If your agency works for a franchise brand, we are the local SEO partner for the part that has to happen per location: Business Profiles, reviews, GEO and automation across dozens of profiles. Our own benchmark shows that only 40% of 500 profiles examined from large chains are fully completed, even though almost all those chains have an agency or in-house marketing team. That leaves room for a specialist alongside you.
What extra does a franchise chain ask of a marketing agency?
To search engines and AI assistants, a franchise brand with thirty locations is not one client but thirty separate businesses under one brand. Each location has its own opening hours, its own reviews, its own place card in Apple Maps and its own listing in Bing. That work is small per item and large in total. It fits poorly into an hours budget built around campaigns and creative work.
We see four disciplines that chains add on top of regular agency work. They are listed below, together with the question you can ask yourself as an agency.
Chains increasingly ask their agency critical questions about local measurement. Read why your agency or account manager rarely helps here to see which questions those are, and how to answer them together with us.
Local SEO per location
Profile management in Google, Apple Business Connect and Bing Places, NAP monitoring, categories, photos and local landing pages. Ask yourself: do you know, for each location, whether the details are correct on all three map services?
GEO (AI visibility)
ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name a handful of providers for a local query. Read how we approach GEO and AI visibility for franchise chains with entities, schema and fixed test questions.
AI automation across all profiles
Spotting discrepancies across hundreds of fields cannot be done by hand. In our AI-assisted way of working, AI collects the data and flags differences; a person reviews and decides.
Governance between head office and location
Who may change an opening time, who replies to an angry review, who approves a local post? Without agreements on this, every profile stays half finished.
What do the benchmark figures say about agencies and chains?
For the Local SEO Benchmark of Franchise Chains 2026, we followed the 100 largest Dutch franchise chains for six months. Google Local Guides at level 6 and above assessed 500 Business Profiles. The figures are not about agencies being unwilling. They show which work is structurally left undone when nobody is specifically assigned to it.
| Benchmark outcome | What it says | What we add |
|---|---|---|
| 40% of profiles fully completed | Basic details are incomplete for the majority | Completeness check per location, every month |
| 6 of the 100 chains reply to reviews within 24 hours | Reviews are not treated as a daily process | Reply within 24 hours from the Growth package |
| An average response time of 6.8 days among chains that do reply | Replies come too late for the customer | Alerts and draft reply, checked by a person |
| 90% without a demonstrable review process | Nobody owns reviews | Fixed process with escalation to the location |
| 19% ever publish a Google Post, 10% weekly | Profiles stand still | Updates and posts per location |
| 7% use the WhatsApp integration | Contact options go unused | Advice per location on contact buttons |
| 40% have questions, no chain answers them all | Customer questions remain open | Following up questions and recording answers |
How do we work with marketing agencies?
There are two models. In the first, we work behind the scenes: you keep the contact with the franchise brand and we deliver the location work under your direction. In the second, we work visibly alongside your agency and the franchise brand also talks to us directly. Which model fits depends on what the franchise brand wants and how your contract is set up. Both models can also start at the request of a marketer at the franchise brand; see also support for franchise marketers.
| Element | Behind the scenes | Alongside your agency |
|---|---|---|
| Client contact with the franchise brand | You | You and us, agreed per topic |
| Name on the reporting | Your agency | Both agencies, each for their own part |
| Contact with locations | Through you or in your name | Us, about profiles and reviews |
| Invoicing | We invoice your agency | We invoice the franchise brand directly |
| Suitable when | The franchise brand wants to keep one point of contact | The franchise brand wants to speak to specialists directly |
Work together on measurable results, not on an annual contract. Start with the free visibility scan.
Which division of tasks do agencies and we agree on?
Overlap costs money and creates noise for the locations. That is why, at the start, we record for each task who carries it out, who approves it and who measures it. The table below is a starting point; we adapt it to what your agency already does.
| Task | Carried out by | Why this way | How we measure it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand, campaigns and creative | Your agency | That is your core discipline | Your own KPIs |
| Website and general SEO | Your agency | You know the platform | Organic traffic and rankings |
| Business Profiles in Google, Apple and Bing | Us | Work per location, many fields | Completeness per profile |
| Replying to reviews | Us, with escalation to the location | Speed requires a fixed process | Response time per location |
| GEO and entities | Us | Requires schema and entity expertise | Mentions for fixed test questions |
| Local advertising | By agreement | Depends on who manages the media budget | Cost per action per location |
| Franchisee recruitment | Us or your agency | A different audience from consumers | Qualified applications |
What do the agency and the franchise brand gain from a local SEO partner?
The agency can answer a request from the franchise brand without hiring its own specialists or losing hours to profile management. The franchise brand gets the location work done by people who do this every day, with monthly figures per location that fit alongside your own reporting.
Fictitious worked example: a franchise brand with 40 locations chooses the Basic package. That is 40 x €199 = €7,960 per month, excl. VAT. If it chooses Growth, it becomes 40 x €400 = €16,000 per month. How the agency recharges this or combines it with its own work is something you agree with the franchise brand yourself. Also see the package prices per location.
| Package | Price per location per month | 40 locations per month | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | €199 | €7,960 | Profile management, NAP monitoring, monthly report |
| Growth | €400 | €16,000 | Basic plus reviews and posts |
| Full service | €600 | €24,000 | Growth plus local landing pages and GEO |
What do we agree on data and reporting?
The accounts and profiles remain the property of the franchise brand. We are given access as a manager and hand that access back when the collaboration ends. Data we collect, such as review texts and profile figures, is used only for that franchise brand.
Reporting is done per location. If we work behind the scenes, you deliver the figures to the franchise brand in your own format. If we work alongside you, the locations part becomes a separate item in the meetings. No annual contract: the collaboration runs month by month, based on measurable results.
How does a marketing agency get started with us?
We start with a baseline measurement of all the franchise brand's locations, so that you and the franchise brand can see where the gap lies. This is followed by a pilot with a group of locations for a fixed period. If it works, we roll out. If you first want to know who else we work with, see the clients we work for, or read why Franchise Marketing Bureau works differently. For the baseline measurement, you can book a free location scan.
Questions from marketing agencies about working together
Will you take over our client if we work together?
Can you work under our agency's name?
Why would an agency outsource local SEO?
What do you mean by GEO for agencies?
Does our agency have to sign an annual contract with you?
Who manages access to the Business Profiles?
How do we prevent duplicate work between our teams?
Can you also do just a baseline measurement for our agency?
Do you work with agencies that already do SEO for the franchise brand?
How do you report when we work behind the scenes?
Sources
Gijs Bodenstaff
Franchise marketer, local SEO and GEO specialist, author
Book an introductory call and discuss which location work your agency can hand over to us.
