Ask ten shop owners how their ads are doing and eight of them will say "pretty good, I think." That's not their fault. Most ad platforms are built to show you clicks and impressions, numbers that feel important without actually telling you whether you made money, the marketing equivalent of a check engine light that never says which part is actually the problem. ROAS is the number that does.
Here's what it means, what counts as good for an auto repair shop specifically, and how to calculate your own without needing a finance degree.
What ROAS actually means
ROAS stands for "return on ad spend." It answers one plain question: for every dollar you put into ads, how many dollars came back out in actual repair orders?
The formula is about as simple as math gets:
ROAS = Revenue from ads ÷ Amount spent on ads
Spend $1,000 and it brings in $4,000 worth of repair orders, that's a 4x ROAS, or "4-to-1." Below 1x means you're paying more than you're getting back, which is the one number that should always get your attention immediately, the way a grinding noise on a test drive does.
What counts as a good ROAS for a repair shop
This is the part everyone actually wants to know, so here it is, with the honest caveat that it depends on your margins: most auto repair shops should aim for somewhere between 4x and 8x on their ad spend.
Why the range is wider than a lot of generic marketing advice suggests: repair orders vary a lot in size. A $60 oil change and a $2,400 transmission job pull very different weight in this math, so your target ROAS should flex depending on which service the ad was for.
- High-ticket services (transmissions, engine work) can be profitable even at a lower ROAS, since the dollar amount per job is large.
- Low-ticket services (oil changes, inspections) usually need a higher ROAS to be worth running on their own, since the margin per job is thin. These often work better as a way to get a new customer in the door, not as a standalone profit center.
A shop obsessing over one universal ROAS target across every campaign is a bit like judging every repair by the same labor time, whether it's a headlight bulb or a full brake job. Context matters, and so does not billing a fuse like it was a transmission.
How to calculate yours, step by step
- Pick a time period. A month is usually the right window, long enough to smooth out a slow Tuesday, short enough to still be useful.
- Add up what you spent on ads for that period (Google, Facebook, whichever platforms you're running).
- Add up the revenue from repair orders that came from those ads. This is the part shops usually get wrong, more on that below.
- Divide revenue by spend. That's your ROAS.
Example: you spent $1,200 on Google Ads in a month. Nine booked appointments came from those ads, averaging $380 per repair order. That's $3,420 in revenue on $1,200 spent, a ROAS of about 2.85x.
The mistake that quietly ruins this number
The whole calculation falls apart if you can't actually tell which repair orders came from which ads. If your front desk isn't asking "how did you hear about us?" or, better, if your calls and forms aren't tracked back to the specific ad that produced them, you're left guessing at the revenue side of the equation. Guessing turns a precise number into a nice-sounding story, and nice-sounding stories don't cover payroll.
The fix is call tracking and a habit of tagging where each new customer came from. It takes ten seconds per customer and it's the difference between an actual ROAS and a hopeful one.
Common mistakes with this number
- Chasing clicks and impressions instead of ROAS. They're easy to see and easy to feel good about, but neither one pays your electric bill, and the power company has shown zero interest in accepting "great engagement" as payment.
- Judging a brand-new campaign after three days. Give it enough time to gather real bookings, usually a couple of weeks, before deciding it's working or not.
- Using one ROAS target for every service. As covered above, a transmission job and an oil change don't play by the same rules.
- Forgetting repeat customers. A customer who came from an ad once but returns for years is worth far more than that first repair order alone. Your true ROAS, counted over time, is usually better than the first-visit number suggests.
Where to start this week
- Set up basic call tracking, or at minimum, start asking every new customer how they found you and writing it down.
- Calculate last month's ROAS using the steps above, even roughly. A rough number beats no number.
- Set a different target for your high-ticket vs. low-ticket services, rather than one blanket number.
- Check back monthly. ROAS is a habit, not a one-time report card.
Want a second set of eyes?
Knowing your real numbers shouldn't require a spreadsheet degree. B.E. Classics builds and manages Google and Facebook campaigns exclusively for auto repair shops, with clear, plain-English reporting on exactly what your ad spend is producing, and no long-term contracts.
If you'd like a free look at what your shop's ad numbers actually say, book a free Google audit below.