The Challenge
The business was already spending on Google Ads when we took over the account. That's sometimes harder than starting from scratch, because there's an existing structure with its own momentum and a client who's used to seeing certain metrics, even if those metrics don't reflect actual business results.
The account had a classic set of problems. Broad match keywords were consuming most of the budget on irrelevant searches. A campaign targeting "mechanic" was paying for clicks from people searching for "mechanic jobs," "mechanic schools," and "mechanic tool sets." There was no negative keyword strategy. Campaign structure was flat: one or two campaigns with large ad groups mixing different service types together, making it impossible to control budgets or tailor ad copy to specific services.
Conversion tracking was partially implemented. Form submissions were being counted, but phone calls, the primary way automotive service customers contact a shop, were not. The business had no real picture of which campaigns were driving actual customers versus which were generating clicks that went nowhere.
The automotive service market in Edmonton is competitive. Multiple shops target the same keywords, and Google Ads costs reflect that competition. Wasting budget on irrelevant clicks in this market means subsidizing your competitors' cheaper cost-per-click by inflating auction prices without benefiting from them.
Our Approach
We rebuilt the account structure from scratch. Each service line got its own campaign with tightly themed ad groups. Oil changes, brake service, transmission work, and general repair each had dedicated campaigns with budgets we could control independently. This let us allocate more budget to high-margin services and less to commodity services where margins are thin.
The negative keyword work was extensive. We pulled the search term reports from the existing account and found hundreds of irrelevant queries that had been consuming budget. We built negative keyword lists organized by theme: employment-related terms, educational queries, DIY searches, competitor names, and geographic areas outside the service region. These lists were applied at the campaign and account level as appropriate, and we review search terms weekly to catch new irrelevant queries.
Conversion tracking was the foundation for everything else. We set up call tracking with dynamic number insertion so every call from an ad was attributed to the specific campaign and keyword that triggered it. Form submissions were tracked with proper event firing. Both conversion types were imported into Google Ads so the bidding algorithms had accurate data to optimize against.
We implemented budget monitoring that checks spend every 30 minutes. In a competitive market with seasonal demand fluctuations, daily budgets can be exhausted by mid-morning during peak periods. The monitoring system alerts us when spend pace is ahead of target, letting us adjust before budget runs out and the ads go dark for the rest of the day. During seasonal peaks, like the period before winter when everyone needs winter tires and vehicle inspections, this monitoring prevented multiple potential overspend situations.
Ad copy was rewritten for every ad group with specific service messaging, pricing where appropriate, and calls to action tailored to the service type. We used ad extensions systematically: location extensions, call extensions, structured snippets listing services, and sitelinks to specific service pages.
We also aligned the organic SEO strategy with the paid campaigns. Service pages on the website were optimized to match the landing pages we used for ads, which improved Quality Scores and lowered cost-per-click. When someone clicks an ad for "brake repair Edmonton" and lands on a page specifically about brake repair with relevant content, pricing context, and a clear call to action, the conversion rate is dramatically higher than landing on a generic services page. The SEO work ensured these pages also ranked organically, giving the business both paid and organic visibility for the same high-value searches.
The Results
The 825% ROAS means that for every dollar spent on Google Ads, the business generated $8.25 in tracked revenue. This number is conservative because it only counts revenue directly attributed through the conversion tracking system. Walk-in customers who saw an ad but didn't click, or who called from a number they remembered rather than the tracking number, aren't included.
The restructured campaigns also gave the business control it didn't have before. When brake service demand spiked before winter, we could increase that campaign's budget without affecting other service lines. When a promotion on oil changes ran, we could push that specific campaign without overspending on the account overall.
The 30-minute budget monitoring caught overspend risk on 12 separate occasions during the first year, typically during seasonal demand spikes when competitors were also increasing their spend and click costs rose. Each catch prevented the ads from going dark during peak hours, which in automotive service translates directly to missed phone calls and lost revenue.
The combination of paid and organic visibility created a compounding advantage. As the SEO work improved organic rankings for service keywords, the business appeared in both paid and organic results for the same searches. This dual presence increases click-through rates and builds credibility, and the organic rankings provide a safety net that keeps the phone ringing even on days when ad budgets are constrained.
See how we manage Google Ads campaigns and read about why flat-fee pricing aligns our incentives with yours.