A marketing team from Sokal, an automotive digital advertising agency, explored different marketing options that could work for collision shops during a Repairer Driven Education session at the 2025 SEMA Show.
As the marketing world is changing as fast as the collision industry, the team touched on three options at different price points that are currently working for collision shops. They also offered tips on how each shop could do some of the options in-house.
Paid Search
Jasmine Church, Sokal paid search specialist, said most people have interacted with paid searches when using Google or Bing.
About half the content found when searching for something will be SEO, while the other half will be paid search. Paid searches are distinguished by a “sponsored” or “ad” tag.
“How does paid search fit into this bigger picture of your marketing strategy?” Church asked. “If we’re talking in terms of websites being your digital storefront, SEO being the gateway to your storefront, then paid search would be the business card.”
Paid search puts your business in front of people who are specifically looking for services.
Businesses can create campaign-specific ads that are triggered by keywords.
“If I search collision shops near me, that search will trigger the related keyword,” Church said.
Any collision shop running ads in a targeted area will show in that search, she said.
When creating ads, a budget is made, and you tell the platform how much you’re willing to pay for that ad to show.
The search engine determines who appears in the search in what order by conducting an ad auction, Church said. Google makes the decision based on multiple factors, including quality of the ad, relevance to the search, landing page quality, and the bid from the business, she said.
Whichever ad gets clicks gets charged, Church said.
“If you have a really good ad, you’re basically playing pay to win,” she added.
Ads are assigned a rank or quality score by the platform you are using, she said.
“It’s a performance measure, and this will determine the cost,” Church said.
Church said this score is the key to getting more ads for less money.
“The ad rank system prioritizes, and even rewards, higher quality and more relevant ads by selecting them to serve over lower quality, less relevant ads,” she said.
Studies have shown that users click the first five positions on a search engine results page over 70% of the time, with the No. 1 spot clicked 40% of the time, Church said.
“Showing up in those high-visibility spots directly impacts user trust,” she said. “The higher up you are, the more credible you seem.”
When running ads, businesses should have headlines and descriptions that are honest, compelling, and relevant, she said. It should reflect the brand’s tone and personality while maintaining visual consistency.
“You should be using the same phrasing across the board when it comes to expressing the explicit value of your brand,” Church said. “I should see your tagline in your website header, your Google headline, and your Facebook ad. You need to stick to central themes that you have pre-determined represent your brand as a whole.”
Words such as “premium” or “high quality” could be used in branding for a collision shop, she said.
Images also should be consistent across websites, social media, and advertising, she said.
Businesses should stay away from “clickbait” or overly sensational claims.
“Clickbait by its nature is dishonest,” Church said. “Outside of obvious ethical issues, using this tactic immediately undermines the trust you’ve worked so hard to build through your branding.”
Advertising platforms often won’t serve this content because of its dishonesty, she said.
Church suggests businesses use ChatGPT to refine ads or seek help from an agency, such as Sokal, to assist in creating the ads.
Paid Social
Katelyn Shadowens, Sokal senior paid social specialist, said that after a business has its branding, website, SEO, and paid advertising down, it is time to look into paid social marketing.
“Any platform that you can think of where people are engaging, there can be ads there,” Shadowens said. “Beware, though, because of where it’s delivering can be really useful with how we’re delivering the content.”
If paid search is your digital business card, paid social is the conversation that makes people want to look you up or take the card in the first place, she said.
You start by building a community with potential customers and users online, Shadowens said.
“Paid search is super great for people who already know what they’re looking for or who already need your business,” Shadowens said. “But paid social helps you reach potential people.”
Shadowens said that maybe they don’t need a collision repair center right now, but if they get in a collision, you want to make sure you are at the front of their mind.
“You want to be able to show people who you are, what your business does, and what makes you different than other shops,” she said.
Businesses have to think differently about social media because people can discern ads easily and tune them out. The content should feel very native to the platform it is on and blend in visually to stand out.
“You’re scrolling past hundreds, maybe thousands of posts a day,” Shadowens said. “When you see a very sleek and polished traditional ad, you’re going to immediately file that under marketing lop most of the time.”
On platforms such as TikTok, where personal content is expected, the overly polished ad breaks the flow.
Platforms also like to see engagement on posts, such as likes, comments, and shares.
“If you don’t have that kind of content, your ads are going to be more expensive,” Shadowens said. “You’re going to get less engagement.”
Businesses want to look like they belong on the platforms without tricking people.
Short-form storytelling is a method that works for social media, she said. This could be a 60-second video that teaches, entertains, or even inspires, she said.
“These platforms have really trained us to engage in content that is snackable, really short bursts of attention and energy,” she said.
These can be created simply on smartphones by collision centers, she said.
“The more organic feeling content really means that the barrier to entry is lower than it has ever been before,” Shadowens said. “You don’t need a film crew. You don’t need to write a script unless you want to. You don’t need a studio setup. In fact, not having those things could really work in your favor for collision centers.”
