UK service businesses average ~£35 a lead on search. Our featured accounts run at £14.77 and £20.17 — the 12-Point Audit shows what yours should cost.UK average: ~£35 a lead. Our accounts: £14.77 and £20.17.
Fellmar. Google Ads for UK service businesses
Speak to a senior marketer, not a sales team 07588 424030

Every result we publish is an automotive account

Most agencies show you a wall of logos and no numbers. We publish two accounts in detail, and both are automotive — a remapping specialist and a specialist automotive network. Both were takeovers: the accounts were already running, the waste was already sitting in the search-term reports, and the job was finding it and cutting it. If you run a garage or a specialist automotive business, you are not our experiment. You are our book.

£32 → £14.77

Cost per lead, vehicle remapping specialist, taken over from a previous agency. 16.44% CVR.

Live account data, 14 days, anonymised.
£86 → £20.17

Cost per lead, specialist automotive network. 468 leads in 30 days.

Live account data, 30 days, anonymised.
£17.95/conv

Cost per conversion across all three desks: £191K spend, 10.6K conversions, 16–17% CVR in an average month.

Live account data, anonymised.

What should an automotive lead cost? For DPF and vehicle-service work, £50–75 per lead is the typical UK band — typical bands, not promises. LocaliQ's 2026 cross-industry search averages sit near £50 per lead at an 8.18% conversion rate. Our two featured automotive accounts run at £14.77 and £20.17 — under the band, at roughly double the average conversion rate. That gap is not luck. It is structure, and it is the same structure both times.

Where garage and specialist budgets leak

The £32-a-lead account and the £86-a-lead account had different previous setups, different services and different geography. The waste looked almost identical. Automotive accounts leak in the same six places, over and over:

  1. Parts and DIY searchers. Someone hunting a replacement part, remap software or a how-to guide clicks like a customer and costs like one. Loose match types feed them your budget all day.
  2. Radius left on default. A workshop that draws customers from 45 minutes away, paying for clicks from three counties over — or a mobile service invisible in half the towns it actually covers.
  3. Jobs you do not want. Budget spread evenly across every service, including the low-margin work you only take to fill quiet weeks, instead of weighted to the jobs that pay.
  4. Campaigns bidding against each other. Overlapping keywords across campaigns quietly compete for the same searches, and you pay the inflated price on both sides.
  5. Every click sent to the homepage. A motorist searching for one specific fix has to go hunting for it. Most do not bother, and the bounce drags Quality Score down and cost per click up.
  6. Calls nobody counts. Most bookings arrive by phone. When call tracking is missing or has quietly broken — the first thing we check on any takeover — the account optimises towards the wrong searches with total confidence.

None of this shows up in the dashboard your agency sends you. It shows up in the search-term report, the location report and the conversion settings — the places the 12-Point Wasted-Spend Audit goes first. Read-only access, no call required, findings in writing within 48 hours.

What we run for automotive specialists

The method behind both featured accounts is the same, and it is not complicated. It is tight, and it is policed every week:

A campaign per service, weighted by margin

Remapping, DPF work, diagnostics, servicing — each gets its own campaign with tight match types, and budget is weighted towards the jobs you actually want more of. Negative keyword lists are reviewed weekly to keep parts hunters and DIY searchers out, and geography is set to where your customers really come from, not a default circle on a map.

A fast page per service

Someone searching for a remap lands on your remapping page, not your homepage. Message-matched pages convert more of the clicks you have already paid for, and the improved Quality Score cuts what you pay for the next one. Motorists search on their phones, so every page is built mobile-first and built to load.

Calls tracked back to the keyword

Bookings phone in. We wire call and form tracking back to the keyword that produced each enquiry, so budget follows the searches that become booked jobs — not the ones that merely click well. Measured to the pound, reported in writing every month.

Run by seniors, start to finish. Your account is handled by one of three senior marketers — the same people behind the £14.77 and £20.17 accounts. No juniors, no hand-offs, no account manager between you and the person doing the work.

William Thomas David Peters Amalie Lines

William Thomas · David Peters · Amalie LinesThree senior marketers. Every account is one of ours.

A slow page wastes a click as surely as a bad keyword does. We hold our own pages to the standard we sell:

We measured the UK's 30 most persistent PPC agencies. Median mobile load: 8.6 seconds. Four scored 90+. This page loads in under 2.

Pricing for automotive businesses

From £950 a month on top of your media budget, and you can leave after month three. Most of the automotive businesses we work with spend between £1,000 and £7,500 a month on ads — enough for the account to produce real data and real bookings.

From £950 /month

  • Service-by-service campaign structure, built or rebuilt
  • Weekly search-term policing and negative keyword lists
  • A landing page per service, message-matched to the ad
  • Call and form tracking wired back to the keyword
  • Geography set to your real catchment, not a default radius
  • Written monthly reporting, measured to the pound
  • No contracts past month three

Worked maths: at the ~£35 a UK service business typically pays per search lead, £2,800 a month buys about 80 leads. At £20 — where our featured automotive accounts already operate — those same 80 leads cost £1,600. That is roughly £1,200 a month freed against a £950 fee.

And it compounds: every pound of waste removed is re-spent on searches that become booked jobs, month after month.

Not sure the account needs a retainer? Start with the audit. If your setup is already tight, we will say so in writing and you have lost nothing.

Questions garages and specialists ask us

Does Google Ads actually work for remapping and DPF businesses?

It is the sector we can evidence best. A vehicle remapping specialist we took over went from £32 to £14.77 per lead at a 16.44% conversion rate, and a specialist automotive network went from £86 to £20.17 with 468 leads in 30 days (live account data, anonymised). The demand is there; whether it works comes down to how tightly the account is run.

How much does Google Ads cost for a garage?

Two numbers: your media budget, paid to Google, and our management fee from £950 a month. Most automotive businesses we work with spend £1,000 to £7,500 a month on media. There are no contracts past month three, so the numbers have to keep earning the fee.

What should a lead cost for an automotive business?

For DPF and vehicle-service work, £50–75 per lead is the typical UK band — a typical band, not a promise. LocaliQ's 2026 cross-industry search averages sit near £50 per lead at an 8.18% conversion rate. Our two featured automotive accounts run at £14.77 and £20.17, which is what a tightly structured account can do below the band.

Most of our work comes in by phone. Can you track that?

Yes, and in automotive you have to — most bookings phone rather than fill in a form. We track calls and form fills back to the keyword that produced them, so the account optimises towards enquiries that become booked jobs. Untracked phone calls are one of the most common faults we find in accounts we take over.

We already have an agency running our ads. What does switching look like?

It starts with the 12-Point Wasted-Spend Audit: read-only access to your live account, no call required, findings in writing within 48 hours. Both of our featured automotive accounts were takeovers from existing setups — including the one at £32 a lead under its previous agency. If the audit finds your account is tight, we tell you so and you keep the findings either way.

We are a mobile service, not a workshop. Does this still apply?

Yes. The structure is the same; the geography changes. A workshop bids around a real drive-time catchment, while a mobile service bids across the towns it covers, with pages and ad copy that say so. Getting that geography right is one of the six leaks we check first, because a default radius wastes money in both directions.

Find out what your automotive leads should cost

The 12-Point Wasted-Spend Audit, built from your live account. Findings in writing within 48 hours, yours either way.

Get my audit → or WhatsApp us — 07588 424030

No call required · read-only access · in writing within 48 hours