PPC for collision repair and auto body shops
Two additional vehicles a month can pay for an entire advertising program in this trade. That changes what a sensible cost per click looks like, and almost nobody bids as though it were true.
Two extra vehicles a month can pay for the whole account
Collision jobs are large enough that the usual local advertising arithmetic does not apply. A shop that would never spend twenty dollars on a click is frequently leaving money on the table, because a single repair can be worth thousands and the volume of genuine collision searches in any given market is small. The discipline is not restraint on bids; it is precision about which searches are collision searches.
That is where the leaks are. Auto body attracts an enormous quantity of adjacent, cheaper intent: paint jobs, restoration projects, glass replacement, dent removal, bumper scuffs, people pricing a repair they intend to pay for themselves, and drivers researching whether to claim at all. Add clicks from outside a realistic tow radius and the ordinary problem of ads running when nobody is in the office, and a shop can spend a whole budget without ever reaching somebody with a damaged car and an open claim.
- ValueBids set against a job worth thousands, not against a local average
- 1stNegatives first — glass, paint job, restoration, DIY, project car, as patterns
- CertCampaigns for the manufacturer certifications you hold
- ZoneA radius matched to where a damaged car will realistically be brought
From our audit playbook. Client results on the case studies page.
How we run Google Ads for collision repair shops
Bid to the value of a repair
Once cost per vehicle repaired is known, most body shops discover they can afford click costs that would be absurd anywhere else in the trades. The mistake is applying general local advertising instincts to a category where the average job is worth more than a month of many shops’ entire budgets.
Adjacent low-value intent excluded
Glass, paint, restoration and cosmetic work each attract their own traffic, and unless you want that work it should be filtered out before launch. A collision account that has not done this looks busy and books very few vehicles.
Certification campaigns
Owners of newer vehicles search for certified repair by make. Those searches are low in volume, very high in value, and reach exactly the vehicles your equipment and training were bought for. Each certification deserves a campaign and a page, not a logo on a homepage.
The right-to-choose message used deliberately
An ad answering the question of whether a driver can pick their own shop, sent to a page explaining it calmly, reaches people at the moment the decision is being made. It is the strongest angle in the category and it works because it is useful rather than adversarial.
Ads for the week of the wreck; rankings for the years after
Collision demand cannot be predicted and does not wait, so paid search has an obvious role: somebody searching two days after an accident will choose a shop this week. The pages compound instead — the right-to-choose explainer, the certification pages, the calibration piece — and they keep bringing the vehicles you are equipped for without further spend. Run both, bid to the real job value, and judge everything on cost per vehicle repaired.
SEO for collision repair shops, explained the same way Or read the plain SEO vs PPC comparison
Collision repair PPC, answered plainly
How much can we afford to pay per click?
More than most shops assume. Work backwards from the average repair value and the proportion of calls that become vehicles in the building. In many markets a click cost that sounds alarming is entirely reasonable once cost per vehicle repaired is calculated properly.
What should we exclude?
Glass, paint-only work, restoration and project cars, dent removal if you do not want it, and anything suggesting the driver intends to pay out of pocket for cosmetic damage. These are the largest volume terms in auto body search and the least likely to become a collision repair.
Should we advertise our certifications?
Yes, as separate campaigns. The searches are small in volume and reach owners of exactly the vehicles you invested in being able to repair. It is one of the few places in local search where a genuine capability maps directly onto a keyword.
Does advertising work if we are in a direct repair program?
It works alongside it, and it is the part of the business nobody can take away. Program volume is real and it belongs to somebody else; the vehicles that arrive because an owner chose you are the ones that make a shop independent.
How should we measure results?
Cost per vehicle repaired, with calls matched to work orders. Given the job values, a handful of correctly attributed repairs makes the arithmetic clear quickly, which is a considerable advantage over most local categories.
Find out what a repaired vehicle costs to buy
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