Google Endorsed: Leveraging Local Service Ads (LSAs) to Differentiate Your Shop [THA 457]

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Hey everybody, Carm Capriato, Remarkable Results Radio, another Town Hall Academy here

at the ASTA 2025 conference. We're having a good time, we're doing a ton of great

interviews, and the training here is just like off the charts, a lot of good things happening.

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Hey, welcome back. In the studio is two geeks, okay?

Fair. That's fair.

Can I call you two geeks?

Take it.

It's Jeff Jackson, the Vice President of Sales, and Conor Tracy, Kukui's Director of Partner

Development and Product Evangelist. And before we turn down the mics, they're geeking to me.

I can see the temperature in the house. I'm getting ready to play a song for my daughter,

I think, the device in that room.

The Waker Up with the Barbara Ann by the Beach Boys.

Barbara Ann. So do you guys stay up at night trying to figure out how you can automate

everything in your life?

Conor does, I know for a fact.

Yeah, the YouTube stream for automation videos and yeah.

You geek on that.

We'll put it this way. When I get a quarter mile from the house on my CarPlay screen,

my garage door pops up so that it can be opened. It also is automated so that when I reach that

quarter of a mile, it just opens anyway.

Keep in mind, this whole conversation started because

Conor was excited that his lights in the studio had a remote.

Right.

So that's where that began.

Come on, don't call me out on that.

You were genuinely excited about that.

Yeah, and I wanted to get the remote back from Tracy so that I could show you all the

different color changes and the brilliance and the bright. And it's the first time we're

using key lights in our studio as we travel. It only took a few years to figure this thing out

because wherever we would go and broadcast from, sometimes we'd get a room that was dark

in the back of a hotel and it was very difficult to light. We had small lights, we never had big

ones. So yeah, my lights have a remote.

It's exciting. It's an exciting day.

And so does your garage door. Does your stove have a remote too?

It's coming, I'm sure.

It is. Yes, I can actually access my stove by my phone.

I don't want to know.

Hey, hon, what's for dinner? I'm sorry, let me find out.

Yeah, no, you can literally preset the oven and yeah.

Oh my God. I have a Keurig coffee pot that has a Wi-Fi connection. I've never used it.

Look at you.

See?

And it's the one when you put the pot in and you close it, it reads the QR code and it tells you

what brand it is and it says we'll brew it based on manufacturer's brewing specs.

Wow. It says that we not only don't have you grind or put water in this anymore,

we now no longer trust you to just push start. We're just going to go ahead and handle this

from here.

Oh my God, I know. Well, okay.

We're here to talk about websites. We're here to talk about SEO maybe, and GEO maybe,

and all of these really cool acronyms that we have as business people not only have to know,

but we're being bombarded by a lot of new stuff. And when Connor and I were chatting,

because I wanted to have him in the studio and Jeff, what are we going to talk about?

And I believe we're spending a ton of money on marketing on our websites.

Is there anything when you work with your clients to say,

we can see all this inbound stuff, we know what you need to have on our website,

and we can also tell you if you're getting your money's worth?

That's been really critical to Kukui all along is the integrations that we have with shop

management. At this point, we have almost 65 different shop management system integrations.

And that's how we truly measure the success or ineffectiveness of marketing.

We don't live in a world of sunshine and rainbows because

nothing is rubber stamped, paint by numbers. Every shop is different,

their needs are different, and none of those are finite throughout time either.

So for us, that North Star metric that we use to measure the success of any of our marketing

efforts, whether it's website, Google Ads, we'll talk a little bit about local service ads through

Google in a little bit. CRM, live scheduling, any of that is revenue. And there's a lot of ways to

report revenue. We've seen a lot of different methodology. We feel like we have a way that

is just kind of goes a little bit more in depth. We use four steps before we

kind of contribute any of those efforts towards that lead source.

So we look at, of course, a found lead source. Do they visit the website, open an email,

whatever that would be through our channels? Then we look to see, okay, did they actually

reach out to the shop? Did they click to the appointment scheduling or did they call the shop?

Did they actually make outreach? Next, we look at, was an appointment logged?

And then we match a repair order to that. So we're actually looking at that entire process

from found marketing source to revenue. And unless we see all of those, we don't share

that revenue as contributed because we feel we can't confidently say that delivered that.

Now, the brilliance of that is if something isn't working as intended, for instance,

we roll out an email campaign and we aren't converting at the rate we want, where is the

breakdown? Or if Google ads are delivering 200 leads in four convert, is it a question of lead

quality? It could be. We don't know. It could be a question of call handling. It could be anything

in between that pit stop on the information superhighway and a car in a bay, but we can

evaluate each step because we're measuring. Tell me about surfers. We all surf and we're

curious about stuff. So I end up becoming a lead source, but I wasn't ready. So I'd skip.

