An agency sells AI search visibility to franchise brands under its own name by adding one line to the programme it already runs (listings, location pages, reviews, social) and running that line on an engine it does not have to build. Throughline is that engine. It reads what the assistants tell each brand’s customers city by city, finds where a location or a challenger brand is named instead, and drafts the city pages, review requests and monthly reports the agency sends under its own brand.
This page is for a marketing agency or build shop of ten to forty people whose clients are franchise and multi-location brands: boutique fitness, wellness, med spas, home services franchises. Often a HubSpot partner, already running listings and reviews through Yext, SOCi, BrightLocal or Birdeye, paid on monthly retainers per brand. The franchisor pays from the brand fund; franchisees pay for their own local work. Every client now asks some version of “are we showing up in ChatGPT?”, and the agency has no instrument for it and no production team to act across hundreds of locations.
Where does one client brand stand, city by city?
The picture that sells the programme: one client brand across its largest markets, how each assistant treats it, and the challenger named beside it.
What does Throughline read for an agency’s clients?
Per brand, what the agency already has access to: Google Business Profile and the listings tool it runs (Yext, SOCi, BrightLocal or Birdeye); Search Console and Analytics per location page; the booking or membership export for new members by location and source; the review profiles per location and how recently each one moved; and the brand’s social channels and content calendar.
Then each market. The weekly watch asks the assistants what a customer asks in each city: the best reformer pilates studio nearby, a med spa for a particular treatment, a same-day HVAC repair. It records which brands are named, which are named first, which locations are quoted and from which pages, and which challenger brands keep appearing beside the agency’s clients. The scouts follow those challengers: new locations, funding, a franchise sales push.
And the franchise system’s own calendar: brand-fund budgets set once a year, spring and summer peaks for home services, the January surge for fitness. Reports and city pages are timed to the moments franchisees and the franchisor are deciding.
What does it find across a portfolio of brands?
Findings come per brand and per city. The agency watches two kinds most: where a client is missing or not first, and which challengers keep being named, because those challengers are the agency’s next clients.
A client brand is named in most of its cities but first in few; the brand named first is quoted from its own city pages, and the client has one page for all of them.
New members at locations with a review in the last month moved with the weeks those locations were named in local answers.
Three challenger brands are named beside the agency’s clients in most cities, and each is adding locations.
What does Throughline do for the agency?
The agents produce the AI search line of the agency’s programme, under the agency’s name: the monthly visibility report per brand, the city and location pages in each brand’s template, the review requests per location, the posts, and the report on a challenger brand that the agency sends as a first touch. Listings and review requests go out through the tools the agency already runs; Throughline drafts and reads, it does not replace them.
The agency’s account lead approves each piece. The client sees the agency and never Throughline, and nothing is published or sent without that yes. Every city page is tested against the questions customers in that city ask before it goes live, and read again a week later.
- ReportMonthly AI visibility report, one brand$3.40
- PageCity page, the largest market$6.40
- PageCity page, the second market$6.40
- EmailReview requests, twelve locations$4.20
- ReportVisibility report on a challenger brand$3.40
- SocialSix location posts$1.80
That is one brand’s week. The reading and the first drafts are done before anyone at the agency opens the laptop. If a draft takes more runs to get right, those runs are on us, never on the bill.
Which numbers move, and by how much?
An agency’s numbers are its brands, its hours and its retention. With Throughline, AI search becomes a line the agency adds to every brand it already serves, priced and branded as its own, and each brand takes a few hours a month to run instead of a week of checking cities by hand. The challengers the assistants name beside each client become the agency’s list of next conversations, each opened with a report on that challenger’s own visibility. How fast the line grows depends on how many brands the agency serves and how many cities each one is in.
| The number | How it moves | What the size of the move depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Brands on the AI search line | From none to every brand the agency serves | How many brands are asking the question |
| Hours per brand per month | From a week of checking cities by hand to a few hours of review | How many cities each brand is in |
| Client locations named first in local answers | Rises city by city as pages and reviews stay current | How many locations each brand has per city |
| New franchise brands opened from challenger reports | A list each month of challengers, each with a report to open with | How many challengers there are in the agency’s verticals |
| Client retention at renewal | Holds, because every brand gets a monthly report with its own cities in it | How long the agency’s retainers run |
The agency keeps the relationship, the brand and the margin. Throughline stays behind the work.
What happens in the first thirty days?
- Week 1A workspace per brand. Throughline reads each brand’s listings, pages, search data and reviews, and starts the weekly watch city by city.
- Week 2The first brand reports, in the agency’s design, ready for the account lead.
- Week 3The first city pages and review requests are drafted and approved, and the first challenger report is ready to send.
- Week 4The first receipt per brand: what shipped, what it cost, what moved.
Questions people ask
Do our clients see Throughline?
No. Reports, pages and emails carry the agency’s name and design. Throughline is the engine behind the work.
We already run Yext or SOCi. Does this replace it?
No. Listings and reviews keep running through the tool you have. Throughline reads what the assistants say about each location, drafts the pages and requests, and sends them through your existing setup.
Who pays, the franchisor or the franchisees?
Usually the brand fund pays for the brand report and the city pages, and franchisees can add their own locations. The agency sets the split, since the pricing is the agency’s.
How many locations can a brand have?
From a handful to hundreds. Pages and reports are drafted per city, so the work grows with the markets, not with every single location.
Where do we start?
With a report on three of your client brands: a week of the questions their customers ask, city by city. The call after it sets the programme.