Shadowens said collision shops could reach out to microinfluencers in their communities to help build content.
“Their words are very trusted by the people who follow them around you,” she said. “If you could find someone like that to make content about your shop, that is an awesome way to really tap in.”
Shops could also use a technician who takes the phone for the day and shows how they work through a dent. A video could show a before-and-after photo paired with trending audio.
“They don’t really feel like ads in a way,” Shadowens said. “They can sometimes feel more like stories.”
These types of videos work because people are genuinely curious about what happens behind the scenes, she said.
“The goal is perfection,” Shadowens said. “It’s going to be personality.”
She also suggested that AI can help shops generate new ideas for social media advertising. However, she suggests making sure there is still a human touch.
“It doesn’t know your voice, your personality, your community the way that you do,” Shadowens said. “If you lean too hard into AI without having barriers in place, it can start to sound very mechanical.”
Social media users can typically tell that something is a little off when advertising is completely AI-made, she said.
Programmatic
Michaela Mundorf, Sokal director of digital advertising and strategy, defined programmatic as ads that you might see or hear online that are bought and sold using automated bidding.
These are ads you might see on CTV that are not bought like traditional ads, she said. She said they are shown across the internet on websites, or could be played on streaming services like Hulu or live sports. This also includes streaming audio such as Spotify or Pandora.
The ads are bought in real time for specific users who have been selected, Mundorf said. For example, someone could have been searching for the business earlier.
Mundorf said this is a step higher than paid searches.
“These ads are not going to be geared towards generating clicks for your business necessarily,” Mundorf said. “It’s hard to click on an ad on your tv. These are all about getting that information into people’s mentality.”
You start with your website and your brand, she said. You then build your foundation with paid search, SEO, and paid social.
“Programmatic is used best when it is on top of that very strong foundation,” Mundorf said. “You want it to complement what you are already doing elsewhere.”
These ads also could be used as extra promotion around specific times, such as launching anything new, she said. This could be offering a new service, such as a new certification or opening a new location.
It can help in a crowded market.
“Programmatic is going to be powerful for you because you do need to stay top of mind with people,” she said.
Budget and goals influence what type of ad you choose, Mundorf said.
Display ads are the cheapest option, or lowest cost per impression (CPM), she said. Impression is the time when the ad shows up.
Video ads are those that appear before a video starts, in the middle, or at the end. This could be on YouTube or your local news website, she said. They will be more expensive, but they also have more engagement.
CTV or connected TV is the highest cost per impression, she said.
“It’s definitely worth it if your goal aligns with connected TV because the household impact for that ad is going to be higher,” Mundorf said. “You are reaching whoever is watching it in the household, not just one person.”
People are more engaged typically than on social media, she said. They are watching the news or sports programs and dialed in. They are unable to swipe past the ad.
Static banners or animations can be used for those seeking something cheaper.
The top cost would be a full video production, polished ad, Mundorf said.
“There are increasingly more opportunities, and now that we have AI involved, there’s going to be even more opportunity,” Mundorf said.
With programmatic, your strategy determines who sees your ad.
The audience could be selected by demographics, such as people with collision insurance, or parents of high school students learning to drive, Mundorf said. It could target household incomes or owners of a particular vehicle make.
The most powerful option is to work with a data provider who can create an audience based on your current customers, she said.
It could also be based on what people are doing online. They might be going to an insurance website, reading reviews on Google, or making different searches.
“There are ways to track what people have already come to your website,” Mundorf said. “Maybe they have already gotten your service, or they are trying to find people who are doing similar things.”
It is important to use a trusted data provider, she said.
“You want to make sure that the audience data that you are using is really timely, refreshed, and regularly up-to-date,” Mundorf said.
Collision shops need to reach people immediately following a wreck, she said. They don’t want data that is three to four weeks old.
“If you are working with someone, ask them how regularly they refresh their data or how clean is their data,” she said.
Mundorf said that shops should avoid geofencing, which is creating a digital fence around a specific geographic location and then serving ads to the people in that location.
She said that could work for something like the SEMA Show. A local restaurant could use geofencing to target the area and serve ads to everyone.
Some collision shops will use geofencing around their competitors’ locations to try to lure customers away, Mundorf said. She said often there isn’t enough foot traffic to generate a meaningful ad impression. You’ve also caught someone when they’ve already decided on the competitor, and it is unlikely they’ll follow the ad.
A SCRS panel held on the Collision Repair and Refinish Stage during the 2025 SEMA Show also discussed how shops can drive work into their bays when business is slower.
Image
Featured photo: Jasmine Church, Sokal paid search specialist; Katelyn Shadowens, Sokal senior paid social specialist; and Michaela Mundorf, Sokal director of digital advertising and strategy, speak during an RDE session at the 2025 SEMA Show.
Embedded photos of example collision business marketing strategy courtesy of Sokal.
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