Franchise location guide
Write the one cost article that beats every competitor
Your brand's website looks like every other location's. Your prices, your jobs and your town do not. This is how you turn that into content that only you could have written.
Hand this page to your AI assistant
Copy the prompt below into ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or whatever you already use. It interviews you first, then drafts the article.
It is built to refuse. If you do not give it your real local numbers and a real job from your own territory, it will not write. That matters more for you than for anyone else, and the section below explains exactly why.
You are helping me write a cost article for my franchise location, following the They Ask You Answer approach: answer the question customers actually have, honestly, better than anyone else in my local market does. Before you write ANYTHING, ask me these questions one at a time and wait for my answer: 1. What single job is this article about? Be specific. 2. What town or area do I serve, and what is distinctive about it? Housing age, weather, common local problems. 3. From MY estimator, what does this job actually cost here? Give me a low, a typical and a high range. 4. What are the three things that most change the price, and roughly how much does each move the number? 5. Describe one real job I did here recently. What was it, what surprised the customer, what was the final figure? 6. What do customers here most often get wrong about what this costs? 7. What is my estimator link? 8. What is my brand name and my official location suffix? Do not proceed until I have answered all eight. If any answer is vague, ask again. Do not accept "it depends" for question 3 without numbers. Then write an article of 1,200 to 1,800 words with: - A title in the form of the question a customer would type, including my town - A first paragraph giving the actual price range in the first three sentences, with no preamble - A section on what drives the price up or down, using my figures - A section on the real job from question 5, as a short story with the real number in it - A section on what is specific about my area from question 2, and how that affects cost here - A section on what customers get misled about - A closing section on getting a price for their own project, linking to my estimator - A five-question FAQ Hard rules you must follow: - Use ONLY the numbers I gave you. Never invent a price, percentage, average, industry statistic or survey finding. If you need a fact I have not given, ask me. - CRITICAL: every paragraph must be specific to MY location. If a sentence would read identically on another location's page in my brand, rewrite it or cut it. Near-duplicate pages across a franchise network get filtered out of search results. - Never write "prices vary" without giving the range anyway. - Say estimate or range. Never say quote. - Plain language. No jargon unless explained in the same sentence. - Do not repeat my town name for search engines. Once in the title and naturally once or twice in the body. - My business name is my brand name plus my official location suffix. Never add a city or service to it. - Write in my voice, first person plural, like I am talking to someone in their driveway.
Works in any assistant. Nothing in it is specific to one tool.
Write one article answering "how much does this job cost in my town", using the real prices from your own estimator, one real local job, and one photo you took. Then get it published wherever your brand allows, and point your Google Business Profile at it. Your local numbers are the part no other location in your network can copy.
Read this before you write a word. If a hundred and thirty locations in your brand all publish an AI-written cost article at the same time, and they differ only in the town name, Google treats them as near-duplicate pages and filters most of them out. All that effort, no result.
The defence is not better writing. It is your actual numbers, your actual job, your actual photo. Those three things cannot be generated, and they are what makes your version survive when the generic ones do not. Skip them and you are wasting an afternoon.
Why this is worth your time
There is a well-known list in content marketing called the Big Five: cost, problems, comparisons, reviews and best-in-class. Cost is number one, because it is the first thing every buyer wants to know and the last thing most businesses will discuss.
Search your service plus "cost" plus your town. You will find national averages from directory sites that have never worked in your area, competitor pages saying "contact us for a quote", and often nothing local at all.
Meanwhile you have something almost nobody has: an estimator with real prices in it, priced for your market. Getting the numbers takes ten minutes.
What the article looks like
Eight blocks, in this order. The three marked in teal are the ones that make it yours rather than your brand's.
1,200 to 1,800 words. Longer is not better.
A specimen, so you can see the tone
Three blocks from an article for a fictional franchise location, with a note after each on why it works.
This is a specimen, not a template. It is deliberately partial and the location is invented. Do not copy it and change the town name. That is the exact behaviour that gets a hundred and thirty near-identical pages filtered out of search, and it would take your version down with everyone else's. Read it for tone, then write your own with your numbers in it.
How much does a new roof cost in Round Rock?
A full roof replacement in Round Rock typically runs between $9,500 and $18,000. Most of the homes we work on land somewhere around $12,000 to $14,000. Asphalt shingle sits at the lower end, standing seam metal and tile at the top.
Those are our prices for this area, not a national average. The rest of this page explains what moves a project from one end of that range to the other.
Most of the housing stock we work on around here went up between 1995 and 2005, during the big expansion east of the interstate. That means a lot of roofs are hitting twenty to twenty-five years old at the same time, which is right at the end of a standard shingle's life.
It also means the decking underneath is usually in decent condition, so we hit fewer expensive surprises here than we would on an older neighbourhood. That is part of why our typical figure sits where it does.
Last month we replaced a roof on a house off Gattis School Road. The owner had been given a flat figure over the phone by someone who had never seen the property, and she was expecting around $9,000.
When we tore off, about a third of the decking was soft from a leak that had been painted over rather than fixed. The final figure was $13,400, and we showed her the decking before we replaced it.
What she told us afterwards was that the price was not the thing. It was knowing the number could move, and why, before we started.
