Your franchise network,
the next 30 days.

Most franchise networks don't have a traffic problem. They have a consistency problem: twenty locations, each with slightly different hours, numbers, photos and offers, and an ad budget that sends people to all of them. Spend more before fixing that and you pay to show customers the mess.

So the first fortnight is housekeeping: locations, profiles, fund dates and ad accounts. Week three fixes how enquiries reach stores. Only week four spends money, and it spends it on a small test you can measure. The store tasks are short on purpose. Franchisees are running a business, and head office should carry the setup.

Tick as you go. Use the filter to show just the store jobs, and send that list to each franchisee.

Start with a list: every location, with its status (open, opening or closed), owner, address, phone and profile link. Then get every Business Profile into business groups head office controls. Google describes groups as a more secure way to manage and share access, like a shared folder: owners can hand over a group, and managers can edit the profiles in it. Head office holds ownership; each store's manager gets manager access.

Check every profile name is the brand name only. Google's guidelines require the same name across every location in the country, with no suburb added unless the store's real-world signage uses one. Stores check their own hours, holiday hours, phone and services, and add a handful of real photos. Mark closed stores as closed.

Put the fund dates in the calendar. From 1 November 2025, the annual fund statement is due within 4 months of the financial year end, then to contributing franchisees within 30 days. Any vote to skip the audit needs 75% of contributors and has to happen within 3 months of year end. If your year ends 30 June, that means a vote by 30 September and the statement by 31 October.

Read item 15 of the disclosure document, which sets out whether the franchisor must spend part of the fund for each franchisee. Then map every ad account: who owns each Google Ads and Meta account, who can see it, and what it bids on. A Google Ads manager account lets head office see them all in one place. Stores write down what they spend locally each month, and where.

Finally, check the current national offer. Which stores run it? Does each location page say so? The franchise marketing rules page has a pre-flight check for national promotions.

Send a test enquiry through the website form with a postcode from three different regions, and time how long each store takes to reply. Ring each store's profile number at a busy time, as a customer would. Then check the postcode table against the territories in the agreement, using the routing test on the lead generation page.

Stores ask every customer for a review, the same way. Google bans incentives and selective asking, so no discounts for reviews and no asking only the happy ones. Head office adds a 'How did you find us?' question to forms, with 'AI assistant' as an option, because many ChatGPT clicks now appear to arrive in GA4 with no tag or referrer.

Link the Business Profiles to Google Ads so location assets show each store's address and phone, and use location groups so each campaign shows only its own store. Then pick three stores for a local test: a campaign each, with its own budget, Presence targeting, an ad schedule set to opening hours, and an end date.

Agree with those franchisees what counts as a result before it starts: calls longer than a minute, bookings, enquiries. Check each store's tracking number rings the store. On Meta, check each store's radius against its neighbours with the overlap calculator on the social ads page.

Book 30 minutes a month per region and look at four numbers for each store: enquiries, the share contacted within an hour, bookings, and new reviews. If enquiries rose and bookings didn't, the problem is at the store, not in the ads. If the three test stores did well, roll the set-up out a region at a time, not all at once.

Send each franchisee their store's numbers, even when they're not flattering. It's the habit that makes the year-end fund statement an easy conversation.