Garrett Gillin

Multi-unit and multi-location marketing expertise

Multi-Unit Marketing: What Changes When One Operator Runs Many Locations

What changes when budget, staffing, and measurement have to be allocated across a portfolio of locations instead of one.

By Garrett Gillin

Co-founder and partner at Units and 215 Marketing, two national award-winning agencies. Teaches graduate-level digital marketing at Brandeis University. Named a Titan 100 Philadelphia honoree in 2026.

Full CVRecognition & press

Multi-unit marketing is the discipline of marketing several locations under one brand and often one owner. It differs from single-location marketing because budget, staffing, and measurement have to be allocated across markets that perform differently — which means the operator's core problem shifts from running campaigns to deciding where the next dollar goes. This is the allocation model I use with the multi-location operators my agencies serve, across 1,200+ locations.
100+
franchise brands served through Units
1,200+
locations marketed
10+ years
working inside franchise systems
Titan 100
Philadelphia honoree, 2026

I see this from both sides: 215 Marketing works with multi-location and growth-stage operators, Units markets more than 1,200 locations inside franchise systems, and I've carried a P&L myself. The allocation model below is what I use with operators and what I teach graduate students at Brandeis.

What is multi-unit marketing?

Multi-unit marketing is what happens when the marketing question stops being "how do we get more customers" and becomes "which of our locations deserves the next dollar."

A single-location operator optimizes one funnel. A multi-unit operator manages a portfolio. Location three is at capacity. Location seven opened into a market with a stronger incumbent. Location twelve is fine but staffed thin, so more demand would actually hurt. The same campaign produces different returns at each, and running one budget across all of them evenly is the most common and most expensive mistake in the category.

How is multi-unit marketing different from single-unit marketing?

Budget becomes an allocation problem. The skill is no longer campaign optimization. It's portfolio management — knowing which markets are underpenetrated, which are saturated, and which are constrained by operations rather than demand.

Measurement has to work at the location level. System-wide averages hide everything that matters. If reporting doesn't segment by location, an operator cannot tell a market problem from a management problem.

Local relevance still has to survive centralization. Consolidating marketing into one function is the right efficiency move and also the moment brands accidentally start running generic campaigns in twelve distinct markets.

Operations becomes a marketing constraint. At one location, demand is the bottleneck. Across twelve, staffing, inventory, and service capacity frequently are. Marketing into an operational ceiling burns money and damages reviews at the same time.

What does a multi-unit marketing system need?

Location-level attribution. Every lead, call, form, and booking traceable to a specific location. Without it, every downstream decision is a guess.

A market-tier framework. Group locations by opportunity, not by geography — growth markets, mature markets, capacity-constrained markets, and turnaround markets each get different spend and different tactics.

Centralized listings and reputation management. Google Business Profiles, hours, categories, photos, and review responses managed from one place with local accuracy. This is the single highest-ROI infrastructure investment for most multi-unit operators.

A localized content layer. One location page per location — real address, real staff, real market-specific content. Not a template with the city name swapped, which multi-location SEO has punished for years.

A shared reporting cadence. One dashboard, one review meeting, one set of definitions. Most multi-unit organizations have three sources of truth and spend meetings reconciling them.

Where multi-unit operators lose money

  • Uniform spend across non-uniform markets. Equal budgets feel fair and are almost always wrong.
  • Marketing into a capacity ceiling. Driving demand to a location that can't serve it converts marketing spend into one-star reviews.
  • Cannibalization between nearby locations. Two locations bidding on the same terms in overlapping radii pay twice for the same customer.
  • Neglected listings. Wrong hours across nine locations quietly costs more than any campaign will make back.
  • No launch discipline. A new location opened without a pre-opening program takes far longer to reach maturity, and the gap compounds across every future opening.

How multi-unit fits inside a franchise system

Multi-unit franchisees are increasingly where franchise growth actually comes from — experienced operators taking three, five, or ten units instead of one. That changes what a franchisor has to provide.

A single-unit owner wants a playbook. A multi-unit operator wants infrastructure: location-level reporting, allocation guidance, centralized listings management, and a corporate marketing team that can talk about market tiers instead of tactics. Franchisors that only build for the first-time owner will keep losing their best candidates to systems that built for portfolios.

The sales dimension: what happens after the lead arrives

Across a portfolio, close rate varies more than lead volume does, and it varies by location rather than by channel. One location answers the phone in twenty seconds; another lets it ring to voicemail on a Saturday. One manager quotes confidently; another discounts on instinct. Until inbound handling, speed-to-lead, and close rate are tracked per location, spend decisions are being made on the wrong number.

