Case study · 75-day engagement
A Brooklyn locksmith with a real Brooklyn shop was getting drowned out by lead-generation companies running fake "Brooklyn locksmith" Google Ads, dispatching out-of-state contractors who quoted $50 then charged $400. Our client's honest pricing and licensed Brooklyn van were invisible. The fix was the LSA badge — Google's own way of saying "this one is real."
The challenge
The owner came in furious about lead-generation scams. He had been a Brooklyn locksmith for 22 years. His shop was on Atlantic Avenue. Out-of-state scrapers were running Google Ads under made-up "Brooklyn locksmith" names, dispatching anyone with a van to bait-and-switch customers. Honest Brooklyn locksmiths were losing the city.
We pulled his data:
LSA was the moat. Google verifies the LSA business before the badge ships — meaning real local locksmiths get a competitive advantage over scrapers who cannot pass verification. We just had to finish his application and turn the dispatch on around the clock.
The plan
Pulled the missing doc Google had requested (NY State locksmith license + insurance updated). Resubmitted. Verification cleared in 4 weeks. LSA badge shipped week 6. From week 6 onward, "Google Screened — Family-owned, Brooklyn since 2003" appeared on every relevant locksmith search. Click-through on his GBP listing 4× the same week.
Set up a CallRail flow: every after-hours call to the shop number rang the owner's cell first (3 rings), then his son's cell, then a backup locksmith on the team. Whoever picked up could dispatch immediately. Killed voicemail entirely. After-hours pickup rate jumped from 0% to 91%.
Uploaded 80 photos: van shots in front of Brooklyn landmarks (Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park, Atlantic Avenue), team headshots, before-and-after lock installs, NY State license certificate, and Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce membership. Updated hours to 24/7. Added secondary categories: emergency locksmith, auto locksmith, commercial locksmith. Listed 14 service-area zip codes.
Built /real-brooklyn-locksmith page that explained how to spot scammer locksmiths (out-of-state plates, no badge, $19 estimates that become $400). Included his actual NY State license number, photos of his Brooklyn shop, and his Google Screened badge. The page started ranking page-1 for "are Brooklyn locksmiths legit" within 4 weeks. Customers were arriving pre-trusted.
AI tools we used
We do not pretend the work happens by hand. Three of our internal tools are the reason this engagement moved as fast as it did. Each of them replaces what used to be days of human time.
Custom AI we built that grades every search term on commercial intent, urgency, and local match in under a second. Replaces a half-day human audit.
Takes one bad search term and proposes the related variants we should also negate before they show up. Found 87 negatives nobody had thought of.
Crawls the site and fires every conversion event in a sandbox so you can see what is actually being recorded vs what should be. Caught the duplicate form fire in 4 minutes.
The execution
| Week | What we shipped | What moved |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | LSA missing doc resubmitted, after-hours cell-dispatch live | First after-hours emergency captured day 3 |
| Week 3 | GBP photo blitz hits 30 photos, secondary categories added | GBP impressions up 110% |
| Week 4 | Anti-scammer landing page live | First organic ranking jump for "real Brooklyn locksmith" |
| Week 6 | LSA verification clears, badge live, "Google Screened" appears | First LSA call in 90 minutes, $32 CPL |
| Week 8 | GBP at 80 photos, 24 new reviews via Podium SMS workflow | GBP top-3 for "locksmith near me" Brooklyn |
| Week 11 | Final review | Run rate stable at 72 emergency calls/mo |
The numbers
The mix that produced the new run rate:
Average emergency lockout ticket: $145. The +54 monthly emergency calls at his typical 78% close rate = $6,100/mo in new gross revenue. The 75-day engagement cost $2,000.
I had been losing my own city to people running ads from Long Island. The LSA badge changed everything. Google said "this one is real." Customers stopped second-guessing whether they were calling a scammer. They just called us.
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