⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

2025 was a big year for me personally.

Became a dad. That's been the biggest change. Also, the best one.

A lot has been shifting in marketin,g too. The tools. The platforms.

How people research before they buy.

Looking ahead to 2026, I think we're heading into interesting times.

The economy's wobbly. Job security isn't what it was. And when that happens, people start looking at self-employment.

Franchising could be in for a boom.

You want to make sure your brand is in pole position to take advantage of it.

I also started the Franchise Marketer Podcast on a new YouTube channel. I'm going to stick to a consistent schedule and just publish without overthinking it.

That's been my biggest problem. Trying to do too many things.

Overthinking everything. Convincing myself the knowledge I have isn't good enough to share.

But every time I put out a newsletter I don't think is any good, I get emails.

Nice words of encouragement. People finding it useful.

So I'm just going to be more authentic. Pump out valuable advice. Share what I've learned.

If you get something from it, fantastic. If you don't, no problem at all.

As always, if you want to chat about anything to do with your marketing, just reply to this email.

Hope you have a great 2026.

Now here are my 15 predictions……

You're going to hear a lot about Answer Engine Optimisation this year.

Optimising for ChatGPT. Optimising for Perplexity.

Agencies are already warming up their pitches.

Don't get fooled.

Traditional SEO remains the bedrock. The brands showing up in AI-generated answers?

They're the ones with strong, data-rich content that's been properly optimised for years.

AEO isn't a replacement. It's an extension.

Don't panic when an agency tries to sell you "AEO packages" without explaining what's actually different from good SEO.

Google's AI Search mode is coming as the default.

Not something you opt into.

The default. It will happen!

When you look at where those AI-generated answers pull from, it's long-form, data-rich blog articles. Same with Perplexity. Same with ChatGPT.

The brands with deep content libraries are winning the AI race without even trying.

Your digital footprint is your moat.

ChatGPT still leads the race. It's got the brand. It was first. Everyone knows the name.

But Claude and Gemini are ahead of ChatGPT right now. By a long way.

2026 is when more people catch on. Especially marketing teams.

If your team is still only using ChatGPT, you're missing out on better tools that are already available.

I've been banging on about this for years.

2026 is when more franchise brands finally make the jump.

More founders are launching podcasts. More franchisee interview series. More long-form audio content.

The brands that started early are already seeing the compounding effects. The ones starting now will wish they'd done it sooner.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

You can't hide BS in a 45-minute podcast episode. Short testimonials get scripted. Long-form conversations reveal the truth. That's why they work.

This might ruffle some feathers.

I keep hearing about AI nurture sequences. AI-powered lead scoring. AI this, AI that.

Here's what I actually hear from new franchisees.

I speak to more than a thousand of them every year in training. I ask how they found us.

What made them enquire. What pushed them over the line.

Not once has someone said "your nurture sequence email triggered the right emotion."

Not once.

What I hear instead:

"I watched 50 of your podcasts."

"I've been following you on YouTube for two years."

"I saw Jim's TikTok and it felt real."

It's always the long-form stuff. Social sniffing. Checking out the content. Transparent videos that showed the real business.

Video content first. Everything else second.

Executive teams need to hear this.

Stop expecting marketers to attribute everything to every action they do.

I know that's the goal. Every marketer wants to prove ROI on every dollar spent.

But it's becoming harder and harder.

Look into Rand Fishkin's work. Read the Sparktoro blog about zero-click marketing. Get your head around it.

People consume content across dozens of touchpoints before they ever fill out a form. Most of those touchpoints are invisible to your tracking.

Marketers need to educate leadership on this. The old attribution models are breaking down.

Australia's heading into a rough patch economically.

Here's the thing: that's historically good for franchising.

When job security wobbles, people look for alternatives. They research. They explore options. They spend time consuming content about what else is out there.

You want to be top of mind when that happens.

The brands with a massive content library online will be the ones people find. The ones with nothing? They won't even be in the conversation.

Build the content now. The opportunity is coming.

A lot of brands have been dabbling with getting franchisees to create content.

Most have struggled.

2026 is the year more brands figure this out.

The secret isn't forcing everyone to post. It's finding the ones who want to, then making it easy for them.

Franchise businesses haven't caught up to consumer brands on this.

2026 is when head office teams start building their own presence.

Not just the CEO. The marketing team. The franchise development manager.

People follow people. If your brand is just a logo, you're invisible.

Jim Penman's LinkedIn posts outperform the Jim's Group page every time.

The brands still hiding their founders are going to feel the gap widen.

Pick one platform. Commit to showing up. You don't need to be polished. You need to be present.

Hashtags are dead. But optimising for social search is just getting started.

When people search TikTok or YouTube, they're typing questions. What you say in your video matters. How you write your description matters.

This is SEO for social platforms. Most brands are ignoring it.

Quick cuts every two seconds. Text overlays flying everywhere. Fake hooks.

People are sick of it.

What's working now? Someone giving genuine advice for 30 minutes with no fancy editing. No script. No retention tricks.

Less production. More substance.

Not the ones with millions of followers. The local Facebook group admins. The community pages with 50k engaged followers.

I live in Newport. If someone with a big local following here posted about a new business starting up, people would pay attention.

That's real influence.

Using tools like Lovable, Replit, or Google AI Studio to prompt your way to custom software.

Non-technical people building personalised apps. No developers needed.

2026 is when this hits the mainstream. Franchise operators creating their own tools. Marketers building dashboards.

This is the big one.

Trust is low in franchising. The concept of franchising in general has a trust problem. Too many stories of things going wrong. Too much scepticism.

Your information pack isn't going to fix that.

A slick brochure isn't going to fix that.

You need to build trust brick by brick. Social posts. Videos. Podcasts. Transparent content that shows the real business, not the polished version.

Every piece of content is a brick. Over time, those bricks become a wall. That wall becomes a moat.

This is what I'm working on right now. It's what I've been building at Jim's for six years.

A FACT YOU SHOULD KNOW

In a low-trust environment, the brands that win are the ones that build trust assets relentlessly. Not campaigns. Not one-off videos. A system that keeps adding bricks, week after week, year after year.

That's a trust engine.

If there's one thing franchise brands need to focus on in 2026, it's this: how do we keep building and building trust?

Monday: Search your brand plus "franchise opportunity" on YouTube and TikTok. See who owns that conversation.

Wednesday: Talk to your best content-creating franchisee about what support they need.

Friday: Pick one thing from this list and decide if you're actually going to do something about it.

The predictions don't matter if you don't act on them.

What's the one thing you're going to change?

Book a time here - https://www.franchisebuyermarketing.com.au/power-strategy-call