Multi-Location Google Ads for Franchises: Fixing Budget, Tracking and Local Performance

Question 1

Why do some franchise locations use most of the Google Ads budget while smaller markets get almost nothing?

Accepted Answer

The article states that because campaigns were organized by service line rather than by location, Google's algorithm funneled spend toward the markets with the highest click volume and cheapest conversions. In this account, that meant two metro-adjacent locations were eating the majority of the budget while smaller, more rural territories were starved. The article states those smaller markets never received enough data for Smart Bidding to optimize effectively.

Question 2

How should a franchise organize Google Ads campaigns across multiple locations?

Accepted Answer

The article recommends organizing by location first, then by service within each location, rather than organizing by service line across locations. In this case, the 12 service-line campaigns were replaced with 12 location-based campaign groups, moving the account from 14 campaigns to roughly 36 with three service groupings per location. According to the article, keyword sets overlapped by about 70%, while the remaining 30% of location-specific terms made a meaningful difference in relevance and cost.

Question 3

How should Smart Bidding be set when franchise markets have very different conversion volumes?

Accepted Answer

According to the article, some markets generated 200 conversions per month and others generated 15, which is too little for campaign-level Target CPA. The article describes a tiered approach where four of the 12 high-volume locations ran Target CPA at the campaign level, five of the 12 medium-volume locations used portfolio bid strategies to pool data within the same market, and three of the 12 low-volume locations started on Maximize Conversions without a target. Locations graduate to tighter bid controls as they accumulate conversion history.

Question 4

Why do localized landing pages improve conversion rates for multi-location home services businesses?

Accepted Answer

The article states the landing page overhaul was the single highest-impact change measured by conversion rate. Every location received pages built from a shared template but populated with the local phone number, the service area by city and neighborhood name, reviews from customers in that market, and a localized call to action. According to the article, the local area code increased call conversions and including neighborhood names improved Quality Score, while fast mobile load mattered because urgent-need searchers click the result that loads and looks trustworthy.

Question 5

What happened in the 90 days after the franchise rebuilt its Google Ads structure?

Accepted Answer

The article states the first 30 days were a learning period when performance initially dipped in some markets as Smart Bidding recalibrated from polluted historical data. By day 45, the four high-volume locations were generating leads at a lower cost per lead and the medium-volume locations stabilized around week six with portfolio bidding. By day 90, total monthly spend stayed around $45K but all 12 locations were contributing instead of five locations carrying the account and seven barely justifying their ad spend.