Bring the franchise development lead, the person responsible for media and the reps who handle candidates to the same review. Prepare the figures and change log first, then assign an owner to each decision.
Managing a recruitment campaign is mostly deciding what not to change. Each week someone sees a cheaper cost per lead, a campaign with a better Qualified share, or a form that quietly broke, and wants to act on all three. The weekly review exists to decide which of those is real, which is too early to read, and which needs containing rather than reacting to.
This guide sets out a weekly operating rhythm for a franchisor running paid recruitment, in-house or with an agency: a naming convention, four review questions in a fixed order, decision rules that don’t depend on a magic number, and one fully worked fictional week with the change log it produced.
Platform setup is covered separately in the Facebook ads and Google Ads guides for franchise recruitment. The monthly cohort report is the recruitment report. When and how to raise budget is covered in the guide to scaling recruitment ad spend. This page is the weekly meeting in between.
Name campaigns so the review can read them
If a campaign name doesn’t tell you the territory, audience and creative, you can’t compare it with anything. Use one convention everywhere, including in the utm_campaign and utm_content values, so the CRM and the ad platform describe the campaign the same way (see source tracking).
[market]_[channel]_[objective]_[territory or national]_[audience]_[creative]_[start yyyymm]
us_meta_leads_tx-aus_owner-operator_ops-video-01_202604Four questions, in this order
Run it on a fixed day with a fixed data cutoff. Attendees: whoever runs the campaigns, the development lead, and the budget owner.
1. Can we trust this week’s data, and where can’t we? Match the submissions you own (accepted form submissions in your form or lead-delivery log, each with a submission ID) to CRM records by that ID, campaign by campaign, and record a reason against every unmatched or merged ID (see ad leads versus CRM). Read the platform’s credited lead count as a separate observation: it follows the platform’s attribution rules, so on its own it can’t prove a delivery failure or explain a gap. If one campaign or one form has a problem, mark that campaign as unreadable for this week and contain it. Don’t freeze decisions on campaigns whose data still reconciles.
2. What did the development team grade? Count Qualified, Nurture and Disqualified by campaign, and count Not yet graded separately. Read the Disqualified reasons, not just the totals. A rising Not yet graded count usually means a grading or follow-up backlog, which is a capacity problem rather than a campaign one.
3. What moved further down the pipeline, and how old is each campaign? First calls held, discovery days booked, disclosure delivered. Write each campaign’s age next to its numbers. A six-week-old campaign with no signings tells you very little about signings, because recruitment cycles usually run much longer than that.
4. What do we change, what do we deliberately leave, and what are we only watching? Decide, log it, and stop.
Decision rules
These rules describe how to reason, not thresholds to copy. Agree your own numbers with the development team and write them in the change log when you use them.
| Situation | Decision |
|---|---|
| One campaign’s owned submission log doesn’t match the CRM by submission ID, or its records lose their campaign value | Contain that campaign: hold its budget where it is, don’t judge it on this week’s grades, fix the tracking, and record what’s uncertain. Carry on reviewing the others |
| Tracking is broken across every campaign | No budget increases until it’s fixed. Decreases for reasons that don’t depend on the broken data (a territory sold, a claims problem) still go ahead |
| Graded inquiries are dominated by one Disqualified reason | Fix the ad or page line that’s inviting it. Don’t just cut budget, because the next campaign will inherit the same message |
| Qualified candidates are waiting for a first call | Fix capacity or routing before touching the campaign |
| One campaign has a higher Qualified share than another | Look at the Qualified count, the absolute cost per Qualified, the campaign’s age and whether the team can take more first calls. A share on its own doesn’t justify a budget shift |
| Too few graded inquiries to say anything | Keep it running unless it’s clearly broken. How many is “too few” is a team decision; write down the number you used |
| A territory in the campaign is reserved or sold | Change the campaign the same day (see territory availability) |
One more rule sits over all of them: a change in the numbers after a change in the campaign is an observation, not proof. Seasons, rep workload, territory releases and platform delivery all shift at the same time. Unless you designed a controlled test, log what you changed and what you saw next, and don’t call it a cause.
