Imagine a customer searching for “auto repair near me” and your garage pops up first—shiny, detailed, door open, and inviting. They see your shop on Google Maps, so they know it’s close to them. And all your details, from hours to reviews to best time for a quick oil change, are right at their fingertips.
They’d be hard pressed not to take the next step—bringing their car in.
Crafting an engaging Google Business profile is as critical as a good wrench is for a local custom detailing, body, maintenance, or repair shop. It revs up your lead-generation engine by getting your garage seen online and driving that high-intention online traffic straight to your shop.
You can earn this kind of visibility in your local area when you learn how to improve your Google profile engagement. This guide will walk you through optimizing your Google Business Profile to attract more customers and putting engagement into overdrive.
How Google Helps Businesses Engage Customers
Before we get our hands greasy, it’s important to understand why we’re doing this. How does Google help you engage customers?
And what’s more, how do you turn that Google profile engagement into real, walk-through-your-door, paying customers?
You wouldn’t just start posting on Instagram without figuring out how your audience uses social media. Similarly, investing some time into increasing engagement on Google would be a waste without the details on how your customers use this resource.
Being Visible like that Little Red Sports Car
First, it gets you seen at key moments—when someone’s looking for the services your shop provides. A well-optimized profile increases your chances of appearing in local searches and Google Maps.
The person doesn’t even have to search “near me”. That’s redundant to Google. They know.
They use this location knowledge to prioritize local businesses in local searches, so small to medium businesses like yours aren’t competing with big-name auto companies. You’re competing where it matters by localizing your online presence with Google. But this visibility isn’t a given. As you make your auto shop’s Google profile more engaging, you show Google and potential customers that you deserve better visibility.
For your next read, check out the Strategic Marketing Plan we created to help our auto services customers do just that.
Opening the Lines of Customer Communication
Get rid of the gunk and help people get to what they’re actually looking for.
Google Profile features like reviews, Q&A, Google updates, scheduling, special offers, reviews, and messaging facilitate direct communication with potential clients.
Leverage these tools to make your page look inviting and shop dependable.
Instead of turning your Google Business Profile into a boring business card, you’re going to build an engaging profile that feels authentic, builds trust, and convinces strangers to choose you.
Sound good? Well, there’s more!
Find Out What’s Working Under the Hood
Google provides analytics on how customers find and interact with your profile. It’s invaluable. As you start looking at this data, you’ll see patterns you can use to become a well-oiled machine for generating repair shop customers online.
And hey, we’re not necessarily talking about spending hours digging through spreadsheets of data (unless that’s your thing). Modern local marketing software helps you make sense of the data fast. Focus on what matters most and take action.
Building a Google Business Profile for Your Garage Shop
First, things first. Make sure you’ve got the basics covered. No one ever learned to rebuild a transmission before they changed their oil.
- Visit Google Business Profile and click “Manage now.”
- Enter your business name and select the most appropriate category (e.g., Auto Repair Shop) Pro tip: Google is adding new ones from time to time, so if you don’t find a perfect match for your shop, keep checking back every few months.
- Add your location, contact details, and website. Make sure this contact info is accurate and consistent on your website, other directories, social media, etc. That builds trust.
- Follow the instructions they give you to verify your business, usually via phone or email.
- Choose a special attribute like “veteran-owned”, wheelchair accessible” or “free wi-fi”. Some people search specifically for things like this because they can enhance their experience.
- Upload high-quality images and videos to showcase your work.
- Start asking your customers for reviews. Never ask for 5 stars—just an honest review of your work.
- Write a compelling business description highlighting your specialties. Bonus points if you do some local keyword research to learn some of the searches you need to appear in. Incorporate searchable terms naturally and sparingly for the biggest boost.
For more details on setting up a Google Profile for a local auto shop, check out this post next.
How to Use Google Business to Drive Customer Engagement
Here’s the secret. More engagement leads to more visibility leads to more engagement. Like an alternator, once you get this machine moving, it starts powering itself.
So, what makes a Google Business Profile engaging? Focus on these key factors.
1. Post Regular Updates
Posting updates about services, promotions, or events keeps your audience informed and engaged. It’s like tuning up your profile to ensure it’s running smoothly and efficiently.
Not sure what to post on Google? Keep your customer informed with:
- Images and videos of recent projects
- Details on local collaborations
- Local charity work
- Team-building events
- Special events you’re hosting
- Attendance at local festivals and events
- Limited time deals
- Tips for self-service and maintenance
- Coverage in local media
- Shop awards
- Behind-the-scenes footage
- Employee profile highlights (with their permission). Showcasing their experience and expertise makes your repair shop look good without having to say “we’re the best”.
If you’re wondering how to increase engagement on your Google updates, it all starts with sharing engaging content like this.
Develop a calendar to start generating shareable content and plan to post something at least once a week to 2X a month. You don’t need the post frequency of X or Instagram to be engaging here.
Empower your team to start capturing pictures and videos you can use.
Pro Tip for Regular Updates: Use a content scheduling tool to help you manage posting updates to your Google Business Profile. AI-powered tools can even help you with ideas to save you time and maximize the value of your online presence.
2. Get More Customer Reviews
Now, by far, this is the most critical engagement factor.
Customers don’t expect a 5-star all the way profile. People use reviews to learn how others experience your services and team. They also want to see how you treat your customers.
So your reviews need to be recent, relatively frequent, descriptive, and mostly positive.
Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews. Remind them to leave details and add images to their views. You can even mention qualities you might want them to talk about if they apply to get their gears turning.
3. Respond to All Reviews
Respond promptly and professionally to feedback, both good and bad.
Positive reviews act as testimonials.
Addressing negative feedback shows that you value customer input and are committed to improvement. Responding to positive reviews demonstrates that you value your customers—even after the transaction is complete.
Pro Tip: Explore reputation management tools. These time-saving tools can automate the review request process to generate more and better reviews. You’ll also find AI-powered review tools that can help you quickly compose meaningful responses to positive and negative reviews.
4. Share Photos and Videos
Regularly update your gallery with images of your work, team, and facilities. Visual content allows potential customers to see the quality of your services and the professionalism of your team. Showcase how clean, organized, and busy your shop is.
With written permission, share photos of happy customers. And don’t be afraid to share candid shots of your team playing around as long as they’re not doing it while working on someone’s car. These images are endearing and trust-building.
5. Add Geotags
Use geotags to localize images and posts. These strengthen Google’s trust in your local business by creating more local signals. When possible, include photos of local landmarks, festivals, and locations locals will recognize to strengthen your localness.
Pro Tip: Visual marketing software can help you store and organize your visuals so you can quickly access them to share across platforms. These tools can also automatically geotag your posts to amplify your local online presence faster and more reliably.
6. Use Clear Calls-to-Action
Ask for reviews directly. Invite people to learn more or book their appointment now. While people can’t comment on Google updates, they can share them on other social media platforms. So, encourage locals to share your posts on their social media and improve Google profile engagement.
7. Streamline Your Process
Managing your Google Business Profile doesn’t have to be chaotic. Just develop a plan and automate what you can so Google drives high-value leads straight to your door.Don’t hit the brakes on your Google lead generation success. Learn more about the small business marketing software built with auto shops like yours in mind. Schedule your free demo today.