Under lead source, reach out, appointment logging and matching the repair order,

are each of those like 25%, 25%? I mean, how do you-

It's variable between every shop. The first thing is our industry. People are just searching

automotive repair, whether we want to believe it or not. People don't want to think about us

until they have to think about us. Automotive repair is uncomfortable.

So no one surfs for the hell of it. I got to get my oil changed in a couple of weeks. Let

me look around. It's like, oh, I got to get my oil changed. I need it now.

Right. Got it. The modern day website, in the past, that was the case. That was the

information source. That's really been replaced by social media now. That's where we go and we

have things like ChatGPT and other resources like Wikipedia as those resources, where it used to be

in past times, that website would be that resource, right? You would do that Google search,

that Yahoo search, and you would find that. What really the evolution of a website has grown to be

is one, just that kind of window. Interesting is about 65% of people that we've measured that go

to websites don't even scroll anywhere on the site. They get that snapshot of information when

they land on that landing page, and overwhelmingly, that's on a smartphone, right? So it's pretty-

It's tight.

Pared down information, and they're going to decide to reach out to the shop or not.

The remaining balance of the website, really, it's a library for Google to find.

Google's crawling software, it's software, so it can only recognize letters and numbers.

Can you design a site where people want to scroll up?

You can, and that's some of the brilliance of what we've done is we have not just been

looking at clicks and impressions for our 15 years almost that we've been doing this in automotive,

and we have built out kind of a framework how we lay out sites because we've seen what gets them,

not just getting that click for appointment, but what's actually landed a car in a bay.

So there's a lot of psychology behind that between how we read, how we feel comfortable

digesting information, making sure that appointment scheduling addresses, reviews,

making sure that the review rating and the ease to see reviews and the dates on those reviews,

that they look current and present, all contribute to that, to removing the necessity to scroll.

Because again, people are, when they're engaging with our websites, they're already

in an anxious state, right? My car's broken, I'm elevated. So anything that we can do to

ease the steps between broken car and the shop delivering that estimate to them

is going to increase their ability to create better client success, to create better retention,

and it's going to increase their ability to sell because we've created, for the shop,

a more comfortable solution. It provides that kind of calm, soothing, it lowers the temperature of

what is generally an anxious situation, which is somebody's transportation.

Yeah, who wants this? I heard years ago, the term above the fold and normal Windows desktop,

there is such a thing, I think, as a fold, but maybe not necessarily on a mobile device. And

that would be what you see on the first screen, tiny. Is there value in putting a five-star rating

way at the top?

Massive. It's critical, especially now in a world where ratings are placed on everything. When you

do a Google search, you see those reviews right there, right? Or if you search on your iPhone

through Safari, those review ratings are there. That is the modern-day word of mouth is peer

review, right? So that review rating is how people are instantly judging everything we do as a

review. You go on Amazon, this product is reviewed in five stars. Everything is five-star rated.

Pretty soon, I think we're all going to walk around with stars on our forehead for how we act,

right? That would be nice because-

Oh my God, wouldn't that be something? You were really a jerk to your wife.

That's a star rating.

And all of a sudden, she presses a button and she gives you a one-er right here, right?

And you're going out, you're doing things, and all of a sudden, now you're working your ass off to

get back up to at least a four, maybe, God help it, a five. So you go out and you start doing all

these chores, and all of a sudden-

You get daily review rating to help-

Yes, you get daily review ratings.

To help lower that bad review, right?

Oh God, help it if you were single and you were at a bar and there was just one star up there.

Look, there is an episode on Netflix of Black Mirror that is about exactly this.

It is literally this.

Stop it.

And it depends on what kind of car you rent. It depends on what kind of house you can buy.

It depends on what seats you get on an airline,

who your Uber is, all that is dependent upon an instant review of your person.

So you need to be a saint.

Yeah, all the time.

I mean, it's happening. I read an article last week that the police departments are using AI,

they're using city cameras, they're using driving telematics to actually look at driving habits,

and they're using it to help.

They pull behind a car and it's got some way that it factors all these factors in,

and, hey, do we need to take a look at this person?

OMG, thank you for all this great information.

Let's go to, before we get too deep into the episode, LSAs, local service ads.

They are.

And is it specifically for automotive or is it for any company?

They just have become available to automotive.

Google's releasing these, they're kind of slow rolling it.

So they're releasing it to certain industries as well as certain search terms.

Like right now it's automotive, but certain things in automotive,

like detailing and other items are not available and they're not available in all markets.

So it's kind of slow rolling.

We're really proud of the fact here at Kukui that we feel that we're leading the industry.

We now offer and can manage and even help establish a local service ads for shops that we work with.

How hard is that?

It's a really different process.

So for local service ads, and I guess let's back up,

let's kind of talk about what the heck a local service ad even is.

It functions very differently from a traditional Google ad,

which is a pay-by-click based on keywords that you tell Google

that you want to present search results for.

With local service ads, what they do is that Google goes through a verification process

and it endorses your business.

