How much to spend on Google Ads for PPF and ceramic coating

The short answer

Work backwards from jobs, not forwards from a round number.

Jobs you want ÷ close rate = leads you need. Leads you need × cost per lead = ad budget.

Example: you want one extra full front a week, about four a month. If one in four leads books (a 25% close rate), you need 16 leads. At the published agency estimate of $40 to $100 per PPF lead (Detailers Movement), that’s $640 to $1,600 a month in ad spend. Then check that the gross profit from those four jobs covers the ad spend and the management fee with room to spare.

The rest of this guide gives you the inputs: what clicks and leads cost, what jobs are worth, and how to split one budget across PPF, ceramic coating and tint. If you’d rather plug in numbers, use the PPF ad budget calculator.

What clicks and leads cost

There’s no official price list for Google Ads. Costs come from an auction and vary by metro, competition and how well your ads and pages perform. Two published sources give useful ranges:

The two sources measure different things. Detailers Movement gives agency estimates for specific detailing services (Detailers Movement). LocaliQ reports measured averages across its automotive advertisers, a much broader group that includes dealers and repair shops: an average cost per click of $3.13, a conversion rate of 8.8% and a cost per lead of $32.79, and for auto service and repair $5.31 per click and $44.26 per lead (LocaliQ). For planning a PPF budget, the service-specific ranges are closer to reality. The broad benchmarks are a sanity check.

Notice the spread. PPF clicks can cost more than twice what tint clicks cost. That alone is a reason to give each service its own budget.

What a job is worth

High click costs are fine when the job is worth it. Published price guides give these ranges:

For budgeting, what matters is gross profit per job: the ticket minus film or coating, labor and supplies. A $2,400 full front and a $2,400 coating with heavy correction can leave very different margins. If you don’t know your gross profit per package, estimate it from last quarter’s invoices before you set a budget.

Budget math, step by step

1. Pick the service and package you want more of. Start with one.
2. Decide how many extra jobs a month your installers can realistically take.
3. Find your close rate for that service: of your last 30 inquiries, how many became paid jobs?
4. Leads needed = extra jobs ÷ close rate.
5. Ad budget = leads needed × cost per lead. Use a range, low and high.
6. Check break-even: (ad budget + management fee + tools) ÷ gross profit per job = jobs needed to cover the cost. That number should be well below the jobs you expect.

Worked examples

Example 1: more full fronts

Target: 6 extra full fronts a month. Close rate: 25% (an example; use yours). Leads needed: 6 ÷ 0.25 = 24. Ad budget at $40 to $100 per lead: $960 to $2,400 a month. At the midpoint of $70 per lead, $1,680.

Now the check. Using the midpoint of the published full-front range ($2,400) and an example 50% gross margin, each job leaves about $1,200. Ad spend of $1,680 plus a $1,500 management fee is $3,180, which needs 3 jobs to break even. Six expected jobs gives a comfortable margin, if the close rate holds.

Example 2: ceramic coating

Target: 8 extra coatings a month. Close rate: 30% (example). Leads needed: 8 ÷ 0.3 ≈ 27. At the agency estimate of $30 to $80 per ceramic lead: about $810 to $2,160 a month. With a national average ticket of $1,200 to $2,800 (Cost Insight Hub), the margin per job decides whether the high end still pays.

Example 3: a mixed shop on $3,000 a month

A shop selling all three services splits $3,000 of ad spend. Every number except the cost-per-lead midpoints is an example:

How to split a budget across PPF, ceramic and tint

Don’t split by lead volume. Tint will always win that contest because its leads are cheapest. Split by gross profit per lead and by calendar capacity.

In this example, each dollar spent on ceramic and PPF leads returns more gross profit than a dollar on tint, even though tint leads are cheapest. Your numbers will differ, which is the point: run this table with your own close rates and margins.

Then apply capacity. If tint is already booked three weeks out, more tint leads just create waiting lists. If your PPF installer has open days, that’s where the next dollar goes. Revisit the split monthly using booked installs, not leads.

Why tiny budgets stall

A budget can be too small to learn from. At $1,000 a month, you spend about $33 a day. At $5 to $12 per PPF click, that’s 3 to 7 clicks a day, and at $40 to $100 per lead roughly 10 to 25 leads a month. Split that across several packages and each ad group gets a handful of clicks a week. It takes months to see which searches actually book, and by then you’ve changed something else.

If your budget is small, concentrate it: one service line, one tight area, exact and phrase match only. Our Founding Shop Pilot starts at $3,000 a month in ad spend for that reason: it’s roughly the level where one metro and two or three service lines produce enough data to act on within the first 60 days.

Big metro or small town?

Where you are changes the math in two ways. In a large, competitive metro, more shops bid on the same searches, so expect clicks toward the top of the published ranges and plan your budget from the high end. In a smaller market, clicks can be cheaper but there are simply fewer searches. Past a certain point, extra budget has nothing left to buy.

Google Ads shows you where that point is. The search impression share report tells you what share of eligible searches your ads appeared on, and how much you lost to budget or to ad rank. If you’re already showing on most searches for your core terms, a bigger budget won’t buy many more jobs. Better ads, a better page or a wider area might.

A wider radius is often the right lever for PPF and ceramic in smaller markets, since people will drive further for a bigger job. It rarely makes sense for tint.

Timing and seasonality

Demand for film and coating isn’t flat across the year, and every market has its own pattern. Use your own history: pull bookings by month from last year and compare each month with the same month a year earlier, not with the month before. Raise budgets a few weeks ahead of your busy months, because PPF buyers compare shops before they book, and lower them when the calendar is already full.

The full monthly cost

Published cost-per-lead figures are ad spend only. Your real cost per sold job includes everything you pay to get it:

• Ad spend, paid to Google.
• Management fee, if you use an agency. Ours is flat: $1,500 a month during the 90-day pilot, then $2,000 to $2,500 for Google Search (pricing).
• Tools such as call tracking software.
• One-off work like building a landing page.

Cost per sold job = (ad spend + fee + tools) ÷ sold jobs. That’s the number to compare against gross profit per job. The sample report shows it by service line.

When to spend more, and when to spend less

Spend more when:

• Cost per booked install is comfortably below your gross profit per job, for two months running.
• Google shows you’re losing impression share because of budget on your best ad groups.
• Your calendar has open days for that service.
• Close rate is stable, so extra leads are likely to book at the same rate.

Spend less, or pause a line, when:

• The calendar is full for that service. Leads you can’t serve are wasted money.
• Cost per booked install stays above break-even after you’ve fixed search terms, ads and the landing page.
• Tracking is broken. Fix it before spending more, or you’re flying blind.

Increase budgets in steps rather than doubling overnight, and give each change a few weeks before you judge it.

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