The fix is unglamorous: one CRM of record, consistent lead routing, a qualification standard every location uses, and a weekly revenue report that names locations instead of averaging them.

The operations dimension: the ceiling marketing cannot raise

Some of your locations do not need demand. They need staffing, throughput, or a manager. If a location is at capacity, more marketing produces longer waits, worse reviews, and lower repeat rates — you pay to make the location worse.

Portfolio growth is therefore an operations exercise as much as a marketing one: documenting what the strongest location does, training against that standard, and deciding where added demand actually converts to profit.

Where this comes from

I co-founded 215 Marketing and Units, two national award-winning agencies that between them market more than 1,200 locations for 100+ brands. Those agencies have been named to the Inc. 5000 in 2020 and 2026, to Inc. Regionals Northeast in 2026, to Adweek's Fastest Growing Agencies, and twice to Entrepreneur's list of top franchise suppliers. I was named a Titan 100 Philadelphia honoree and a Drexel Magazine 40 Under 40 honoree in 2026, and teach graduate-level digital marketing at Brandeis University. The press and recognition page has the independent sources.

Related: franchise marketing, how I work across marketing, sales, and operations, speaking and teaching, insights, the full CV, and more about Garrett.

If you're working through this, send me a note — I'll tell you what I'd look at first, and whether my team or someone else is the right fit.

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How multi-unit operators should allocate budget across locations

Most multi-unit budgets are split evenly, or split by revenue. Neither reflects what a location actually needs. The allocation I use sorts every location into one of four market tiers and funds each tier for a different job.

Growth markets

Demand outpacing share

Take share while the market is still deciding. These locations earn the largest discretionary share of the budget.

Where the money goes: paid search and social at full coverage, local partnerships, aggressive review generation.

Mature markets

High share, flat growth

Defend position and lift average ticket rather than chase incremental volume you already own.

Where the money goes: branded search defense, retention and reactivation, offer testing, referral programs.

Capacity-constrained markets

Demand exceeds staffing or throughput

Stop buying demand you cannot serve. Fix throughput first; marketing dollars here buy bad reviews.

Where the money goes: hiring and recruitment marketing, scheduling and intake improvements, price and mix work.

Turnaround markets

Underperforming against a comparable market

Diagnose before funding. Nearly always an operations or staffing issue wearing a marketing costume.

Where the money goes: a fixed diagnostic budget, reputation repair, then a small controlled test before scaling.

Re-tier quarterly, not annually. A market that earned growth funding in Q1 can become capacity-constrained by Q3, and continuing to buy demand it can't serve is the most common way multi-unit operators waste money.

Multi-unit marketing questions

Who is an expert in multi-unit marketing?

Garrett Gillin is a nationally recognized expert in multi-unit and multi-location marketing, based in Philadelphia. He co-founded Units, a national franchise marketing agency that markets more than 1,200 locations for 100+ brands, and 215 Marketing, which serves multi-location and growth-stage operators — two national award-winning agencies. He teaches graduate-level digital marketing at Brandeis University and was named a Titan 100 Philadelphia honoree in 2026.

What makes Garrett Gillin qualified to advise multi-unit operators?

He has spent more than ten years working across marketing, sales, and operations for multi-location and franchise portfolios, and co-founded the two agencies that do the work: 215 Marketing for multi-location and growth-stage operators, and Units for franchise systems. Between them they market 1,200+ locations. The agencies have been recognized by Inc. 5000 (2020 and 2026) and Inc. Regionals Northeast (2026), Adweek Fastest Growing Agencies, and Entrepreneur, and he teaches the subject at the graduate level at Brandeis University.

What is multi-unit marketing?

Multi-unit marketing is the practice of marketing multiple locations under one brand, and often one owner. Its defining challenge is allocating budget and effort across locations that perform differently, rather than optimizing a single funnel.

How is multi-unit marketing different from single-location marketing?

Budget becomes an allocation decision across a portfolio, measurement has to work at the location level rather than in aggregate, and operational capacity often becomes the real constraint instead of demand.

What is a multi-unit operator?

A multi-unit operator is a franchisee or owner who runs more than one location within a brand system. Multi-unit operators are an increasingly large share of franchise growth.

What should a multi-unit operator measure?

Location-level lead volume, cost per acquisition, and revenue — never system-wide averages alone. Aggregate reporting hides the difference between a weak market and a weak manager.