A worked week
Fictional example. Northfield Inspections, an invented US home inspection franchisor. Review on Monday 18 May 2026. Data cutoff Sunday 17 May, 23:59 Central Time (America/Chicago). USD. Figures are cumulative from each campaign’s launch to the cutoff. Days live are counted inclusive of the launch day. Rules version v2.1.
| Campaign | Launched | Days live | Spend | Platform-credited leads (separate observation) | Owned accepted submissions | CRM inquiries | Qualified | Nurture | Disqualified | Not yet graded | Qualified share of graded | Media cost per Qualified | First calls held (Qualified) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 us_meta_leads_tx-aus_owner-operator_ops-video-01_202604 | 6 Apr | 42 | $4,200 | 50 | 50 | 48 | 9 | 13 | 22 | 4 | 9 of 44 (20.5%) | $466.67 | 8 of 9 |
| C2 us_meta_leads_tx-aus_owner-operator_funds-static-02_202604 | 6 Apr | 42 | $4,000 | 31 | 31 | 30 | 8 | 7 | 12 | 3 | 8 of 27 (29.6%) | $500.00 | 7 of 8 |
| C3 us_google_search_national_nonbrand_202603 | 2 Mar | 77 | $6,600 | 43 | 43 | 41 | 7 | 11 | 20 | 3 | 7 of 38 (18.4%) | $942.86 | 7 of 7 |
| C4 us_meta_leads_fl-tpa_owner-operator_ops-video-01_202605 | 4 May | 14 | $1,300 | 13 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | not read | not read | 1 of 1 |
| Tampa page, campaign unknown | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 9 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 2 | not read | n/a | 1 of 1 |
| Total | $16,100 | 138 | 133 | 26 | 34 | 59 | 14 | 24 of 26 |
Graded plus Not yet graded equals CRM inquiries on every row (for C1: 9 + 13 + 22 = 44 graded, plus 4 = 48). Media cost per Qualified is spend divided by graded Qualified. Owned accepted submissions come from the form and lead-delivery logs, one submission ID each. For C4 and the unknown row they split the Tampa page’s 14 accepted submissions (5 carrying C4’s campaign value, 9 with none), so the page total is counted once, not added on top. Platform-credited leads are what each ad platform reports under its own attribution; they are shown for comparison and not summed.
Question 1: data. C1, C2 and C3 reconcile at ID level. Every accepted submission in their owned logs either matches a CRM record or has a recorded reason: C1’s 2 unmatched IDs (SUB-C1-0112, SUB-C1-0127) were second submissions from people already in the CRM and were merged into those records; C2’s 1 (SUB-C2-0044) was a staff test from a test@example.com address and was excluded; C3’s 2 (SUB-C3-0031, SUB-C3-0090) were repeat submissions merged into existing records. The platform-credited totals happen to equal the owned counts for C1 to C3 this week. That is an observation, not the evidence for the merges and the test; the IDs are. C4 doesn’t reconcile on campaign. All 14 accepted Tampa page submissions are in the CRM by ID, so nothing failed to deliver, but the Tampa form was updated on 12 May and the hidden campaign field stopped filling. Only 5 of the 14 carry C4’s campaign value. The page also gets organic visits, so the other 9 can’t all be assumed to be C4’s. Meta credits C4 with 13 leads; that figure uses Meta’s attribution and can’t tell us which of the 9 unknown submissions, if any, came from C4. C4 is unreadable this week. C1 to C3 are not affected.
Question 2: grades. C1’s 22 Disqualified break down as 14 passive-investment answers (R3), 6 below the funds minimum (R2) and 2 wanting only sold territory (R1). Fourteen of 22 for one reason is a message problem. C1’s ad leads with “Own your own inspection business” and never says the owner does the inspections. C2’s 12 Disqualified are 7 R2, 3 R3 and 2 R1. C3’s 20 are 9 R2, 6 R3 and 5 R1.