So when you find somebody that's using a LSA, a local service ad,

you'll see a green check and it'll say Google endorsed or Google verified.

And the psychology behind that is Google is now kind of vouching for you

and the consumer now has an additional level of comfortability.

And in theory, that is going to provide you a warmer lead.

What's Google looking for?

So they do a full background check.

I mean, they really actually, they do.

I mean, are they going to the IRS or anything?

They do a complete background check, just like you'd be vetting an employee.

Wow.

So we actually embark on that whole process for the shop.

And then once they are approved by Google,

and the reason why is, of course, if Google is endorsing a business,

there's risk for Google to endorse the wrong business and it's the wrong person.

So yeah, there's a whole background check process and it functions very differently.

So rather than charging you by click, Google uses its AI.

It'll listen in on the inbound call because it's call based

and it will verify if it's a viable lead or not.

And you get charged by lead rather than by click.

Yeah.

Google's listening to your call.

So you have to have a Google number on that.

Google assigns a number to that.

Through our process, we work with Google and then that number will pull into our software.

And then we have that same conversion metric I talked about earlier.

It pulls into, but it goes to the shop.

But Google, mother Google, father Google, God, Google is listening.

I mean, they're listening one way or another.

But yes, this channel's right through the AI tool.

Oh, it's scary.

It's scary to see what happens on my phone when I even had a thought.

We were talking about something yesterday when I pulled up Facebook this morning.

And it was something we mentioned just kind of in passing.

And then it pulled up and I was like, okay.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

It's scary.

Don't talk about your gutters at home.

Honey, you got to go clean the gutters.

All of a sudden.

Yeah, the gutter feed.

Leaf filter, Ed.

And it's just not one in any stream.

It just keeps coming at you.

I would love to know the algorithm of, listen, we can't crash through this person.

They haven't clicked on it ever.

Right.

When do we stop?

Because we're listening for something new to put up there.

It's the leaf filters, as an example, who are paying for that position.

Yeah.

Based on what they know is kind of an invasion of privacy.

Wouldn't you think?

Well, Rick White and I were talking about it yesterday.

We were talking about when you decide you want to take a break from social media.

And if anybody's ever done that, what you'll find is those apps start to become the paranoid

ex-girlfriend.

So, oh, I hadn't logged into my LinkedIn for, I don't know, a month, six weeks.

I've just been busy.

And all of a sudden, my email feed was like, this person mentioned this.

And I'm getting four and five emails a day from LinkedIn.

I'm getting LinkedIn notifications with posts and feeds where I normally...

It's like, hey, we're here.

Plug in.

I'm here.

I'm like, whoa.

And I didn't even think about it until Rick pointed it out because we were talking about

taking breaks from social media.

Of course, in our roles with our companies, we have to engage on social and personal stuff.

And those apps have been built that way too.

They act like that girl that you ghosted.

I love that part.

It's scary.

I'm sorry, Jeff.

I think if the common man knew what was being programmed in those deep 10 levels below the

earth, in those brainiac rooms where no radar penetrates, and they're building all this

crazy stuff, and they're in their think tanks, how do we get Connor back on LinkedIn?

And what are we going to do?

We're going to drag that puppy back in if he likes it or not.

Let's write the code.

And so there was a documentary on it a few years back.

I made my girls watch it.

The whole Cambridge Analytica thing.

Yeah.

It was crazy.

We know somebody I won't mention by name who got off Facebook, am I right?

And I'd love...

In fact, he's here.

We need to ask him if he's been tortured at all by any emails.

I can imagine.

Wow.

Okay.

What didn't we finish about...

I'm sorry we jumped on a curve left here, but back to LSA.

The biggest thing about LSA is setting yourself as a market differentiator.

That's one thing that we really pride ourselves on, Kukui, is how can we help you stand out

in your marketplace?

More and more in a world where you can get auto parts on Amazon, and you can do a chat GPT search

and find out what shops in your area are charging.

There's an attempt to commodify what we do.

How do we stand out?

Things like having a Google integrated live scheduling tool.

So if there's four search results presented in the Google map, I'm the only one that I

can just easily click that button and book an appointment through Google.

Now I'm the easiest shop to do business.

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Are you integrating through an API to someone's calendar?

Yeah.

So we have a fully integrated live scheduling tool.

It connects into their calendar and

shops have different levels of comfortability with that.

So we can throttle that on or off.

You can set parameters.

Yeah.

So really, the goal with live scheduling is creating bay flow 1.0.

That should be configured how you flow your bays.

So you, in theory, should not have to reschedule that.

Well, with everyone wanting to say yes to a client and make sure that they can

figure out how to satisfy that client's needs, take the appointment.

Well, so some interesting facts as we were building out our live scheduling tool.

And I was blessed to be involved with our product development team

in that process as we looked at it.

And we first looked at the data about, okay,

Kukui has been scheduling appointments for 15 years.

And it was the old school appointment way where customers would go to our website and

they would click and they would select two times and ask for permission to come into our shop.

