t be confused with direct measures of business impact.
AI search results can vary based on the platform, prompt, context, and location. And an appearance in an AI-generated answer doesn’t automatically translate into a website visit or conversion.
Looking ahead, the opportunity is to build stronger connections between AI visibility, website engagement, lead activity, and actual business outcomes.
First-party data will be particularly important as marketers work to understand more of the customer journey and connect emerging discovery channels to measurable performance.
For multi-location brands, this becomes even more complex as geographic context and personalization influence which businesses appear in different search experiences.
The takeaway: Start building familiarity with AI visibility metrics, but evaluate them alongside existing marketing and business performance data. The goal isn’t simply to appear more often in AI-generated answers. It’s to understand how that visibility contributes to meaningful business results.
If there was one message that carried throughout the panel, it’s that franchise marketers don’t need to have AI search completely figured out today.
The technology is evolving, measurement capabilities are still developing, and brands are continuing to learn which approaches produce meaningful results.
But there are practical steps marketing teams can take now.
Maintaining accurate local information, generating consistent customer reviews, improving website content structure, connecting educational resources to service pages, and equipping franchisees with actionable guidance all support a stronger foundation for discovery.
As 2027 approaches, the opportunity for franchise brands is to move beyond simply understanding AI search and toward building repeatable processes for testing, learning, measuring, and executing across locations.
AI search may be changing the discovery experience, but long-term success will still depend on how effectively brands connect strategy, technology, and local execution.
Want to learn more about how AI search is changing franchise and multi-location marketing? Explore Netsertive’s resources for additional insights on local discovery, AI visibility, and marketing performance.
