When you are locked out of your house you immediately want to hire a locksmith to help you get back in. How would you market your services if you were a locksmith?
There are three options. The first one is spammy, the second low margin and the third one is brilliant.
The spammy option.
If you have ever been in Spain, you have probably noticed that some doors look like the image below.
I am sure it works, because the phone number is right in front of the person who is locked out. But I wish it would not be effective. It is the locksmith version of sending a million emails in the hope that somebody will buy the blue pills.
Low margin option.
The second option is using online ads. This works, but at a low margin because Google takes most of the profit.
Locksmith brilliance.
Then there is a third method, which is brilliant. Some locksmiths have made an official looking document with “phone numbers of interest”, such as the police and fire department. These documents are distributed in the hope people will hang them on the wall in the entrance of their apartment building.
Of course one of the numbers on interest is that of the locksmith who created it.
Regular publicity is torn off the wall by residents in no time. However, almost nobody considers these document to be publicity. The result is that you can see this “useful information” in buildings everywhere.