And then we would get that appointment and, oh,

we will bless you with the permission to come into our shop.

We will approve your appointment.

When I say it's okay to bring the car in, we'll let you come in.

Well, when we looked at that data, what we found is well over 10% of the appointments

that were coming into Kukui didn't get touched by the shop for one reason or another.

Okay, that was an interesting fact.

Now, when I talk about numbers, last year in 2024,

Kukui delivered $3 billion in revenue for shops.

We contributed almost 5% of the entire revenue reported by the ACA and the industry.

So 10% of appointments not getting approved or touched by the shop,

I kind of had a bit of a Code Brown moment.

But why is that?

And is the shop getting that data from you saying,

nasty boy, are you looking for me to confirm, send a text?

Is that...

Exactly.

So my fear was in the going psychology of how we had done appointments really

till about two years ago when the whole live scheduling thing came into our industry was,

I will let you know when you can come into the shop,

hold tight until we get back to you, right?

So the thought process is, okay, we've got this

huge bank of appointments that weren't getting approved.

And I'm putting my mind to the revenue that was associated.

Now, the interesting part is then we went to that, we looked at that data and said,

okay, out of this block, how many of those customers actually still showed up?

Because you would think I didn't approve your appointment.

I didn't tell you, yes, it's okay to show up.

Hold tight.

About 80% of them still showed up.

So the reality is, is not that they're waiting for us to say, it's okay to bring the car.

And they hit send, they're making ride arrangements.

They are already coming, whether we like it or not.

So what we need to do is we need to make sure that we have all of the foundation in place

that when we can be most convenient for them, when they have said,

I can bring my vehicle in, we're ready to take it on.

And it's so that having those, each job configured, each timeframe configured,

whether it's waiting, drop off, how much time we need to do that.

And having that integration should make that so we can eliminate rescheduling.

That also helps with micro inefficiencies too.

When I thought about it, like back in my shops, back in the day, a conversation to

reschedule somebody to come into the shop was maybe a three-minute conversation.

Okay.

But then I go into shop math, right?

It's all these extrapolations.

One of those calls a day multiplied by 20 days in a month, I've now lost an hour of productivity.

How much more could we be making by selling ROs during that hour?

So it's these efficiencies that we're striving to help create,

but also set us apart in the marketplace, right?

If I'm the shop that's easiest to do business with,

and then I do great service at the end of the day, there's no way I'm not going to retain my customer.

I call that an opportunity zone.

Yeah.

In my mind, I'm thinking about it.

Why would you say no to any opportunity?

Right.

Especially if it's digital, like a website, like a great marketing team company,

that's a partner of yours to drive revenue.

And you've got then to be sure that your service advisor has been trained

and is of the right everything to be able to take that opportunity.

Even if the customer never calls, sets the appointment, comes in, heard about your place,

the old word of mouth.

I never told the guy, but I've told him enough times,

I've got a great experience down at Connor's place.

And now he's searching and there it came up.

And I remember Karm saying this, blah, blah, blah.

And so they book it.

Now they come in, you still have to have a great service advisor

to be able to handle the inspection report and the timeline.

And if it's a courtesy car, whatever it is, that experience,

maybe it was a great experience on the web, but now you've got to finish it.

But then we've got to give that service advisor the opportunity to be great, right?

So if they're spending their day monitoring a calendar,

if they're spending their day, even worse than that,

we want to accommodate the customer.

So then we're shuffling bays.

We're not efficient through our service delivery.

So now we're giving that person an hour back.

That's more opportunity for that service writer to be awesome.

And then LSAs do the same thing.

So to go back to the prior question,

the LSAs are that now another market differentiator, right?

So when they search and in my marketplace,

if I'm the shop that says Google says that they verify me,

hey, I'm trusting Google because I'm doing a Google search, right?

So Google is some sort of voice of authority.

I've got these Google reviews, which is peers talking,

telling Google that we do well.

And now Google says that this is the shop for me.

Okay.

Because I don't know who the shop for me is.

I'm John Q. Public.

I don't know anything about my car.

All I know is that it's angry right now and I need it to not be angry

because my kids need to get to where they need to get

or whatever that equation is, right?

Did you hear Connor just say some kind of authority in describing Google?

It is.

Jeff, years back, we would use Google

and we would almost trust it to the letter.

And now today with AI and their quick interpretation

of your concern, question, thought, idea that you're looking for,

who knows?

I'm not 100% sure that some of the information that comes up

is accurate.

It's right because there's so many content creators out there

that can come up in a Google search, but some kind of authority.

And that just rocked me there for a moment.

Jeff, as I was saying years ago, I think we trusted.

Is Google still that trusted source?

I think it is.

I think it's only growing.

I don't think that there's anything to dispel that or to make it think that.

I mean, I think people know when you Google it,

depending on who's Googling it and where you're Googling it,

different information can populate.

But I think for the most part, people trust it.

