Questions shop owners ask about marketing

More than the three shops you appear next to. Across 90,000 listings the median is 44 reviews and 24.3% have fewer than 10. In a real metro the shops holding the map pack usually sit past 100, and only 30% of shops are there. The workable target is one review per car that leaves happy, asked for at the counter when the keys change hands. The reviews guide has the script.

Most independent shops land between $25 and $70 per call, depending on the metro and the service. Brake, check engine light and transmission terms cost more than oil change terms and are worth far more, because an oil change click is a $60 ticket and a diagnostic click can turn into a $1,400 job. Shops that lose money on Google Ads are almost always paying broad match for "car repair" all night with no call tracking.

You are not competing on the same ground. Dealers win warranty work and people who still owe money on the car. You win on price for the same job, on the customer talking to the person who did the work, and on speed. Say that plainly on the site and in ads: same factory-spec parts, a fraction of the dealer labor rate, and the technician's name on the inspection.

It changes the conversation. Sending a customer photos of their own worn pads and a short video of the leak, with each item marked red, yellow or green, moves the approval from trust me to look at it. Shops that run inspections on every car and text the report typically see the average repair order climb, because yellow items get approved now instead of never. It is also the best marketing asset you own, since customers forward it.

Chase it. Every yellow item a customer said no to is a job with the diagnosis already paid for. Export declined lines from your shop management system, filter to anything 30 to 90 days old, and text a short reminder with the photo from the original inspection. A one-person follow-up hour each week is usually the highest paid hour in the shop.

Yes. 44.3% of shops list no website, and the ones that do carry a median of 85 reviews against 20 for the ones that do not. Part of that is that serious shops do both. But the site is also where Google and the AI answer engines confirm what you fix, which makes and which towns. See the website guide.

Yes. Set your Google profile up as a service-area business, hide the street address, and list the cities you cover. You lose the map pin advantage in the exact town you sit in and gain coverage across the whole area. Be specific about what you can and cannot do at a driveway, because the fastest way to a one-star review is showing up to a job that needed a lift.

Not through ads. Fleet is a list and a phone. Build a list of local contractors, landscapers, plumbing companies, delivery outfits and church vans with five to thirty vehicles, call the person who signs the checks, and offer one thing: scheduled service that keeps their trucks working. One 12-van account can be worth more than a month of consumer advertising, and it does not churn.

It is public data collected at scale, so treat it as accurate to within a point or two rather than to the decimal. Listings are deduplicated by Google place and refreshed monthly. Google does not publish this breakdown itself, which is why we compute it. The method is on the about page.

Because they compete for the same searches. A homeowner typing "mechanic near me" gets both. Merging them keeps the benchmark honest about who is actually on the results page. The mix by primary category is listed in the benchmark report.

Any one of the services we run, or several at once: Google Ads management, Meta ads, AI search optimization, local SEO and Google Business Profile work, website design, social media management, review generation, missed-call text-back and follow-up, email and SMS campaigns, bookkeeping, and cold-call appointment setting. Setup, management and reporting are included. Ad spend paid to Google or Meta, if you choose to run ads, stays yours.

You choose. Keep the service at the monthly price quoted before the trial started, switch to a different one, or stop. Nothing renews on its own and nothing is charged during the trial. Whatever we built inside your accounts stays in your accounts.

No. There is no card on file at any point during the trial. We ask for access to the accounts involved and about 20 minutes for a setup call.

Most services are live within 48 hours of that call. Ads need your ad account and billing profile in place before anything can run. A website takes about a week to a first draft. Review generation and missed-call text-back can be on the same day.