In the age of Google and social media, most collision repairers continue to get business the old-fashioned way: by word of mouth.

Word-of-mouth referrals are the No. 1 generator of revenue for body shops, according to the BodyShop Business 2017 Industry Profile survey. Shops responding to the survey said they get 34 percent of their business from word of mouth. That number stayed unchanged from the 2015 survey.

The No. 2 revenue generator is DRPs, coming in at 32 percent (up from 29 percent in 2015). Advertising is next at 12 percent, followed by insurance referrals at 9 percent.

The vast majority of body shops – 91 percent, to be exact – said they rely on the word-of-mouth marketing tool. The same percentage gave that answer in 2015.

However, more shops are leveraging the Internet compared to 2015.

Some 65 percent of body shops said they use their website to market their services, up from 61 percent in 2015. Another 54 percent of collision repairers use social media as a marketing tool, up from 50 percent in 2015.

For more results from the 2017 Industry Profile, read the May issue of BodyShop Business.