The swap test
Before you publish, do this. Read your article and ask, honestly: could I change the town name and hand this to another location in my brand?
If the answer is yes, it is not finished. Somewhere in there you need a local fact, a local job, or a local number that makes the swap impossible. That is not a stylistic preference. It is the difference between a page that ranks and a page that gets filtered as a near-duplicate.
The three sentences people get wrong
Almost every weak cost article fails in the same three places.
That middle pair is the one that matters most for you. The first version is true of every location in your brand, which means it does nothing for any of them. The second could only have been written by you.
How to write it
Get your real local numbers
Open your estimator, go to the Pricing Lab, and read the Price Range Summary. Budget, baseline and premium for every service, produced by your own pricing.
If you have never changed your pricing from the brand template, stop here and do that first. Publishing template numbers as though they were your local numbers is the exact mistake this whole page exists to prevent. When we audited one brand's nineteen locations, sixteen had never touched their pricing.
Pick the exact question
One job, one place. "How much does a new roof cost in Round Rock?" Not a general guide. Not your whole territory at once.
Gather the three things nobody can generate
What you need Why it matters Your real local price ranges Different from the location two towns over, and different from every competitor, who publish nothing. One real job from your territory Three sentences. What it was, what surprised the customer, the final number. This is what proves a real business wrote this. One photo you took Your job, your crew, your van. Brand stock photos appear on every other location's content and readers can tell instantly. Draft it
Use the prompt at the top, or write it yourself. The prompt exists because most people never start.
Give the price in the first three sentences
Do not build up to it. The reader came for a number.
How the opening should readA full roof replacement in Round Rock typically runs between $9,500 and $18,000, with most of the homes we work on landing around $12,000 to $14,000. Asphalt shingle sits at the lower end, metal and tile at the top. Below we break down exactly what moves a project from one end of that range to the other.
Where you can actually publish it
This is the part that is different for you, and it is worth sorting out before you write rather than after. Your location page is maintained by your brand, so you may not be able to publish to it directly. Work down this list:
| Option | Worth knowing |
|---|---|
| 1. Your location page, if the brand allows a local news or blog section | Best outcome. Ask head office. Some brands allow it and simply never mention it. |
| 2. Send it to brand marketing | Many brands are desperate for local content and have nobody producing it. A finished, well-written article with real numbers is an easy yes, and it makes you visible internally. |
| 3. Break it into Google Business Profile posts | Entirely within your control, needs no permission, works from day one. One article becomes five or six posts. See the GBP guide. |
| 4. Email it to your list and past enquiries | The people who asked what it costs and never got a straight answer. This is often the fastest return of the four. |
| 5. Post it to your local social pages | In sections, with the photo. Cost content performs unusually well in local community groups. |
Wherever it lands, put your estimator link in it, and make sure the version customers see points at your estimator with your prices, not a brand-level one.
The rules that keep it working
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Every paragraph must be specific to you | The single most important rule on this page. If it would read identically on another location's page, it is working against you rather than for you. |
| Never invent a statistic | The most common failure of AI-written content. If a number is in the article, it came from you. |
| Never write "prices vary" and stop | Give the range anyway. The refusal to give a number is why competitor pages are useless. |
| Estimate, never quote | A quote is fixed and binding. You are giving a realistic range. |
| Check your brand guidelines first | Ten minutes now beats being asked to take it down later. |
| Update when your prices move | Twice a year, or whenever you re-price. |
Google does not penalise content for being written with AI. It does filter thin, near-duplicate pages. Those are different problems, and only the second one should worry you.
What good looks like
- The price range appears within the first three sentences.
- There is a real job in it, with a real number.
- There is a photo you took yourself.
- You could not swap the town name and publish it for another location without it reading wrong.
- Your estimator is linked at least twice.
Troubleshooting
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The AI wrote something generic | You let it start before answering all eight questions. Start again and make it interview you. |
| It included a statistic you did not give it | Delete it. Do not go hunting for a source to justify it afterwards. |
| Head office will not publish it | Go to option 3 and 4 above. GBP posts and your own email list need nobody's permission. |
| Another location published something almost identical | Compare them. If yours has your numbers, your job and your photo and theirs does not, yours is the one that survives. Mention it to your brand, because it is a network-wide risk. |
| You are nervous about publishing prices | Worth sitting with. The enquiries you lose were not going to buy at your prices anyway. |
| No traffic after a month | Normal. Cost content takes three to six months. Meanwhile it works as something you send people directly. |
Am I allowed to publish this at all?
Check your brand guidelines. Options 3, 4 and 5 above are almost always yours to do regardless, because they are your own Google profile, your own email list and your own social pages.
What if my prices differ from other locations in my brand?
They should. Different labour rates, material costs and markets. That difference is the entire value of this article.
Should I write about my whole territory or one town?
One town first, the biggest one. See how it performs before repeating it, and only repeat it where the numbers genuinely differ.
Can I reuse an article another location wrote?
Please do not. That is precisely the near-duplicate problem, and it damages both of you.
How long should it be?
1,200 to 1,800 words. The numbers matter more than the length.
Want us to look at a draft, or help you ask head office? Email [email protected].