Connecting a three-shop auto repair business’s marketing, so a limited budget goes where intent is highest.
A local auto repair business with three shops ran its ads in-house. The office manager kept the campaigns running on Google, Bing and Meta, but nothing connected one channel to another, and nobody was reviewing what the money bought. Loque Logic built a marketing system, managed by Claude, that ties them together. It reads how visitors behave to sort them into higher and lower intent audiences, puts a limited budget where intent is highest, and reviews search terms and conversions every week. On the same ad budget, leads went up 43%, and the system cut $8,608 in wasted ad spend in its first four months, more than the automation cost to build.
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The case study, in five parts.
Every case study we publish reports the same five things, so you can judge the result for yourself.
- The workflow
- Paid search, social, outbound and customer marketing for a three-location auto repair business, run until then by its office manager. Connect and build: the shop kept its ad accounts, and we built the system that connects them, with Claude doing the day-to-day analysis and management.
- The baseline
- The office manager kept the campaigns running on Google, Bing and Meta, on top of the rest of the job, and that was as far as anyone had time to take it. Nobody reviewed search terms or conversions, so clicks that never turned into customers kept getting paid for. The channels had no connection to each other: each ad platform ran on its own, and the customer and email lists sat apart from all of them. The owner wasn’t happy with the results.
- The volume
- Three shops, three ad platforms, an outbound email campaign to local fleet businesses, a newsletter list and a postcard campaign to customers who hadn’t been in for more than a year.
- The result, and its kind
- Growth enabled. Leads went up 43% on the same ad budget. In its first four months the system cut $8,608 in wasted ad spend, more than the automation cost to build, and moved that money to the audiences and campaigns that convert. The shop’s marketing database gained more than 2,000 potential fleet customers in its local market. Over six months the business brought in about $12,500 in additional revenue, and service volume held steadier from week to week.
- What it costs to run
- $642 a month covers every service the system runs on: the Anthropic API, n8n, Neon, Vercel, Markifact, Clay, Smartlead, Mailchimp and Thanks.io. The ad budget, the build, and our maintenance and marketing support aren’t part of it. Those are listed separately.
- Client
- A local auto repair business with three shops
- Channels
- Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, cold email to local fleet businesses, a newsletter, handwritten postcards to fleet prospects and lapsed customers, and SEO including answer engine and generative engine optimization
- What it replaced
- Campaigns kept running in-house by the office manager, one platform at a time, with no connection between channels and no regular review of the results
- Stack
- The Anthropic API and Claude, n8n, Neon’s Postgres, Vercel, Markifact, Clay, Smartlead, Mailchimp, Thanks.io for the handwritten postcards, and the Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising and Meta platforms
- Ongoing from us
- $500 a month keeps the system and its servers maintained, with 3 hours of improvements and changes included every month. Another $1,500 a month covers SEO, GEO and AEO, and the oversight and management of Google Ads, Bing Ads, the Smartlead campaigns, Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics
Channels that never talked to each other, run in spare time.
A repair shop’s marketing budget is small enough that every wasted dollar shows. Here the channels ran side by side with no connection between them, looked after by someone who already had a full-time job.
The shop didn’t need more ad spend. It needed its channels connected, the budget it had put where intent was highest, and a few more ways to reach people who already had a reason to call.
- 01
Campaigns kept running, not managed
The office manager kept the ads live between everything else a three-shop business needs. Nobody reviewed search terms or conversions, so money kept going to clicks that never became customers.
- 02
No connection between channels
Google, Bing and Meta each ran on their own, and the email and customer lists sat apart from all three. Money stayed where it was first put, whichever campaign was bringing in the calls.
- 03
Every visitor treated the same
There was no way to tell someone ready to book from someone just browsing, so a limited budget was spread across both.
- 04
Nothing beyond the ads
There was no outreach to local businesses with vehicle fleets, and nothing to bring back customers who’d stopped coming in.
Every channel connected, and managed by one system.
Every channel works from the same intent audiences. The ads reach people ready to book now, and the rest builds a list of people who'll need a repair later.