Question 3: pipeline and age. Twenty-four of 26 Qualified candidates have had a first call. C3 has two discovery days booked. No campaign has a signing yet, and none of them is old enough for that to mean anything.
Question 4: the tempting decision. C2’s Qualified share (29.6%) is well above C1’s (20.5%). The easy move is to shift budget from C1 to C2. The table doesn’t support it:
- C2 has produced fewer Qualified candidates (8 against 9), at a higher media cost per Qualified ($500.00 against $466.67).
- Both campaigns are 42 days old. Neither has a single discovery day.
- The two reps have 5 open first-call slots in the next two weeks. Moving budget doesn’t create capacity.
- C1’s lower share has a known, fixable cause: the passive-investment answers.
So the team leaves both budgets where they are, fixes C1’s message, and watches.
The change log that week
Fictional entries.
| Date | Campaign | Change | Evidence | Type | Decided by | Review on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 May | C4 | Budget held at current level; C4 excluded from grade-based decisions until fixed; form hidden field repaired; reps record self-reported source on the 9 unknowns in a separate field (not overwriting campaign) | Tampa page owned log: 14 accepted submissions, all 14 matched to CRM records by submission ID; 5 carry C4’s campaign value, 9 have none since the form update on 12 May. Meta’s credited 13 noted separately, not used to size the gap | Containment | Media + development lead | 25 May |
| 18 May | C1 | New primary text and headline stating the owner does the inspections in year one; same audience, budget and page | 14 of 22 Disqualified on R3 passive investment | Message fix (observation, not a controlled test) | Development lead + media | 1 Jun |
| 18 May | C2 | No change | Higher Qualified share but fewer Qualified, higher cost per Qualified, same age as C1, 5 open call slots | Deliberate no change | Budget owner | 1 Jun |
| 18 May | C3 | No change | 2 discovery days booked; 77 days live; still too young for signings | Deliberate no change | Media | 1 Jun |
“No change” entries are as important as the others. In three months, when someone asks why budget didn’t move to C2, the answer is in the log, with the numbers the team had at the time.
Who owns what
| Role | Owns |
|---|---|
| Media (agency or in-house) | Campaign build, naming, reconciliation check, change log |
| Development lead | Grades, Disqualified reasons, pipeline stages, call capacity |
| Budget owner | Budget changes above an agreed limit |
| Territory owner | Territory status, and triggering same-day ad changes |
If an agency runs the campaigns, it should be in this meeting and see the grades, not just lead counts. An agency that only sees form fills will optimize for form fills.
When the weekly review says “maybe scale”
The weekly review can flag a candidate for more budget. It shouldn’t approve it on its own. Before an increase, check the Qualified count and absolute cost, not just the share; whether at least one older cohort has matured far enough to show a cost per signed franchise; whether the team has first-call capacity; and whether the territories in the campaign are still open. The scaling guide covers the steps.
Grades are also what you send back to the ad platforms so they learn from qualified candidates rather than form fills. How to do that on each platform is in the channel guides.
Start here
Pick a fixed weekday and a fixed cutoff time with a timezone. Run the four questions once on last week’s data and start the change log with whatever you decide, including “no change” and “containment”. Keep doing it for four weeks before adding anything to the meeting.
Download: S12-weekly-campaign-review.csv (the worked week, with formulas shown as text) and S12-change-log.csv (the log, with blank rows).
Related: Franchise recruitment ad examples · Qualifying franchise leads · Ad leads versus CRM · Cost per signed franchise
Work through your own numbers
Franchise recruitment capacity planner. Enter your own records and assumptions. The tool does not store your inputs; its example figures are fictional.
Put it to work on your recruitment system
Bring your recruitment page and anonymized stage counts to a diagnostic. We’ll identify what to test and how to measure it.
Discuss your franchisor recruitment system