Auto
Google Ads for auto repair, detailing and tire shops
The searches arrive when a car breaks, which is rarely convenient and never planned.
Car trouble is urgent and local. A search for brake repair near me, winter tires Orleans or a check engine light is made by somebody who needs a shop today or this week, and who will call two or three of the closest ones.
Most of those searches happen within a few kilometres of the shop, which makes radius, hours and response time the three things deciding whether the click becomes a bay booking.
Where auto shop campaigns lose money
A radius that is far too wide
Nobody drives across the city for an oil change. Auto searches are heavily local, so a wide radius mostly buys clicks from people who then choose a shop near them.
Ads that name the shop instead of the job
Brake repair, wheel alignment, tires, detailing, diagnostics: the job is the search, and the ad has to name it plainly alongside the neighbourhood it is offered in.
Seasonal panic followed by silence
Tire changeover weeks are a scramble and late January is quiet. Budget belongs on the switchover for the weeks it lasts, then on the work that fills the bays afterwards.
Calls that go to voicemail at lunch
In this industry the phone is the booking system, and a missed call is a bay that stays empty. The report should say how many calls went unanswered, and when.
What your customers search for
What drivers in Ottawa type when something needs attention:
- brake repair near me
- winter tire changeover Ottawa
- check engine light diagnostic
- oil change near me
- car detailing near me
- wheel alignment Kanata
- AC recharge Ottawa
- mechanic open Saturday
How we track the leads that come in
For a shop, the lead is almost always a call, and the outcome is an appointment in the book. We credit each call to the search that produced it and separate the ones that were answered from the ones that were not, because that ratio decides whether the problem is your budget or your phone.
Where your shop management system records the job, the outcome can be fed back to the campaign. The report then shows cost per booked appointment by service: tires, brakes, diagnostics, detailing, so you can see which work the ads actually bring in.
- Calls credited to the search that produced them, by service.
- Missed calls counted, with the hours they happened in.
- Online booking confirmations counted separately from calls.
- Cost per booked appointment where your system records the job.
- A simple test of the setup: a car in for brakes on Tuesday should be traceable to the search that brought the driver in, and to whether the call was answered. Anything the tracking cannot answer gets named in the report rather than filled in with a guess.
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