In 2009, when I opened my auto repair shop, social media was still in its infancy, the Iphone 3G took lousy (yet stunning) pictures, and flyers were common behind car windshield wipers and on the stairwells of blocks of flats, the distribution of which was often the first form of earning a few pennies for young people. Local radio stations were also hitting local businesses pretty hard with advertising offers, but the cost of such a campaign, while not high, was definitely beyond the reach of the young entrepreneur, who first rented nearly 300m2 of the hall and only then began to think about what he would buy tools for and how he would pay the next month’s rent. When I was 24 years old, nothing was an obstacle to getting into a compote up to my ears.
Neighborhood leaflet-gazettes even then, seemed to me a relic. As it turned out mistakenly, because in subsequent years I placed advertising in them regularly, and the effect was always satisfactory. This has proven to be a very effective form of neighborhood advertising in the 50+ target group, which has been a source of regular and loyal customers who have been returning for years.
A form of advertising that drove me to complete fury were the flyers stuck behind the windshield wiper of the car. The scenario was almost always the same, you go to your car, get behind the wheel, close the door behind you in a hurry because you want to move as quickly as possible and here suddenly, a crappy flyer appears in front of your eyes. You are so pissed off that you are absolutely not interested in what is on it, just how to get rid of it. Get out of the car to remove it? No way! Waving your windshield wipers will help! How about some windshield washer fluid? Further without effect, the watered-down pulp glides across your glass, and you take on the color of Christmas mullet. I remember the excitement like today.
It was one of the cheapest possible forms of marketing that could interest an entrepreneur looking for customers among car owners, and I was determined to use it, just in a slightly improved form. I wanted every car owner within a radius of a few neighborhoods from the workshop to know about my workshop and at the same time not hate it at the very beginning.
I quickly came up with the idea of placing a business card in the driver’s door, between the glass and the gasket, instead of a flyer behind the windshield wiper. I ordered the business cards themselves in a double-sided laminated version to make them as moisture- and rain-resistant as possible, and to help distribute them, I recruited a couple of juvenile backyard buddies. In several sessions, we “handed out” at least 9,000 business cards, which, as it turned out, secured a portfolio of clients for YEARS.
It didn’t happen that someone called with complaints about receiving a business card of the workshop. This is what I was a little afraid of, but apart from a few people shouting from the balcony what we were doing to the car, the reception was 100% positive.
The first day was called by those who knew they had a problem with their car, or simply needed an oil change, but didn’t remember to do it, or through their past experience with garages, put off looking for a new mechanic as long as possible. Also, the idea caught fire immediately, and the cost of the whole action, I bet, was covered by orders from the first 3-4 customers.
Next came calls from customers who had a light on their clocks (and didn’t know what it meant), or just happened to have a breakdown. Getting into the car, they took the business card out from under the gasket and threw it inside, and when something happened they remembered they had it somewhere. Customers who came to the workshop through this route , there were a mass of them for several more years.
The last group of customers were those who did not get a business card at all. But they got them from their friends, or random people who shared the acquired contact during casual conversations about their cars, or when they helped another person on the road struggling with a car breakdown.
Never before or since, have I encountered such a form of advertising for a local business, and to this day I am really proud of the idea. And above all, from what a success it has turned out to be.
Today I would certainly repeat this action once again. Probably with a more fabulous business card and not inserted under the gasket, but attached to the driver’s door glass on some easily removable 3M tack. And I would probably already be more selective about vehicle brands :).