Franchise PPC services, compared on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to select a paid search partner for a franchise system

1. Settle account structure and ownership first. Decide whether the brand owns one account with location campaigns, or each franchisee owns their own account under a manager account held by the brand. That decision governs billing, data access, what happens when a franchisee leaves, and what a departing agency can take with it, so make it before you ask anyone for a price.
2. Write down the territory and bidding rules. Define geographic targeting per location, what happens in overlapping metros, whether franchisees may bid on the brand name, and who arbitrates disputes. Ask each candidate how they enforce those rules technically rather than by asking people nicely, because the enforcement mechanism is the whole difference between systems that work and systems that argue.
3. Separate national fund spend from local spend. Franchise advertising funds and local marketing contributions are usually governed by the franchise agreement and the disclosure document, and the FTC's Franchise Rule compliance guide covers what must be disclosed to franchisees about such funds. Keep the two budgets, and their reporting, visibly separate from the first month.
4. Agree two levels of reporting. The brand needs a system view of spend, cost per enquiry and coverage by market. Each franchisee needs their own numbers in a form they can understand and act on, ideally in their own login. A programme that only reports at one of those two levels loses the confidence of whichever group it excludes, usually the franchisees.

What we record about each firm

Our index records what each agency publishes on its own website, with the date we checked it, rather than what a badge or an award page asserts. That means published starting prices where they exist, disclosed minimum engagements and minimum terms, named clients and stated service lines. Where a firm publishes nothing on price, we record the absence rather than substituting an estimate, because an invented number is worse than an empty field.

In multi location and franchise work, published pricing more often appears as a per location fee than as a single monthly figure, which is genuinely useful because it scales with your system. Watch for whether that per location fee includes the ad spend or sits on top of it, since the two conventions produce numbers that look similar and mean very different things.

How franchise paid search is priced

Three shapes recur. A per location management fee, which is the most transparent for a system and easiest to charge to franchisees. A percentage of total spend, which is simple but rewards growth in budget rather than in results and becomes expensive as the system scales. And a base brand fee plus a smaller per location charge, which reflects the real cost structure since central setup is shared while local optimisation is not. Ask each candidate to quote your actual location count under their own model, then rebuild every quote at the same count.

Then ask what is inside the fee. Landing pages per location, conversion and call tracking, feed management, creative production and franchisee onboarding are the items most often excluded from a headline figure, and a cheaper quote that omits landing pages is not cheaper. Ask for the smallest engagement accepted, the minimum term and the notice period, because those three answers thin a shortlist faster than any pitch meeting.

The failure modes worth designing out

Franchisees bidding against each other on the brand name, which raises the price of clicks the system would largely have won for free. A single shared account where one location's performance is invisible inside a system total. Conversion tracking that counts every click on a phone number, including repeats, so the optimisation is trained on noise. Landing pages that send every location's traffic to a national page with a store locator, which loses the enquiry between the click and the call.

Each of those is preventable at setup and expensive to unwind later, so raise them during selection rather than after. Ask each candidate how they prevent the first, how they report the second, how they define the third and how they handle the fourth. A firm with genuine multi location experience answers all four immediately, because every one of them has already happened on an account they inherited.

Questions people actually ask

Should franchisees be allowed to run their own ads?

Many systems permit it within rules covering brand terms, territory boundaries and approved creative. The risk is uncontrolled competition inside your own system. If you allow it, write the rules into the local marketing policy, require visibility of the accounts, and ask your agency how they monitor compliance in practice.

Who should own the ad accounts?

Most systems are better served by the brand holding a manager account with individual location accounts beneath it, so data and history survive both a franchisee transfer and an agency change. Whatever you choose, put ownership and access rights in writing with the agency and in the franchisee documentation.

How should the advertising fund and local spend be reconciled?

Separately and visibly. Fund spend is governed by your franchise agreement and disclosure obligations, while local contributions are the franchisee's money and they will want to see it. Ask the agency to report the two budgets in different views rather than combining them into one figure.

What should each franchisee see every month?

Their own spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry and the specific searches that produced them, in their own login where possible. Aggregate system reporting is for the brand. Franchisees who cannot see their own numbers stop believing the programme, and that loss of confidence is harder to reverse than any performance problem.

Browse agencies by specialty

• SEO agencies with verified facts
• PPC agencies with verified facts
• Social media agencies with verified facts
• Content marketing agencies with verified facts
• Email marketing agencies with verified facts
• Performance marketing agencies with verified facts