Intent audiences from analytics
Through the Anthropic API, Claude studies how visitors behave in the shop’s analytics and sorts them into higher and lower intent audiences. Every channel works from those audiences, so the most money goes to the people most likely to book.
One budget across every channel
Claude reads every campaign on Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising and Meta, and moves a limited budget toward the audiences and campaigns producing leads. The total didn’t change.
Weekly search term and conversion review
Every week the system reviews which searches triggered the ads and which clicks converted, and the campaigns are adjusted. Searches that waste money come out, and the ones that convert get more. That’s where the $8,608 in wasted spend was cut.
Paid search and social
Search, call and social campaigns for all three shops, managed by the system every day rather than when someone found the time.
Fleet prospects enriched with Clay
Clay finds local businesses that run vehicle fleets, and adds enrichment whenever a contact shows fleet-service intent. Those prospects get direct mail and join the newsletter audience, with the details to reach the right person.
Cold email through Smartlead
An outbound campaign to those fleet businesses. Anyone who engages is added to the shop’s newsletter list.
Newsletter with Mailchimp
The list grows from the outbound campaign as well as from customers, so the shop keeps a marketing database it owns.
Handwritten postcards
Fleet prospects get a handwritten postcard, and so do customers who haven’t been into the shop for more than a year, inviting them back. They’re sent through Thanks.io.
SEO, AEO and GEO
Search optimization for the shops, including how they show up in answer engines and AI assistants.
It runs on the Anthropic API and Claude, with n8n running the workflows, Neon holding the data, Vercel hosting it and Markifact connecting the ad platforms. Clay, Smartlead, Mailchimp and Thanks.io handle outreach.
What changed.
Measured as of September 2026. The conversion, cost and call figures are from search campaigns. The 43% is measured against the shop’s own lead count before the system, on the same ad budget. The $8,608 is spend cut from searches and audiences that weren’t converting, and moved into ones that were, so the budget itself stayed the same.
How the campaigns compare.
The first three compare against WordStream's 2026 medians for Google search ads in auto repair. The call-lead figure compares against an agency's typical range for Local Services Ads, and the appointment rate against Invoca's call data for the whole automotive industry. They're yardsticks across many advertisers, not a promise of what any one shop will see.
- WordStream by LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026, 2026. 13,474 US Google Ads search campaigns running April 2025 to March 2026, at least 52 per industry. Figures are medians.
- Honest Mechanic Marketing, Google Local Service Ads for Auto Repair Shops, Undated. No sample or method published. An agency's typical range, not a measured study. Google doesn't publish Local Services Ads benchmarks.
- Invoca, Automotive Call Conversion Benchmarks Report 2025, 2025. An analysis of more than 60 million automotive calls, sales and service combined. Covers the whole automotive industry, dealership sales included, not repair shops alone. Converting on the call is close to, but not the same as, booking an appointment.
Every figure we cite is listed with its source on our research page.
The budget didn’t grow. It just stopped sitting still.
Connected channels, and a budget that follows intent.
A repair shop doesn’t need a bigger campaign. It needs the one it has run properly, and a list that keeps growing.
Connected, not side by side
Every channel works from the same audiences and the same data, so what someone does in one shapes what they see in the next.
Spend follows intent
A limited budget goes furthest on the people most ready to book. The system puts money there first, across every channel, instead of leaving it where it was first put.
Reviewed every week
Search terms and conversions are checked weekly, so waste gets cut within days, not whenever someone finds the time.
Every contact is kept
A fleet manager who opens an email but isn’t ready to book still ends up on the newsletter. The database grows with every campaign, and it belongs to the shop.
The easiest customer is one you’ve had
Lapsed customers already know the shop. A handwritten card is a small cost against bringing one of them back.
What is manual work costing your business?
Repetitive admin, missed follow-ups and disconnected systems take time away from running your business. Bring us one process that slows your team down. We'll help you understand what could improve, how much time you could recover, and what it might cost to implement.
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