Auto Body & Collision · Google Ads
How the customer actually buys, what I audit first, the levers that move cars into bays, and what that's looked like in accounts I've run.
Same order every time — each step depends on the one before it.
Are conversions counting the right things — calls over 60 seconds, estimate forms, photo uploads — or raw clicks and every 3-second dial? If the signal is wrong, every optimization downstream is guesswork. This gets fixed before anything else.
Search-terms report: DIY, careers, parts, “The Body Shop” cosmetics, out-of-area cities. Geo settings: presence-based, drive-time radius. On a typical takeover this recovers 15–25% of spend in the first month.
I click the ad on my own phone and try to become a lead. Dedicated landing page or generic homepage? Tap-to-call above the fold? Does the form work on mobile? What happens to a Saturday-night accident call?
The levers that consistently move these accounts, roughly in order of impact.
Qualified actions as primary conversions, then offline conversion import — feeding written estimates and closed ROs back into Google so Smart Bidding learns to find $4,000 collision jobs instead of $150 scratch inquiries. The single biggest gap in most shop accounts.
Collision/insurance campaign gets the budget. Service lines (bumper, dent, paint) run separately at lower bids. A cheap brand campaign protects the shop's name. One lumped campaign lets low-value queries eat the collision budget.
Body-shop queries are polluted. Weekly search-term pruning against a shared, market-localized negative list — jobs, DIY, parts, salvage, the cosmetics brand — keeps spend on people with a damaged car, not a curiosity.
Nobody tows a car 40 minutes for an estimate. A 10–15 mile presence-based radius, zip-level bid adjustments from performance data, and clean separation between locations for multi-shop clients.
Call assets everywhere, call tracking with recordings, schedules aligned to staffed hours, and an after-hours path so weekend accident leads don't die in voicemail. Recordings double as lead-quality proof and front-desk coaching.
Dedicated landing pages — click-to-call above the fold, photo-upload estimate form, real shop photos, reviews, insurance logos, warranty badge. Homepage traffic converts at 2–4%; a purpose-built page can run 10–15%.
Max Clicks with a cap to gather data → Max Conversions once tracking is proven → tCPA at ~30–50 conversions/month → tCPA fed by offline RO data. Smart Bidding on day one against thin data is how launches burn their first two months.
LSAs (pay-per-lead, review-driven, top of page) for cheap incremental volume, and a maintained Google Business Profile — because the paid click converts better when the map pack and reviews back it up.
Three accounts, three different problems — same framework.
Account takeover
Inherited: $4,500/mo in one catch-all campaign, optimizing to clicks, search terms full of DIY and out-of-area queries.
Done: Rebuilt tracking around 60-second calls and forms, split campaigns by intent, ~300 negatives in month one, 12-mile presence radius, tCPA once volume supported it.
$212 → $118
Cost per lead
21 → 44
Leads / month
~90 days
Time to result
New launch
Inherited: No history, $3,000/mo, needed calls fast without torching month one on Smart Bidding guesswork.
Done: Tracking first, one concentrated high-intent campaign, dedicated landing page, capped Max Clicks for two weeks, then Max Conversions. Weekly pruning.
17 → 31
Leads, month 1 → 3
$96
CPL by month 3
8.4%
Landing page CVR
Retention save
Inherited: Client threatening to cancel — volume fine, “all tire-kickers.”
Done: Reviewed 40+ call recordings with the owner — a third were real jobs lost to slow callbacks. Cut low-ticket query themes, moved conversions to qualified actions, set up instant-response on form leads.
~35% → 61%
Qualified-lead rate
4 hrs → 8 min
Median first response
14 mo
Retained after
Figures are representative of the collision vertical, drawn from account reporting; client identities are withheld.
Lead counts are a means. This is the chain I report on — and why the channel works.
Roughly 8× return on ad spend — and every stage of that chain is measurable, which means every stage is fixable. When lead volume is fine but bays are empty, this chain shows exactly where jobs are leaking: targeting, follow-up speed, or close rate.
| Benchmark | Typical range |
|---|---|
| CPC, collision keywords | $5 – $20 |
| Cost per qualified lead | $75 – $250 |
| Dedicated landing page CVR | 5 – 15% |
| Lead → written estimate | 40 – 60% |
| Estimate → closed RO | 50 – 70% |
| Average repair order | $3,000 – $4,500 |
If bays are empty while the phone rings, the leak is measurable — and fixable.