Google Ads for
dealers and workshops.

The most common mistake in dealer accounts is one campaign doing four jobs. Someone searching 'used hilux sr5 newcastle' and someone searching 'kia service gosford' want different things, at different prices, from different people in your business. Lump them together and the budget drifts to whichever searches are cheapest, which is rarely the one you need most this month.

Split by department, so each campaign has one goal and one number to judge it on. The table is how I'd set up a typical franchised dealer with a workshop. An independent mechanic needs only the service rows, split by job if the margins differ.

Vehicle ads show a photo of the car with its make, model, price, kilometres and your business name, right in the search results. Google lists Australia as fully released, alongside Canada, Japan and the US. To run them you link Google Ads to Merchant Center, link your Google Business Profile, switch on the vehicle ads add-on, upload a vehicle feed and run Performance Max or Standard Shopping. A click goes to the car's own page on your site.

Two limits matter. Google's vehicle ads policies say brokers can't take part and dealerships need a valid dealer licence where one is required, and Google says vehicle parts, accessories, tyres and services aren't supported, so workshops and tyre shops stay with search ads.

The bigger trap is the price. A feed puts a number in front of a buyer, and in NSW that number has to follow the dealer advertising rules: dealer charges in dollars, a statement that government charges apply if they aren't included, and no 'on-road costs' wording for statutory charges. Feed the drive-away price where you have one, and keep it the same as the price on your site and the comparison sites.

Workshop searches are short and close to home: a suburb, a job, often 'near me' or 'open today'. Someone whose brakes started grinding on the way to work in Tuggerah wants a phone number and a time, not a brand story. Keep each ad group to one job, use the job's name in the headline, and make the phone number a call asset.

Pick the jobs you want more of. A log book service fills the diary and starts a relationship. A diagnostic or a clutch job carries more margin. A pink slip is a weak ad on its own because NSW caps the fee, but it is a reason for an older car to visit once a year, and that's worth more than the inspection.

Then watch the search terms every week for the first month. Car searches throw up a lot of noise: people looking for mechanic jobs, workshop manuals, wreckers, DIY videos and toy cars. That's what the builder below is for.

Pick your business, tick what you don't do, and add any makes or places you don't cover. It writes a starter negative list to paste into Google Ads. It's a starting point built on Google's matching rules, not a list from anyone's account: check your own search terms before and after.

Weekly repayment headlines get clicks, and they carry more rules than any other line in a car ad. Google requires financial services advertisers targeting Australia to prove they're licensed by ASIC, a requirement it has enforced since 30 August 2022. Before a campaign leads with finance, check whether it counts as a financial services ad and who in the business, or the lender you work with, holds the licence.

The ad wording rules sit on top. If an ad shows an interest rate, ASIC's guidance says it must also show a comparison rate, no less prominently. If it shows a repayment, put the price and term beside it. The wording for each of these is on the car advertising rules page.

A car sale often happens weeks after the click, in the showroom, after two phone calls and a trade-in valuation. If Google Ads only sees the form fill, it will chase whatever fills forms. Two Google features close the gap. Call measurement can count calls that last longer than a minimum duration you set as conversions, so a 15-second wrong number doesn't count. And enhanced conversions for leads matches hashed details from your lead forms to the sales you import later, so Google learns which clicks became buyers.

That needs one habit in the dealership: every lead in the CRM or DMS gets a source, and every sale gets matched to its lead. It's dull, and it's the difference between a campaign that learns and one that guesses.