The way prospects research a franchise has changed considerably, but the fundamentals of what makes content work haven’t.
AI is becoming an increasingly important part of that research. Prospective franchisees use it to explore their options, understand how franchising works and decide which opportunities deserve a closer look. They still visit websites to investigate individual brands, but AI is increasingly influencing which websites they visit, and what questions they arrive with.
That creates two related challenges for franchisors. Their content needs to help prospective franchisees make informed decisions when they reach the website, while also giving AI tools useful, credible information to draw on when answering questions that might lead those prospects there.
Two acronyms have become increasingly prominent in this conversation: AEO and GEO. Yet many of the principles behind both are familiar to anyone who understands what makes good content work.
From rankings to answers
Traditional SEO has focused on helping search engines find, understand and rank relevant content — appearing prominently when somebody searches for information related to your business and giving them a reason to visit your website.
That hasn’t stopped being important, but the way people encounter information has expanded. Google can now provide AI-generated summaries alongside traditional search results, while tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity construct answers using information drawn from multiple sources.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring your content so that AI can find, understand, and use it when answering a specific question. Think of the AI-generated summary that now appears at the top of a Google search result, above all the page listings. That answer is being pulled from somewhere, and good AEO is all about making sure it’s pulled from you.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) goes a step further. When someone asks a direct question in a chat-based AI tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity, the response is generated from sources the AI has assessed as credible and authoritative. GEO is about ensuring your brand is one of those sources. Not just for one question, but across the range of questions your prospects are likely to ask.
Neither discipline has replaced SEO, and all three still depend on accessible, well-structured content that addresses real questions. The difference is that visibility now extends beyond a search ranking. It can mean becoming the source an AI draws on to construct an answer, shaping a prospect’s view of your franchise before they’ve ever visited your site, and long before they start thinking about booking a conversation.
What makes content useful to AI?
When AI tools started generating content at scale a few years ago, a lot of people in my profession wondered if our careers were coming to an end. After all, when you can generate content at the push of a button, for next to nothing, why pay a copywriter to write it?
I spent a good deal of time working through that question, learning how AI content actually works, where it falls short, and what a skilled writer brings that it can’t replicate. What I found was that AI and human expertise work best as collaborators, not competitors, and that’s what is making the real difference when it comes to showing up in the right way online.
No reliable formula guarantees that a piece of content will appear in an AI-generated answer, and different systems don’t all select information in the same way. Content that addresses a question clearly, provides specific evidence and demonstrates genuine expertise gives these systems more useful information to work with than a generic article full of familiar marketing language. Original experience, credible data, detailed examples and accurate explanations can all help establish the value of a source.
Why this matters to franchisors
Choosing a franchise is rarely an impulse decision. Prospective franchisees are weighing a financial commitment, a potential change of career and, in many cases, a significant change to their family life. They need more than a persuasive description of an opportunity before they can decide whether it is right for them.
They ask hard, specific questions and, more and more, they’re asking those questions of an AI before they’ve ever reached your website. The answer that comes back is built from whoever produced the clearest, most credible, most specific content on the subject. That shapes whose website they visit next, and what they’re already thinking when they arrive.
What should you do differently?
The starting point isn’t to rewrite every page of your website around the latest marketing acronym. It’s to assess whether your existing content answers the questions prospective franchisees are actually asking.
Start with real questions – review the enquiries your recruitment team receives, the concerns raised during Discovery Days, and the objections that tend to delay decisions. Provide substantive answers that explain investment, training, support, and the realities of running the business, rather than relying on broad promotional claims.
Use evidence and experience, such as relevant, up-to-date figures, specific examples, and franchisee stories that give prospects a realistic picture of what joining the network involves. Check what prospects actually see by asking relevant questions in Google and the AI tools your audience uses, then examine which brands appear and whether the answers accurately reflect your opportunity.
Good content still does the heavy lifting
The conversation around SEO, AEO and GEO can make it sound as though franchisors need an entirely new set of rules. Fortunately, that’s not the case. The work still involves understanding what prospective franchisees need to know and providing answers that are more useful than the generic information they can find almost anywhere.
If you’d like to understand how your franchise content is performing and where there may be gaps worth addressing, I’d be happy to take a look.