So if I do an LSA, I got a green check.

You're almost trusting Google to almost a higher degree.

Well, because that data set is larger.

Now with the advent of AI, there's more data being compiled in different ways.

Not only that, you can ask ChatGPT,

hey, where should I take my shop in the area?

Who's the best rated?

You can ask ChatGPT and it gives you...

It's not an opinion.

It's postulated as an opinion, but it's using data, right?

It's looking at consumer ratings.

It's looking at overall satisfaction across different platforms.

I mean, so...

In seconds.

I'm sorry.

I am just blown away by that.

Yeah.

Just blown away how fast...

Are they using quantum computers or what?

Any idea?

They're using massive amounts of GPUs.

That's why if you have kids that are gamers or anybody that's into gaming,

that's why a graphical processing unit used to be a couple hundred dollars

and now are thousands of dollars

because the compute power that's been required is massive.

I mean, that's why the world has an overall...

The power demands are what they are.

Part of the reason why during COVID,

why there were chip shortages for automotive vehicles

is what the automotive companies bid to build the silicone for those chips

was a lot less than what NVIDIA was bidding to build these GPUs.

It's amazing to hear all of that.

But let's stop and think for a moment.

If we're doing LSA,

if Google certifies us,

God blesses us to the world,

why do I need a website?

Because the website is your library of information

for Google to understand who you are,

where you are,

and what you do.

Google can't just understand that.

It'll get little snippets and reviews,

but your website has two functions.

That main page where they land,

that's for the consumer.

The rest of the website,

which is pages and pages of content,

that's a library as Google software crawls to understand who you are.

And those pages need to be formatted in certain ways

so that Google can very quickly and easily understand who you are,

what you are,

and it needs to be unique information.

If your website is made up of pages of information

that are on hundreds of other websites

that are not unique to you,

Google's going to keep it moving

because now it hasn't found anything else new about you.

It's seen that on 13 other websites.

Okay, fine.

I'm moving on.

Really, it's a twofold thing.

All of those back pages that make up a website,

our Kukui websites now as we build them,

they have somewhere between 100 to 150 back pages

that are indexed and logged with Google

so they can be seen for whatever services

and vehicle types that shop wants to be viewed for.

That's what those are there for.

It's that library of information,

and Google's not just using that.

Also, things like app consistency,

name, address, and phone number consistency,

really important information on your website to do that.

A lot of shops don't know that,

but there's also hundreds of rating agencies

throughout MapQuest.

It still exists.

How it exists is that it reports name, address,

and phone number information to Google.

Yellow pages.

There's hundreds of those agencies

that also report name, address, and phone number.

Those really assist in map visibility,

but your website also is partially a hub for that.

So if I walked up to the Kukui booth here

and I said,

Connor, Jeff,

name one thing that my website has to have

that I need to go back and look at.

You don't even look at their website.

What would you tell them has to be on page one?

Home page.

It needs to show who they are.

It needs to...

How about a picture of the team and the owner?

It needs to be familiar.

I look for about stuff.

That makes me curious.

What's the team like?

Who's the owner?

Is there a team picture?

Do they look semi-happy?

Do they look professional?

And I see some of that migrating to the home page.

So that above the fold,

the kind of critical information that we say

that absolutely is have to have,

you need to have a logo.

Typically placed top left.

We read top to bottom, left to right.

So from a psychology standpoint,

from a comfortability standpoint,

have that present there.

Recognizable logo.

Okay.

You know, branding is really important,

especially from a retention standpoint.

Again, a familiar picture,

picture of the shop,

picture of the crew,

all that kind of stuff.

Phone number, clickable.

Address, clickable.

Appointment button, clickable.

All right there.

Have your review rating.

Have the ability to click on that review rating

and read reviews.

So if that's the critical information I need,

where you are,

how do I get ahold of you?

And can I trust you?

If I can answer those three questions,

chances are I'm going to bring my car in.

Because those are the only things I need

to feel okay with bringing you

and having my service done.

So I meet shop owners all over the country.

I just maybe,

I want to have them on my show.

I had a brilliant discussion with them.

They're on fire doing things.

I can't find their website.

And I say,

are you serious?

And then one of them,

Google search, business side,

click on the website.

It goes to Facebook.

And I wonder why.

Because we don't want to invest in a website.

We're too lazy to invest in a website.

We think Facebook is it.

What should I be as an outsider,

as a consultant,

as an observer of the industry?

Why is that happening?

The excuse generally is that I'm busy.

I don't need it.

I see.

Okay.

All right.

What if you weren't?

Okay.

So what if we have,

I think we've discovered in the last five years

that outside market forces can have massive shifts

in how busy or not busy we are.

You would almost think

the way the industry is being enveloped,

consolidated.

I mean,

there's some bigger players out there

and there's some really successful top shops

that are now on their second,

third,

fourth,

fifth shop.

And they're spending.

I remember I did an episode with Chris Cotton

and he bought a shop in Durango,

Colorado.

