Before you hire an agency for your auto repair shop

Agency pitches to repair shops sound alike: more car count, page one, a dashboard full of green. They rarely show whether anyone on the other side of the table knows what a repair order is, why a coupon can get a shop in trouble, or what a driver needs to hear before handing over the keys. The questions below sort that out in one meeting. They apply to us too.

Ask what has to appear in every ad in your state

A good agency asks for your registration details before it writes a headline. In California, the Bureau of Automotive Repair says every online ad must include the business name as registered with BAR, the automotive repair dealer registration number and the phone number as registered. If an ad lists more than one location, each one needs its own details, and the same information has to be easy to find on your website, for example in the footer or on the contact page.

California’s regulations also call an ad misleading if it tends to deceive the public, judged as a whole the way the people it is aimed at would read it. Florida takes a similar line from another direction. Its Motor Vehicle Repair Act requires a written estimate before diagnostic or repair work that will exceed $150, limits going over that estimate to $10 or 10 percent, capped at $50, without the customer’s consent, and prohibits false promises likely to get a customer to authorize a repair.

So ask: what do you need from me before the first ad runs, and who reads every ad against my state’s rules? A blank look means the agency has not run ads for a shop in your state.

Ask how they will talk about warranties and price

The strongest sentence an independent shop can advertise is not a price. It is the FTC’s own consumer advice: it is illegal for a dealer to deny warranty coverage because routine maintenance or repairs were done somewhere else, and using aftermarket or recycled parts does not void the warranty either. The maker can refuse to cover damage only once it shows a part caused it.

An agency that knows the trade will want that on your site and in your ads, aimed at owners of cars a few years old who assume they have to stay with the dealer. It will also be careful with price. A bargain oil-change headline the service writer cannot honor once the filter and the disposal fee are added is exactly what the misleading-ad rules are written for. Ask what they would advertise instead, and listen for an answer that starts with what your counter actually quotes.

Ask what a lead should cost, and what the report will count

LocaliQ’s 2026 automotive benchmarks, published this week from 1,983 search campaigns run between April 2025 and June 2026, put the median cost per lead for Auto Service & Repair at $42.10, with a 15.39% conversion rate. Inside the category the numbers spread widely: $20.70 for tire and wheel repair, $32.46 for brake repair and inspection, $34.81 for transmission and clutch work, $56.26 for body repair and paint.

The same report found Auto Service & Repair clicks up 27.13% in cost, while click-through rates fell 7.35%. An agency that reports clicks and click-through rate is reporting the two numbers that are moving against you, and neither tells you whether a car came in.

A useful monthly report for a shop shows:

• Calls and booked appointments by channel, with missed calls listed by hour.
• Leads matched to repair orders in your shop management system.
• Cost per booked repair order by channel and by service line.
• Review count and rating, with how many came in during the month.
• What changed in the account, and why.

Ask for a sample report before you sign. If it has no line for repair orders, it was built for another kind of business.

Ask what the first ninety days look like

The order matters more than the list. For a repair shop we would expect something close to this:

• Weeks one and two: call tracking on every channel and an agreed definition of a lead, so cost per car can be read from the start.
• Weeks one to six: the Google profile corrected, with categories, services, hours and the registered name. Local Services Ads screening started early, since Google puts it at three to four weeks, and search campaigns split by repair.
• Weeks two to eight: a review request at every pickup and a reply to every review.
• From week four: service reminders by mileage and date, and follow-up on estimates customers declined.

Two details are worth checking against what the agency tells you. For auto categories, Google says the Google Verified badge is currently unavailable, so a Local Services Ad for your shop runs without it. And Google began moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads in August, starting with home services; auto was not named in that first phase. An agency promising a badge, or describing the move as already done for repair shops, has not read the help pages.

Ask what they will do with your badges and reviews

Certifications mean different things, and a good agency explains them rather than piling logos in a footer. An ASE Blue Seal of Excellence shop has at least 75% of its employees ASE certified. AAA Approved Auto Repair has run since 1975, counts more than 7,000 facilities, and requires ASE-certified or factory-trained technicians. RepairPal Certified is a paid certification that requires a warranty of at least 12 months or 12,000 miles. The FTC tells drivers to look for certifications but warns they are no guarantee of good work, which is why they belong next to reviews, not instead of them.

On reviews, the answer you want is boring: ask every customer, the same way, every time. The FTC’s rule announced in August 2024 bans fake and insider reviews and rewards tied to a positive or negative review. Any agency offering a faster way is offering you its risk.

There is plenty of work ahead for shops that get this right. The Auto Care Association’s latest Factbook, released in June, put the average age of light vehicles on the road at a record 12.9 years. Older cars come out of warranty and into independent bays, and the shop the driver trusts on first look gets them.

What to do this month

• Write down your registered business name, registration number and registered phone, and check that your site, profile and every live ad match.
• Ask any agency you are talking to for a sample monthly report, and look for repair orders on it.
• Put the FTC warranty point on your site in plain words, near the booking button.
• Check every coupon and price in your ads against what your service writer would quote today.
• Start a review request by text at every pickup, and answer the reviews already waiting.
• Pull last month’s missed calls by hour, so you can ask an agency what it would do about them.

Our own answers to these questions, set out for independent shops, are on our auto repair marketing page. For the review side, see how we run review requests, and for repair campaigns, how we set up Google Ads.