I’ve managed hundreds of Google Ads accounts for franchises, ranging from corporate accounts to accounts corporate didn’t know about.
I’ve seen them created and managed in lots of different ways, but I’ve seen a couple of things that tend to improve results while also making it easier to manage so many accounts.
When you’re managing accounts in bulk like this, you generally want to be as efficient as possible, but you can’t just make one change and copy it a hundred times. You may get better performance from one account while breaking another.
The tips below are my recommendations for efficiently managing Google Ads accounts when you work with franchises with multiple locations. Whether it’s one franchise or several, you’ll find these tips helpful.
Create An MCC For Each Franchise
Agencies create manager accounts called My Client Center and use those accounts to access all of their client’s accounts from one place (Hoping you know this…).
Did you know that you can create an MCC within your agency’s MCC?
This is actually the ideal scenario if you have one or more franchises with multiple locations that need to each have their own account.
Suppose you’re approached by the corporate marketing manager for a franchise and they want to run ads for all of their locations, starting with 10 locations and spreading out after they have proof of concept.
You could just create the accounts in your MCC and create a label for that franchise that you then assign to each new account, or you could create a sub-MCC for the franchise and add all new accounts under that new sub-MCC.
It’s much cleaner and less impactful on your other clients to build everything this way, but there are lots of other benefits, especially if all of the locations just send traffic to the corporate site (as many do).
Use Shared Conversions If Possible
If you do run ads for a franchise in which all locations are sending traffic to the same domain, building all of their accounts under a sub-MCC has a really powerful benefit that makes life much easier.
You can create conversions at the MCC-level and share them with each account.
You’ve got to select which accounts you want to include in MCC-level conversion tracking (done in the sub-account settings under the ‘Accounts’ menu option), so you aren’t automatically going to include every new account. That can be helpful if a particular franchise location has it’s own site or something.
This can dramatically increase the speed and simplicity of your new account setups for each franchise.
You set up conversion tracking once, at the MCC-level, then your “conversion tracking setup” for each new franchise account is just setting the MCC account as the conversion tracking account.
No need to get access to every website or have their “web guy” add tags.
It’s magical.
Use Shared Lists (Negatives & Placement Exclusions)
Another massive shortcut is sharing exclusion lists.
Do you have a franchise account with 296 competitor names as negative keywords?
Add it to the MCC you created for that franchise’s locations and you can now add it to campaigns within that franchise account.
The downside to this is that the list can only be edited at the MCC level, which means you can’t actually add negative keywords to the list from each sub-account’s search terms reports.
Because of this, the MCC-level exclusion lists are usually just broad and generally irrelevant things like cuss words or mobile app category placement exclusion lists (both worth using, by the way).
However, the easy solution is to download the negative keywords from each account at the end of every day and copy-paste them all into the relevant MCC-level lists. That’s a lot of work, but you can have a VA do it and it every account you touch each day helps all of the others reduce wasted spend from irrelevant terms and competitor searches.
Plus, every new account starts miles down the road in terms of waste mitigation, rather than having to review all the same search terms and add negatives like you did with account one.
That’s a network effect and a solid value proposition if you don’t have an exclusive vendor deal with corporate.
Use Shared Audiences
Yet more sharing, because sharing is caring.
Similar to shared conversions, audiences are either set to be created and managed at the MCC level or the sub-account level. You can pick and choose which accounts use which level of audience and can change the settings at any time, so you’re not locked into one or the other.
This one is usually used for Display, Demand Gen, or Pmax targeting, but you can also use the audiences in observation mode on Search or Shopping campaigns to gather data on specific audience segment interest and engagement.
You can also use them for targeting on Search and Shopping campaigns if you have enough search volume, so that only people in those audiences can see the ads when searching.
Audiences are often underutilized in Google Ads, so this doesn’t get used as often, but it’s well worth creating some shared audience segments to shorten the setup of new accounts and make sure all accounts have access to any great non-search targeting you’ve identified.
This also works with remarketing lists, so you get similar benefits to those mentioned in the conversion tracking section where account setup is faster and you don’t risk missing steps.
Use Ads Editor
Google Ads Editor is the desktop app that lets you manage Google Ads accounts offline and post changes at a later date (or immediately).
It lets you do some things you can’t do in the web platform, so it’s very helpful for advanced ad specialists who want to go beyond the normal day-to-day features.
A lot of expert ad managers use Ads Editor for everything. Personally, I like to use it for copying accounts and editing the unique elements before pushing it all live.
This is EXCEEDINGLY helpful when running lots of small accounts for virtual copies of the same business, like franchises.
You should manage every account as a unique entity, but it’s silly to reinvent the wheel if you’ve identified a good starting point for a particular franchise’s offer and market.
Add to that the other tips above, and you’ve got yourself a powerhouse that runs like a well-oiled machine. High results, low maintenance.
Summary
Few agencies work with franchises because of the perceived lack of scalability. You often have lots of accounts to manage and they can’t pay what large accounts can.
However, if you follow the tips above, on person can manage 50+ small accounts without sacrificing quality.
If each account spends $500-$1000 and pays you $500/mo, you’ve got yourself a solid book of business that only requires 30–60 minutes of maintenance per account, per month.
If you know how to set proper boundaries and how to manage lots of small accounts efficiently, franchises can make great clients.
If you’re curious about how I work with agencies or if you’re frustrated with your agency’s profitability or retention of clients or employees, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll see how I can help. I never charge for the first consultation and if I can solve it in 30-minutes, there’s no reason to pay for my services and you walk away happy.
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