Yeah.

He mentions the fact

that he spent marketing money

as a percent of sales

as if he was a $200,000 a month shop.

And he went from 125,

that spend 250.

And when I did this episode with him,

he was like,

he says,

well, this month we're going to hit 180

because I've been spending like I was 200.

What a powerful.

It is.

But we have a problem in this industry,

especially when it comes to Google ad spend.

There's been a lot of providers

that have created this belief

that you need to spend

massive amounts of money

every month on Google ads

to get a level of conversion

that generally is not necessary.

The reason why is that

all of those providers

have never been able to look at the revenue

that they're generating for shops.

The only thing that they can report

to that shop owner

is clicks,

impressions,

and maybe phone calls.

That's only half the battle.

So they're asking shops

to have 2,000, 3,000.

I've literally talked to a shop

that's in the Midwest,

the mid market.

They're spending $4,000 a month on Google ads.

And I asked him,

I said,

is every month,

are they using that entire budget?

They said, yeah.

How is that possible?

How does your market have

that consistent click through rate

for your Google ads?

It's not possible.

What they're doing

is they're bloating those ads

because the only thing they can report

is clicks and impressions.

That's the only value proposition they have.

Well, here at Kikui,

we report revenue.

We don't just look at that click and impression.

Okay, we've had this lead.

Here's how much we've generated.

Our average shop

is getting well over 600% return

on their Google ads spent.

Many shops get well over 1,200%.

More so than that,

we actually look at retainability.

We look at if those customers

are willing to return

from a lead quality standpoint.

Generally, what we have found is

the other problem is those companies,

because the only value they have

is saying,

hey, we made your phone ring this many times,

or we got you this many clicks.

Then it's incumbent upon them

to get those clicks.

So what we're finding as we analyze

when those customers come over to us

and we're able to look at

some of those historical data

is they're being lead stuffed.

So at week three,

if only half of their budget's being used,

that provider is then

rebidding their ads for 10 times

what it should be.

Or they're reaching outside of their market

where they shouldn't be.

So yes, did I get clicks and impressions?

I was talking to a shop in Cincinnati

and I did a search in their area

and I can spoof Chrome to look like

I'm in a different geographical area.

I had a Google ad for a shop

in Cleveland come up.

That's three and a half,

almost four hours away.

So I called that shop

after I got off of that meeting

with that shop and I said,

hey, I know you don't know me.

I'm Connor with Kukui.

I got a question for you.

I stumbled across one of your Google ads.

Can I guess how much

you're spending a month?

And the guy, sure, I guess.

I said, you're spending probably

$1,500, $2,500 a month on Google ads.

He goes, how the hell did you know that?

I said, well, I can tell you how.

I said, because they put your target map,

not five miles, not 10 miles,

which are your normal areas

that you should be delivering

the leads for your shop from.

If I had clicked on that ad

when I was in that meeting

with that shop in Cincinnati,

I would have cost that shop

about $5 for that Google click, right?

Nobody's driving three and a half hours

to have breaks done

because that was my search term.

What was it on?

500 miles or something?

Yeah.

I mean, they're completely one.

But isn't it the fault of the owner

when he decides to set his parameters?

But they're not setting the parameters.

The company that's running

their Google ads,

they're basically telling them,

hey, this is what I want to run.

They basically made a mistake, though.

And they're trusting that that's happening.

I would love to think that it's a mistake,

but this isn't the only time I've seen it.

Because those companies that don't

have that conversion metric,

what keeps us honest here at Kukui

is there's the revenue.

If we spent $2,000 a month

and I delivered five leads

and it only brought them $1,500 in revenue,

I've become an expense.

Okay.

So help me understand the depth

of a marketing company doing Google ads.

Are they earning a percentage of that?

Or it's just a flat fee they're paying?

It's billed in different ways.

So we, for instance, we bill 20%

on top of whatever Google bills.

And that's...

So some do it differently,

some will do it a flat fee per month

and some do it...

So here's the story.

You have to pay attention in a very big way

how large a geographic area

that your Google ads is supposed to cover.

And if it wasn't for you,

three and a half hours away,

see that and then pick up the phone.

And if the only data that you're getting

is Google's AI-generated reporting

from that provider,

why aren't you...

I guess you're happy you're getting all these clicks,

but you're wasting your money.

That's so interesting.

Yeah.

So recruitment is...

A lot that we've been talking about is gaining.

What should or could we do,

websites, CRM, et cetera, for retention?

Massive amounts.

So one, I joke with shop owners,

and I talk to shop owners every day,

and my experience is,

I spent 20 years in shops.

First and foremost is with CRM.

I use this analogy,

but even to this day,

and I haven't been working in a shop

for about six years,

but when it snows...

Do you miss it?

There's days when I'm on my third meeting

about having a meeting,

I'm like, man, I would really love...

Listen, Jeff, go easy on him.

Jeff, go easy on him.

