Google Ads for franchises:
one network, no bidding wars.

A franchise network has three kinds of search worth paying for, and they need different owners. Brand searches come from people who already know the name. Local service searches come from people who need the thing and don't care who does it yet. Store extras are the odd service, event or opening that only one location runs.

The mistake I see most is treating all three as one pot. Here's the split that usually holds up. Your agreement decides who pays, so check it before you copy this.

Both can work. What matters is that head office can see everything. Google's manager account lets you view and manage many Google Ads accounts from one place, report across them, and track conversions across accounts. It sits above the accounts like an umbrella.

One account with a campaign per location is simpler to run and easier to keep consistent. One account per franchisee, all linked under head office's manager account, keeps each store's spend and billing separate, which some networks need when franchisees pay for their own local ads. The version that fails is the third one: franchisees or their local agencies running accounts head office can't see, bidding on the brand name, with nobody checking.

Head office, once. Google's policy says you can't try to show more than one ad for your business, app or site in a single ad location. It doesn't spell out whether two franchisees count as one business, so the safe assumption is that network accounts bidding on the same brand search are fighting over one spot rather than doubling up. You pay more, and you can't tell which account deserved the click.

The brand campaign still matters, because competitors can buy your name. Google's trademark policy says it does not restrict trademarks used as keywords, only some uses in ad text. If someone searches '[brand] Gosford' and a rival's ad sits above you, the brand campaign is what keeps the first result yours.

Let the brand campaign carry the suburb searches too. With location assets, the ad shows the nearest store's address and phone anyway, so there's no need for a separate brand campaign per store.

Location assets put a store's address, a map and the distance in the ad. Google says the data for them comes directly from Google Maps and Google Business Profile, so you change an address or phone number in the Business Profile, not in Google Ads, and closed locations stop showing. Link the profiles through the Business Profile account head office manages, and every store comes through at once.

Then use location groups. They let you choose which locations appear in which campaign or ad group. The Erina local campaign should only show the Erina store. If every campaign shows every location, a customer searching in Woy Woy can see an ad with an address across the water.

One trap: affiliate location assets are meant for brands sold in stores they don't run, like a manufacturer stocked by a chain. Google says declaring the wrong location type can get assets disapproved. A network's own stores come through the Business Profile link.

Google's default location setting, 'Presence or interest', is described as the default and recommended option. It reaches people in your area and people who have shown interest in it. For a national brand campaign that's fine. For a local campaign paid from one store's budget, switch it to Presence, so the money goes on people who are actually there.

Draw each local campaign's area to match the store's territory. The disclosure document has to say whether a territory is exclusive or non-exclusive, and whether other franchisees can operate a substantially similar business in it. If territories are exclusive, a campaign that spills into the next one is paying to send a neighbour's customer to the wrong store, and that ends up as a phone call to head office.

Tick how your network runs Google Ads today. The check flags the set-ups that usually waste money or start arguments between stores. It runs in your browser only.

Put every location in one campaign with one budget and the money drifts to wherever the most searches are, usually the busiest metro stores. Give each location its own campaign and the Wyong store's money stays in Wyong. Google sets a campaign's spend by its average daily budget: on a busy day it might spend up to twice that, but over a month it won't charge more than 30.4 times it.

That makes per-store budgets easy to explain to franchisees: monthly amount divided by 30.4 is the daily budget. Set an ad schedule to each store's opening hours if calls are the main goal, so you're not paying for calls nobody can answer. The franchise budget page has a calculator for the split between the fund and local spend.

A franchisee wants to know one thing: what did my store get? Google Ads can count calls from location assets and calls from your website after an ad click as conversions, with a minimum call length so hang-ups don't count. Those call types need Google forwarding numbers, so set them up per location and check each one rings the store, not a call centre.

Name every campaign by location, report each store's clicks, calls, forms and cost every month, and send it to the franchisee. It costs head office an hour and saves a lot of suspicion about where the fund money goes. The lead generation page covers getting form enquiries to the right store.