Small business ownership didn’t slow down after the pandemic. It sped up. What started as a wave of career pivots and side hustles during lockdowns turned into a sustained shift in how many people relate to work — and years later, the rate of new business formation still hasn’t returned to where it was before 2020. That’s not a temporary blip. It’s a structural change in the market, and it directly shapes what a marketing service franchise is walking into today.
Most people evaluating a franchise opportunity right now are looking at the current moment in isolation — interest rates, competition, whatever’s in the news that week. Few are looking at the multi-year trend underneath it: more small businesses exist now than existed five years ago, and most of them need marketing help they can’t produce in-house.
This article breaks down what actually changed in the small business landscape since 2020, and why that shift favors a franchise model built around delivering marketing to independent business owners.
New Business Formation Never Went Back to Normal
The rate of new business creation in the U.S. has stayed elevated for years past the point anyone expected it to normalize. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 5,479,144 new businesses were started in 2023 — the highest year on record — followed by 5,199,984 in 2024 and a pace of roughly 5.1 million through the first eleven months of 2025. Monthly applications have been running around 478,800 in 2025, well above pre-pandemic norms.
This matters more than a single headline number suggests. A sustained multi-year elevation in business formation means the client base for marketing services isn’t a one-time bump — it’s a wider, ongoing market. Every one of those businesses eventually needs a website, a way to show up in local search, and a way to advertise. Most of them have no internal marketing function to handle it.
The New Business Owner Needs Marketing Help Immediately, Not Eventually
A new business today doesn’t get years to build an audience the slow way. Consumers expect to find a business online, check its reviews, and evaluate its site before ever calling. This is part of why DIY marketing fails most small business owners — a new business without a real digital presence is functionally invisible in its first year — the exact window when it can least afford to be. That urgency is a large part of why marketing services are one of the first things a new small business owner shops for, not a “someday” line item.
Small Businesses Are Actively Increasing Marketing Spend, Not Just Maintaining It
The demand isn’t passive — small businesses are putting real budget behind it. Clutch’s 2025 research on small business marketing found that 81% of small businesses increased their digital presence budget in 2024–2025, and marketing ranks as the single most sought-after category for outsourcing, ahead of both IT services and design. Over a quarter of business leaders surveyed said they plan to outsource digital marketing outright rather than build it in-house.
That last point is the core opportunity for a franchise built on delivering marketing execution. Small business owners increasingly don’t want to hire and manage an internal marketing team — they want a relationship with someone who handles it for them. That’s a direct match for the RedKnight model, where a franchisee owns the client relationship and a specialist team executes the work behind it.
Why In-House Marketing Doesn’t Work for Most Small Businesses
Most small business owners can’t justify a full-time marketing hire, and they know it. Hiring one person to handle SEO, website work, social media, and paid ads is asking a single generalist to do the job of five specialists — and even if that person is competent, the business is paying a full salary for partial expertise across each discipline. Outsourcing to a team that specializes in each of those areas is usually both cheaper and more effective, which is exactly why small business marketing budgets keep growing even when the broader economy tightens.
Franchising Is Positioned to Capture This Shift
The franchise sector as a whole is growing alongside this demand, not separate from it. The IFA’s 2026 Franchising Economic Outlook, developed with FRANdata, projects franchise establishments will grow to roughly 845,000 units in 2026, with total economic output climbing to $921.4 billion and the sector adding more than 150,000 jobs. A marketing-focused franchise sits at the intersection of two growth curves at once — more small businesses need marketing, and the franchise model for delivering local services is expanding to meet exactly that kind of demand.
What This Means for Someone Considering the Opportunity Now
The timing question people ask — “is now a good time to get into this?” — has a clearer answer than it did five years ago. The market didn’t just recover after the pandemic; it reset at a higher baseline of small business formation and a stronger expectation that marketing gets outsourced rather than handled internally. A franchisee stepping into this space today isn’t betting on a trend reversing. They’re stepping into a market that’s already been running in this direction for years.
The Numbers Point in One Direction
Every relevant statistic here points the same way: more businesses being formed, more of them increasing marketing spend, more of them choosing to outsource rather than hire. That combination doesn’t guarantee success for any individual franchisee — the work of finding clients, building relationships, and closing business still has to happen, and it depends on effort like any business does. But it does mean the underlying market is expanding, not something you’d have to fight against to grow inside of.
Ready to Explore the Opportunity in This Market?
If the shift in small business demand for outsourced marketing sounds like a market worth building a business around, that’s exactly what the RedKnight model is built for — you sell, we build. Reach out to RedKnight Franchising to learn how the opportunity works, how territory fits into the discovery conversation, and what it takes to get started.