When it comes down to it, body shops are like people. There’s only one place you need to be known and loved: home.
Once collision centers get Google going — claiming your presence, a pro-level website, seeking reviews — the place shops must make for themselves is in their place: the area they’re in, with the people who live and drive nearby.
Owners and operators have heard it some, and been there, done that with Little League sponsorships and other ways of getting out there. That plurality is partly a problem: all shops know it. But make the Saturday youth sports circuit like a local, physical Google: it’s the baseline; baby steps — on soccer pitch or baseball diamond.
You do more.
Collision repair peers should show the way, whether for hustling and hungry solo shops or MSOs, which have more resources, but do things possible for individual owners, and formal or even informal gatherings of them.
Find what fits your “backyard” and “have people over” for a cookout.
Read on for ideas, tips and tricks, but not just those. Don’t strictly copy another operator on events they present — make it your own, for your town. The point is to prompt “next step” spit-balling. What’s a little better? Or, just bigger.
More is more.
Bigger than Little League
Shops know they should sponsor youth sports — baseball, soccer, basketball — which is getting huge on the pro level, so it figures youth interest will grow, too. Even lacrosse, in a pinch: pricier enclaves like a beach city in Orange County, CA, are nuts for the grueling workout, like soccer or rugby, with bats.
Think beyond the usual — maybe sponsor a pickleball tournament, if your customer skews elder.
Authentic Auto Body went large in other ways, taking sports sponsorship first, beyond Saturday park scenes, and then, more than just “we’re sponsors.” The two-unit Massachusetts operator also ponies up for Celebrate Holliston, a community-wide gathering in one of its cities. Soon it will also do several area Oktoberfest events, as the “designated driver” sponsor. Along its way it paid for exposure at a fundraiser for the local zoo, too.
“Eight hundred people,” said Authentic founder Steve Prioa. “We were the only auto body.”
Image from an Authentic Auto Body Facebook post.
At Oktoberfest(s), Authentic’s sponsorships can pay the entry fee for the get-home-safe drivers. Patrick Keefe, a partner in Authentic owner Envest Private Equity, also mentioned possible partnering through rideshare services, if a designated driver isn’t available, and the body shop pays the tab. Getting them in front of people who drive cars locally for a living couldn’t hurt.
Proia owns Jack’s Automotive separately from his Authentic focus, cross-marketing with them for the Authentic body shops. And when a sweet ride comes through Authentic’s garage doors, they snap a photo and post it on social. At one event, kids attending got to make for free their own “safety magnet,” reinforcing body shop messaging.
Something else collision repair knows: branded bottled water. This of course goes ball-in-glove with a youth sports banner, or should. But does every shop bring people cookies?
Auto Body Concepts in north Texas does. Co-owner and day-to-day operator Wendy Ott brings cookies to local insurance agents. That’s an upgrade of itself. Now bring milk, too. And you don’t have to brand it. Just enough pints make your point.
Thinking beyond, consider employee interests. A Las Vegas welder with a degree in auto collision repair has exhibited at arts and crafts gatherings. Or what of farmers markets? Should your cookies show up in a booth for the local dairy? With proper signage of course.
Here’s another upgrade and it’s not hard. In Missouri, Mr. Dent Collision has found business at the track — racecars, not racehorses. A step or three up from Little League, and it gets the gaze of gearheads who’d care about quality work.
Even Bigger Than That
Want more? One Classic Collision shop in East Texas signed on for local radio coverage of youth football. Texas football: talk about ardent fans. And it’s not just team fans, but the broadcast listeners too. Meantime, Classic Collision corporate sponsors NASCAR events.
That sort of sponsorship can also get a collision repair center access to other corporate sponsors that are spending money in larger markets and perhaps have fleets. Even the smallest NASCAR ad on that car gets this access. A golf resort in Florida once took one, not because those watching stock cars racing play golf, but because companies that buy ads for those viewers do.
Consider Chicagoland’s CDE Collision Centers, sponsoring minor league hockey. This gets buyers a package of benefits, including the videos of, for CDE, “Collisions of the Game.” So have fun with naming it, too.
