Lead generation for ceramic coating, paint protection film and detailing shops. Three to ten qualified enquiries a day, for under ten dollars each, from people already searching for the job you do.
A considered purchase, decided in an afternoon
A coating is not an impulse buy. Somebody has just taken delivery of a car they care about, or watched their paint dull through a second summer, and they spend an afternoon deciding. That afternoon is almost entirely spent in one place: a phone, on Google, looking at shops near them.
Which is why intent beats reach here by a distance. A person searching ceramic coating near me has already decided to spend the money and is only choosing where — and that is why those leads book at 8 to 15% while a scroll-stopping video to a cold audience books at a fraction of it.
It is also why the map matters more than the website. Around 44% of local search clicks never leave the Map Pack, so a shop that is not in those three results is invisible to nearly half the market no matter how good its site is.
Estimated leads per $1,000 of ad spend, from accounts we run in this category.
Leads per $1,000 spent
Highest intent and the fastest to switch on — the first enquiries land inside 72 hours.
Organic, so the marginal lead is free — but it takes 30 to 90 days to earn the position.
Creates demand rather than catching it. Worth adding once the intent channels are full.
The cheapest lead on the list per head, but the volume is capped by the traffic feeding it.
Anyone can drive the cost per lead down by buying worse traffic. These are the six things we hold on to instead.
Every lead comes from a search that names the service. Nobody is being interrupted, so nobody has to be talked into wanting it.
8 to 15% of these enquiries turn into work. That is the number that decides whether a lead was worth buying, and it is the one we report.
Radius targeting reaches every suburb you will actually drive to, including the ones your walk-in trade has never come from.
Negative keywords, day-parting and geo exclusions strip out the tyre-kickers, the job seekers and the DIY crowd before they cost you anything.
When the cost per booked job is known, more budget is a decision rather than a gamble. That is how a $30K month becomes a $200K one.
Reviews, photographs and consistent placement compound. After a year the shop is simply the obvious one, and the ads get cheaper for it.
Six steps. Paid goes live first so it can cover the gap while the organic work matures.
Who else is bidding in your metro, what they charge, how many reviews they have and where the gaps are. You get the write-up whether or not you hire us.
Categories, services, photographs, hours, service area and a review request flow that actually gets used. This is the asset that decides the Map Pack.
Campaigns split by service and by intent, with call tracking and a negative list built from your own search terms rather than a template.
One page, fast, with before-and-after work, the service area stated plainly and the phone number in reach at every scroll position.
Meta to create demand where searches run out, and retargeting to bring back the visitor who compared three shops and did not call any of them.
Cost per lead, cost per booked job and where each one came from. When a channel is proven, we widen it; when it is not, we say so and stop.
The honest version, including the two we would talk you out of.
| Channel | Lead quality | Time to first lead | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Ads | Highest | Days | $5–15 |
| Google Map Pack (GBP) | Highest | 30–90 days | $0 organic |
| Meta Ads | High | Days | $8–25 |
| Retargeting | Highest | 1–2 weeks | $3–10 |
| Yelp Ads | Medium | Days | $20–50 |
| Yellow Pages / print | Low | Months | $50–150+ |
Scroll the table sideways on a phone. Retargeting reads cheaper than everything else per lead, but its volume is capped by whatever traffic the first two channels send it — it is a multiplier, never a starting point.
Generalist agencies get these wrong, and the account underperforms for reasons nobody can name.
You are asking somebody to leave a car they love with a stranger for three days. Reviews carry disproportionate weight in that decision, so review count and rating move the cost per booked job more than any bid change we could make.
Nobody can read their way to being convinced by gloss. Before-and-after photography in the ad, on the profile and on the landing page is not decoration here — it is the argument, and campaigns without it cost measurably more.
Spring, new-car season and the first hard weather each bring a spike, and the quiet weeks between them are predictable. Budget should breathe with that curve instead of sitting flat and wasting half of itself.
The leading shops in a metro sit past 100 reviews at 4.8 or better, but it is the rate of new ones that holds Map Pack position. A steady trickle outranks a big historic pile, so asking has to be part of the job, not a campaign.
Bigger tickets, fewer winners per metro
Sun-belt markets like Florida have been the clearest signal: heat, salt air and year-round driving turn paint protection from a luxury into maintenance, and the average ticket has climbed with it as PPF attaches to coating work.
The consolidation underneath that is the part worth planning for. Local search rewards the few shops with the deepest review histories and the most complete profiles, and their advantage compounds — the same three names take the map, and everyone else pays more per lead to be seen at all.
Which is an argument for starting the organic work now rather than next year. Paid can be switched on this week; a review history and a Map Pack position cannot be bought at any price.
Most shops land between $1,500 and $3,000 a month, ad spend and management together. What moves you inside that band is how competitive your metro is and how far you are willing to drive — not a package tier, because we do not sell those.
Put it against the job value before you react to the number. Leads come in under $10 and coating work runs $500 to $3,000 or more, so the month pays for itself somewhere in the first handful of bookings.
Ninety to three hundred a month once the account has settled — three to ten on a typical day. The range is wide because the season genuinely is.
The count matters less than what happens to it. At an 8 to 15% booking rate, 150 enquiries is roughly 12 to 22 jobs on the calendar, and at that point the constraint is usually how many cars you can physically take, not how many people called.
Google Search Ads and the Map Pack, together. Both catch somebody who has already decided to buy and is only choosing where, which is why they beat everything else on quality.
Retargeting goes on next, because it is the cheapest lead on the board once there is traffic to retarget. Meta comes after that, to create demand once you have exhausted the people already searching. Yelp is expensive for what arrives, and print cannot be measured or turned off — we would rather you spent that money elsewhere.
Almost certainly not. You need one page that loads quickly, shows real before-and-after work, says which areas you cover and keeps the phone number within reach at every scroll position.
A fully worked Google Business Profile and a single strong landing page will out-earn a handsome ten-page site with thin reviews and a buried phone number. Rebuild later, from profit, if you still want to.
Search ads produce the first enquiries within 24 to 72 hours of going live. The organic side — Map Pack position, review velocity, profile signals — needs 30 to 90 days, because those cannot be bought.
Running both from day one is what makes the wait survivable: paid carries the first six weeks, then the two start compounding. Around day 45 to 60 is when most owners tell us the difference stopped being a spreadsheet and started being obvious.
Ask for the market audit. It is free, it takes one call, and the findings are yours regardless of what you do next.