There is a wide variety of advertising methods you can use to market your locksmith business.
There are two distinct but related worlds to pay attention to. Online and Offline. We are going to discuss the advantages of each of these and how you can use them together for best results.
As we specialise in leaflet distribution we are going to spend some extra time talking about targeting your clients with flyers. We are going to pay extra attention to the specifics of the locksmithing business and how these will influence how you choose to advertise.
Let’s get into it.
Advertising a locksmith business offline
One of the main advantages of advertising your locksmith business offline is the control you keep over every element of your marketing.
Many online trade apps and directories allow you to advertise but severely limit how you can present yourself.
You often only get a small icon and a short description of yourself next to all of your local competition. It is almost impossible to separate yourself from your competition as there simply isn’t enough space to do so.
This often leads to competing on price and paying the app provider for higher placement in the search results. This is generally not desirable or sustainable.
You can compare this to advertising with leaflets.
Your leaflet will most likely be an A5 format. This is considerably more space than you get in any online trade directory.
On top of this your flyers will never be delivered together with your competition. You will always be a part of a drop with companies that in no way present a conflict or compete for the same clients.
Most of this is true for other offline marketing methods. Whether you choose to advertise in related print publications, local events or stick to leaflet distribution much of what we mentioned above will apply.
Online marketing methods
With all that said it would be very unwise to not pay attention to the variety of online advertising methods that are available.
We’ve already mentioned trade apps and directories some of which might be worth paying attention to.
There is also the world of social media marketing, search engine ads and more.
Let’s briefly talk about social media. You might think that there is not much about locksmithing that is exciting enough to post about.
This is not the point. The point of your locksmith business being on facebook, youtube, instagram and some of the other platforms is not to compete for millions of views with pop music videos.
There are three great reasons to be on social media that have nothing to do with trying to post entertaining content to attract views.
Communication
– The great thing about social media is the ability it gives you to communicate with your potential customers.
Facebook in particular has done a very good job allowing businesses to do this. If a potential customer finds your locksmith business, social media gives them the ability to ask you questions they might have without having to block off time to call you.
These questions could be about your availability, prices or specific issues they might be having. They can of course send you an email but the easier you make it for people to get in touch with you the more of a chance you have of attracting their business.
Social media marketing
– Marketing on social media gives you an amazing ability to target demographic groups at a level of granularity that is otherwise impossible.
You can target people of specific ages. genders with specific interests and habits. You can even carefully pinpoint the exact areas where you want these people to live. This is a great tool to use if you educate yourself on how to do so.
Combining social media ads with other offline methods like leaflet distribution and hitting the same areas with leaflet and social media ads at the same time is a great strategy as well.
Showing that you are active
– Regularly posting on social media can serve the purpose of showing your potential customers that your business is active.
While a potential customer is searching for a locksmith they go through a process of elimination. This often happens very quickly and based on split moment decisions.
They find 10-15 companies that could potentially do the job and they have to decide on who they call.
Seeing that your locksmith business is active on social media and that you’ve posted two new images in the last week could help them decide that they will call you first since you’ll seem approachable.
There is more to online advertising than social media of course. A good example are google ads.
Google ads
– Outside of paying for your website to pop up when people search for specific terms you can also retarget people that have recently searched for certain services.
This means that you can serve your Youtube and Google ads to people that have recently searched for locksmithing services in a given area.
There is no need to discuss why this is an amazing tool to have access to.
Leaflet distribution for locksmiths in London
One of the best ways of advertising your locksmith services locally is with leaflet distribution.
As we’ve mentioned your flyers are most often going to be in an A5 format. You can use this space in any way you want.
This means you can deliver your branding properly and with the help of a professional graphic designer you can craft your flyers to perfection.
One of the biggest advantages of flyers is that they can be delivered into every household in a given area.
When you select which part of London you want to target, you know that a good leafleting company will put your flyers into every household within it.
There is no skew in terms of demographics, age, income level. Your flyers make it through every letterbox.
This is something that is fairly unique to leaflet deliveries. No other marketing method can do this. You flyers make it into every home.
It makes flyers an incredible brand building tool. You can choose your preferred areas and have your leaflets delivered regularly.
Your flyers being delivered into every household in your key areas regularly can bring results that other methods of advertising would struggle to compete with.
How do flyers work?
So what are the specific things about flyer distribution that you should know?
Use great photography
Most often one side of your flyer will be fully devoted to a high quality picture. Spend extra time considering what this image should be and discuss this with your graphic designer.
Stick to A5
The good old double sided A5 flyer is still the best format to go with. If you stick to a good gsm range (200-300) they are resilient, deliver your message clearly and are not expensive to produce.
Repeat deliveries are good
If you have a budget for 60,000 flyers you might want to consider delivering to an area of 30,000 homes twice over a 4 week period than to 60,000 households once.
Repeat deliveries are very powerful and often bring better results than larger single delivery campaigns.
Use a reputable company
Always use a reputable company with professional systems in place. You need to make sure that the flyers you produce are of high quality and that they all find their way to the right households. You can find out more about our service here.
There is a good amount of logistics, tracking and training involved in professional leaflet delivery. You always want to use a company with good robust systems and a good reputation. You can find more information about our GPS tracking here.
Stick to shared distribution
Your locksmith leaflets can either be delivered on their own or together with up to two other flyers. Delivering your flyers together with others is called shared distribution.
Always go for this option where available. Shared distribution (when done right) gets you exactly the same results as having your flyers delivered on their own at less than half of the cost. You can find out more shared and solo distribution here.
Door to door only
Locksmiths should really consider only door to door deliveries to residential households or B2B deliveries. Any other delivery method is not suitable for a locksmith business.
Offline B2B advertising for locksmiths
When it comes to leaflet advertising for your locksmith business we’ve discussed only B2C methods so far.
If you want to target businesses instead you can do so with leaflets as well. B2B leaflet delivery has similar advantages to the more common B2C deliveries.
B2B flyer distribution allows you to target all local businesses in selected London areas. This generally excludes multinational chains and large office buildings as there is no point in delivering flyers to these places. Find out more about our B2B services here.
Every other business however will receive your leaflets. Estate agents, flower shops, bike shops, gyms, cafes, restaurants, laundromats and more.
A presentable distributor will deliver your leaflet to the manager or receptionist and briefly explain what the leaflet is about.
As such B2B deliveries are slightly more expensive than B2C but they can be an excellent way to contact local businesses with a physical piece of advertising.
Online B2B advertising
There are B2B marketing options for locksmith businesses in the online world as well.
LinkedIN is the most obvious place to go for B2B online advertising. The targeting here is again the most attractive element.
With LinkedIN you can target businesses of a specific type, size, industry or target even by company names. Here is a great article about LinkedIN advertising.
On top of this you can choose to target people in specific positions within these companies.
Combining this together with delivering leaflets to these local businesses can create a similar effect to B2C campaigns.
When your potential customers see your leaflets in the real world as well as online you will stand out.