They're not all my meetings.

But yeah, there's days

where I absolutely miss it.

I've done it my whole life.

I mean, I started working on cars

in a shop at 12 years old.

So that's the core of who I am.

So yeah.

But I'm blessed.

Like if I want to go visit a shop

any day of the week,

I can go hop in the car

and go visit a shop.

So if I need to be in the environment

with my people,

singing the song of my people,

which is the Air Hammer,

I can do it.

So I'm very blessed.

Honey, I need a fix.

Yeah.

I got to go smell tranny fluid.

I did it last week.

So last Friday,

we live in a town

that's got a very successful

high school football team.

My daughter's a varsity cheerleader.

We don't do bi-weeks at our high school.

So we didn't have a scheduled bi-week.

So we put it out to everyone

in the Midwest.

Hey, who wants to play

one of the best teams in Michigan?

Great.

A team in Ohio decided

to raise their hand and take that on.

So they're in the Columbus area.

It's almost five hours away from us.

And I'm talking to Jeff.

Yeah, he took the off

going to football game.

I said, yeah,

I'm going to stop over and date.

And he's like,

you know, that's not anywhere near there.

I said, yeah, that's OK.

So I, you know,

I've got the kids in the car.

They're like, Dad,

we're going to a shop.

I'm like, yep,

we're going to go visit a shop

on the way.

Yeah, I knew it.

You had to get your fix.

I did.

I'm a fiend.

That's my whole life.

And it was a friend of yours.

It's a shop that's working with us.

Yeah, we wanted to stop in and say hi.

And you needed to go breathe

some brake dust or something.

I did.

You know, if I don't have

enough asbestos in these lungs, man,

like they start tickling.

You have to go settle it.

Right.

I used to have a saying

that a clean fingernail

is a useless fingernail.

And now I have really clean fingers.

So like, you know,

I got to tell you,

part of my history

is having been in the aftermarket

and the distribution side.

And, you know,

I visited shops every day,

you know, 40, 50, 60 a week.

And that's back in the day

when the air hose came out,

the drum came off.

And you know what?

On a cold winter day,

all the doors were closed.

And I just said to myself,

I don't think this is good for me.

And so I'd walk outside,

breathe some air

until I saw the level of dust

in the doors of the garage go down.

And then I went back in.

I was so smart to feel

that would be wrong.

But boy,

I've got some of that in my lungs.

I actually rigged, you know,

so in Michigan,

you get a lot of rust.

So wheel corrosion is big.

So we were a big tire shop.

So, you know,

we would grind every bead,

get all the corrosion off

so that the tire would seat.

Yeah.

And what we figured out

is we were generating

a lot of aluminum dust.

And I don't know

if you do a quick Google search,

as to what aluminum does to your lungs.

It's not stellar.

And again,

closed doors through the winter.

So I actually went out

and I purchased an industrial,

it's built for like countertop shops,

a dust collection system.

I ran ducting and built it

into our tire machines

to help remove some of that dust

because we would come home

with what we would call moon rocks.

And that was the black boogers

that you would have

when you would get home.

So did you have a bag?

You put them in?

No, we wouldn't keep those.

I bet you they'd be great

for compost in the garden.

More than likely, you know,

they've got a lot of minerals

in those things.

You can pull them

and snap them in the garden.

Yeah.

Sorry to make this so gross, my listener.

That happens.

Oh my God.

I'm with Connor Tracy Kukui,

Director of Partner Development

and Product Evangelist.

We can hear that.

So to go back to that,

the conversation about CRM.

Yeah.

The analogy I use for shop owners is,

you know,

do you ever have those people

that whenever their car is broken,

they're your best friend,

but you don't hear from them in between?

It happens to all of us.

Yeah.

Hey, buddy, my car is broken.

I had the guy that met

that they met at the bar

that figured out that, you know,

the sad part is,

is most CRM platforms

treat the customer the same way.

They're solicitation platforms,

so they'll happily reach out to a customer

and ask them to come in for declined work

or they'll let them know

that they have an oil change that's due.

They're asking for money every time.

What do you think that does

to that trust bond, right?

The overwhelming anxiety

people have about automotive repairs,

they're just going to try to,

quote unquote, sell me something.

Well, if the only outreach

we have post visit

is they're trying to sell me something,

we're validating that thought.

So we've really tried to flip the script

with our CRM and how it functions.

So much of what we do

is really empathetic,

personal care and messaging.

Most of the messaging that we send

are things like,

hey, this is, you know, XYZ Automotive.

We just want our job.

Check out and see how you're doing.

It's been a couple of months.

There's anything let us.

They're not asking for anything.

Hey, it's been a little while

since we've seen the 2011 Dodge.

Just checking in on.

Hear any noise.

Car still driving straight.

TPMS light ever come on.

I mean, these are things that go on

every day in our world

as we're sitting in that seat.

And if we're aware of the world around us,

the vehicle is around us.