CDE (collision damage experts) got 30 video clips from October 2024 to April 2025 on the team website and YouTube, the latter of which has 5,700 subscribers. Most clips: 100 to 150 viewers; one got 700.
Car racing connects to “guys with cars” and hockey’s likely micro-targeting males: guys who like hockey, who could be interested in good body shops. Mr. Dent co-owner Logan Martin has also bought ads on local TV during sports events, often featuring fan favorite Kansas City Chiefs. Meanwhile, Quality Collision Group has also done ads, and those show during film and TV streaming — huge companies, locally targeted.
Sure, Classic has 350 locations, QCG nearly 100, and CDE has 20 — spreading in a roughly 40-mile radius to north of Chicago and into northwest Indiana.
But Mr. Dent has three. And some consultants counsel area body shops or the local or state association should get together on such ads and marketing: quality-focused, sporting events, volume pricing and reach.
Some News is Good News
Stranger things have happened.
Some shops, for instance, go what could be considered the other direction. Not to be different for the sake of different, but to focus on the sort of customer they want.
Scottsdale Collision Center in Arizona got its owner Oscar Granados into a high-end lifestyle magazine. These publications are often free, online or in print, and target upscale shoppers, especially women outside grocery stores and chic, boutique shops of all sorts.
In line with that, and just as a good idea, that can show the personal and human of a shop as well, SCC’s entry gave shop info — website, social media (Scottsdale Collision has 7,000 Instagram followers, with another 750 on Facebook) — and a quick Q&A with a dozen or so questions for Granados: family, hobbies, fun bio on his childhood ambition, dream day, favorite quote, and “what motivates you?” alongside 150 words or so on SCC. These were emailed and answered when Granados had a few minutes to spare.
Some shops have taken out ads in local lifestyle magazines like this one.
Or just buy an ad. Set it Off Paint and Body took space in a similar journal for Northern Colorado. Glossy cover, thick paper, no articles, ads easily costing thousands of dollars.
Or do they?
Publisher David Massey said $350 buys a full page. This gets the shop surrounded by other ads aiming for the well-heeled local clientele: mountain housing, original fine art from small galleries; chic boutiques, Columbian restaurants, wine tasting; theater tickets and hi-fidelity audio-video; bespoke jewelry, goldsmithing and apparel.
The magazine has been published 25 years. Advertisers commit to four months, still sub-$1,500 on a staple people see for an entire season — with a fresh cover of high-end local artwork each month.
“It’s an attractive cover, an artsy little book,” Massey said. “People pick it up and take it to work.”
But you don’t have to buy ads to go high-end or appeal to female clients. Elite Customs in Nashville upgraded how it treats and simply talks with women. The Damage Co. in southern Illinois held a “ladies’ night” and will do more. Women spoke with women on insurance and car repair, said owner Clayton Millsap.
How about homeschool families for attracting moms to a shop? Throw a pizza party for the kids or take them to a local science museum or batting cage.
Or just send a press release. Victor Botnari became for a time the go-to local news guy talking about the weather, catalytic converters and car safety. His Universal Motorcars in Las Vegas didn’t get shop YouTube views, though one about paint damage from raw eggs captured 300, but anyone watching the news saw them.
Shops in Florida including Northwest Collision Center simply sign-on with a press release distributor — such companies include EIN Presswire, which Northwest has used, as has Louisiana shop Toussaint Customs; Business Wire, PR Newswire and OpenPR, which RPM Precision Auto Body in New Jersey tapped just to talk up its new website.
Think again about employees. Maybe a local paper would profile someone like that welder in Vegas — a parts and production manager at Ascue’s Auto Body & Paint Shop in South Carolina, for instance.
It doesn’t have to be especially “big” — just seen. Smaller local websites are often desperate for content. In the community, those who read the tiny weekly newspaper really care what happens, or they’re looking for the high school sports because their grandkids are the mayor or the quarterback or a new Eagle Scout, or maybe the body shop that goes there will simply be the only one.
Paul Hughes