Guides · Marketing

What is the most effective marketing for an auto repair shop?

You spend money on marketing every month and you're never quite sure which part of it is working. Here's how Nolavi works through it, the same way a good mechanic works on a car: find the concern, the cause, the correction, then verify the fix.

1

The concern

Nate was running Google Ads, a website and a Facebook page. When someone asked him which one brought in the most cars, he couldn't answer.

Nolavi table following one auto repair shop ad click from a Google search all the way to a deposit in the bank
Every step, matched. Google learns which searches bring paying jobs.
2

The cause

Most marketing stops at the click or the call. Without following the ad to the actual repair order and the bank deposit, you're managing impressions, not jobs. Nate's ad account was sending equal money to searches that brought in $520 brake jobs and searches that brought in nothing, because Google had no way to tell them apart.

Nolavi dashboard showing a marketing idea to move ad budget to brakes and two ads ready to improve
One tap. The system makes the change in Google and checks it happened.
3

The correction

Nolavi follows the full path: the search, the ad, the website visit on a fast page built to ring the phone, the call, the booked job, the paid invoice, and the deposit in the bank. It tells Google which calls were real customers, not page views, so Google's bidding puts more money behind the searches that bring paying jobs. When a service earns more than it costs, Nolavi writes up the move, Nate taps approve, and the system makes the change in the live Google account and checks it happened. The owner doesn't manage any of it.

4

The verification

After six months, Nate's cost per booked job dropped from $61 to $38. Brake ads bring 9 to 1 on spend. He reads one page on Monday that shows what's working, what to do next and why.

Auto repair shop marketing results over six months: lower cost per booked job and higher return on brake ads
Every number verified against real repair orders.

How we work. We make changes like this for shops all the time, using each shop's own data. The numbers shown are examples.

Questions

Quick answers.

What's the most effective marketing for an auto repair shop?

Search ads, because the person is already looking for the repair. They work best when every click is tracked to a real job and the budget follows the work that pays, not the clicks that don't.

How do I know if my shop's marketing is bringing in paying customers?

Match each call from an ad to a repair order and the deposit in the bank. Clicks and impressions don't tell you that. Nolavi does the matching and sends the results back to Google so it learns which searches bring real customers.

Keep reading

See it for yourself.

Open the demo and find this kind of problem in a minute. Or book your 14 day free trial: it starts with a quick call, and we set it all up and fit it to your shop.

Try the live demo