The whole goal for us,

then, is to mine that investment

that shop owners have made.

So when I talk to shops,

I say, you know,

I want you to think about,

you know, give me a percentage

of the time, energy,

effort and investment you've made

in providing the best possible

customer experience that you have.

Generally, it's 99%.

You know, it's the building

that they have.

It's the parts that they buy.

It's the employees that they have.

It's the software.

It's everything.

It's millions of dollars

in every single shop.

And it's hundreds of thousands

of hours.

That cost is immense.

So my question for them is,

what are you doing to reap

that investment that you've made?

We just sprinkling be back dust

on them when they leave the shop.

Yes, they feel great.

We provided great customer service.

99% of the service that people get

in automotive repair shops is positive.

But what are we doing

to reap that return?

So the goal for us is to create

these periodic touches of just

really nothing conversation.

Hey, we're just checking in

and you see how things are going.

What that does is that extends

that goodwill that we built.

And what we found is organically,

it opens up a lot of opportunities.

Tammy Shoemaker, who I know

that you guys know,

I was looking at some of her messages

and this was from about a month ago.

And they were like, hey,

we're just checking in on the 2009 Hyundai.

I want to make sure everything's good.

Customer goes, yeah, everything's great.

By the way, my Alpina B7 needs a repair.

So for those who don't know,

an Alpina B7 is a completely coach

built BMW 7 series.

So you want to talk about

completely opposite types of vehicles.

But they took just a,

hey, we really care about you.

And I ended up looking at the RO.

It was a $400 oil change for that vehicle.

And we didn't ask for anything,

but just showing them we care.

The brilliance then is as we then

need to layer in our typical

retention marketing,

reminding people of the client work

or sending that promotion for AC.

The rate that it converts

jumps up well over 10%

because the customers don't feel

like they're just being sold.

We've shown them that we do care

because we do.

Shop owners,

they really do care about their customers.

And the ones that don't,

they don't stay around long.

But the ones that do well,

they really do care.

Well, this has been so interesting.

I learned three new words

in a level of succession,

be back dust.

I'm sorry.

I've been around for a long, long time.

That's the first time.

And in my mind,

it's just like, hey, thanks.

It's been great.

They're walking out the door

and you throw some be back dust at them

in hopes that they be back

in hopes that we did everything right.

But you don't necessarily own,

even though it was the best

and stellar best experience of ever.

You have a chance to lose it

from someone's else efforts of marketing

because they're just going to pull this out

when they have next.

So even there,

even if they search for your shop,

we have a lot of shops come to us.

They're like,

why are you running Google ads

for my shop's name?

Okay.

Do you want,

oh my God,

your competitor shop to pop up

if they're searching for you?

I just got a wild thought.

Well, be back dust.

Okay.

Yeah, thanks.

You know,

I just paid for an ADAS thing.

I have no idea what the hell that is,

but I trust these people.

They've been good to me

and they don't know what the hell it means.

We're living in a world of acronyms

and we share those acronyms to our clients

and they walk out

and no amount of be back dust will work.

If you don't take the time

and bring the level of professionalism

in what we say to our clients,

we calibrated your vehicle back to OE specs.

So it drives straight and it works

and all those computers that help you

stay on the road,

stay away from people,

know that there's people on the side

or the left or behind you.

It all works.

And that's part of be back dust.

We actually just had a conversation

about that yesterday

when we were talking,

we were looking at our listing for SEMA

and it said online appointments

on our scheduling

and the team's like,

well, it's live scheduling.

And I had to bring it back to the team

and said,

hey guys, we know that live scheduling

is a term we've adopted in the industry,

but our consumers are looking

at online appointments.

Yeah.

Hey guys,

I think we can go on for a couple of hours.

It's been a very interesting talk.

Jeff,

I see why he's doing what he's doing.

Does a great job.

You got any final words to someone?

Just that we appreciate being here.

We appreciate your time.

We appreciate being a part of the podcast.

Yeah, thank you.

Your continued support as well.

We appreciate your support.

You guys have done a great job.

Ever since I got in the industry,

seeing everybody with the kukui beads forever.

And I'm so glad you became a partner on the show.

And wow, I have more questions than ever.

So we've got to come back and do this

because it was very, very educational.

Very educational.

I learned a lot.

Connor Tracy,

Jeff Jackson,

VP of sales kukui.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks for being on board to listen and learn

from the premier automotive repair business podcast,

Remarkable Results Radio.

Get your episodic education on the ARPN listening app

at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com.

Also enjoy the podcast on our

Karm Capriato YouTube channel.

Karm is all for advancing the professional

automotive service industry.

Until next time.

Google Endorsed: Leveraging Local Service Ads (LSAs) to Differentiate Your Shop [THA 457]

About this episode

NAPA Tracks

LSA

tranny fluid

rust

wheel corrosion

tire shop

bead

2009 Hyundai

Alpina B7

ADAS

live scheduling

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