How to Successfully Market a New Moving Business
5 Phases, 8 Steps to Guaranteed Growth: No extra steps, just meat and potatoes
You are going to enter peoples’ homes.
If they can’t trust you, you lost the job. The farther away you can distance your moving company from a fly-by-night Craigslist random person, or a brokerage who only cares about pinching some profit off the top, the better.
Phase 1
1) Google My Business (Google Maps):
Signup with gmail (if you do not have an account) and go to Google My Business. If you do not have a listing, you 100% need to get one in order to get more moving jobs. Google will send a physical piece of mail to your home or business. If home, you can hide the address and let Google know you are a service area, and not a brick and mortar.
Fill out basic information such as phone number, and create the autogenerated website Google gives you with each Google My Business (Maps) Listing.
Example:
https://relief-moving-company-llc.business.site/
2) Lead Generation Providers:
When you’re starting out, someone needs to feed you. It’s not worth setting up your entire marketing funnel (website, and promotions / advertisements) without at least a handful of booked jobs coming in each month.
Thumbtack is your best option. There are multiple lead generation platforms, but you don’t need 2,438 ways to get moving leads for your moving company. You need the best path from 0-100 moves a month.
If you are just starting out, it’s NOT worth diversifying your leads. You need to put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch / guard the basket. We recommend starting off with Thumbtack for your leads, but you should still get listed in Google Maps. Get reviews on Thumbtack. Same principle as Google Maps. More reviews = more customers trust you and choose you on this platform.
Phase 2
No longer just a theory, you are making it happen!
1,2,3,4 moves per month! Once you have phase 1 setup and you are being fed leads, you’ll want to start soliciting reviews from happy customers on your Google My Business (Maps) listing.
3) Get reviews on Google Maps:
Google My Business has a “Share Review” url section inside your listing, to make it super easy to text/email your happy customers.
4) Register a .com or .net domain and setup a basic website:
We recommend platforms which require little to no coding knowledge such as Wix or Godaddy website builder. While these websites are limited, it’s important to have a .com or .net for your moving business to legitimize yourself against the fly by night competition.
Phase 3
Now it’s time to market and promote yourself, cheaply or for free
5) Take pictures!
No one wants to see a random stock photo smiling woman on your Google Maps listing or your new website. Authenticity matters. Show yourself, moving truck, packing, shaking hands of customers. Separate yourself from a brokerage, or you will never win the jobs you should be winning. Even if your beard does not look as good as mine, people connect with real people. Help people, and you will be rewarded. We aren’t going for super model poses here.
**Videos**. For even better marketing, create videos of yourself or team moving other peoples stuff. Simply self shot it, explain the type of move you are doing, and the location to and from. No need to reveal customers personal information or even have them in the video. Add all your media (pictures and videos) to Google My Business (Maps), your website, and any/all platforms you are buying leads from, primarily Thumbtack.
6) Webpages for All Services:
Create webpages on your website for each service you offer. This is tedious but it does help. Rather than watching Netflix 3 nights in a row, take the time to think about the services you want to offer. Each webpage can be basic, and show photos as well as some text explaining your process. Our clients most common list of services include (these are not keywords, but rather general major / minor services):
Commercial Business Movers
Furniture Movers
Furniture Delivery
Furniture-Assembly Movers
Internal Movers
Labor (Loading / Unloading) Movers
Local Movers
Long-Distance Movers
One-Piece (Heavy Furniture) Movers
Packing Movers
Piano Movers
Safe (Gun Safe and Vaults) Movers
Senior (Assisted Living) Movers
Storage Movers
Residential Movers
Apartment Movers
Some choose to offer Junk Removal, and Clean out type services as well. The reason this is important is because it allows the prospect, human being, who needs a moving company for their “X” need to see clearly you offer EXACTLY what they need. Image going to a foot Doctor’s website for your hangnail on your pinky toe, and you see a webpage all about helping hangnails, specifically on pinky toes. The more specific you can get in your marketing and services, the better off you will be.
The lazy method is to have a 1 – 3 page website. This can work if you have a good amount of reviews and images to prove you are a quality person and business. However, it will never hurt you to have the absolute most specific type of moving service the prospect is looking for on your website.
Phase 4
7) Choose Your Own Adventure…
A) Rinse and Repeat: Keep Being Fed, and Fed Well
At this point, you are being fed leads consistently from your primarily lead provider, but you are also actively building your brand for the long-term on Google Maps and your website. You can simply double down on buying more leads from your main provider (because with all your reviews, photos, and website in place, you will land even more jobs). It becomes a positive feedback loop, where you can grow simply by doing more of what you did to get to your first 4 booked moves per month.
B) DIY Advertise Your Own Moving Company Directly to Consumer
This sounds similar, but it’s entirely different. Rather than putting money back into the guaranteed booked moves sequence of 3rd party lead providers, you are taking a risk, but betting on yourself. When you advertise your brand directly to the consumer, it’s possible you do not receive any booked jobs. This is why it’s critical you do not skip any phases, or you could find yourself spending money on advertising, and not having any booked jobs to show for it.
Google Ads: Be sure to target only your city area, and correct keywords matched to your service webpages
Craigslist Posts: Paid, but a good option once you have everything else in place
SEO / Organic Long term: Get listed on directories in the moving industry and/or geo-targeted ones in your state and city. Work with local bloggers or website owners to get featured.
Social media Organic and Facebook Ads: Put yourself out there on social media. Organic doesn’t get as many views anymore, but paid ads on Facebook can go a long way for a small amount of money. Just be sure to setup remarketing ads, versus general ads.
Phase 5
8) How Many Hats Can You Wear?
At this point, your moving business should consistently receive new booked jobs each month. You have a real marketing budget, and ready to get to the next level of growth with delegations of responsibilities within your moving business. It’s time to hire a marketing person or an agency to help you. MoversBoost uses cutting edge technology and best practices to get the phone ringing each day for its clients. We are excited to work with growing moving businesses, and know for a fact, if you follow these phases laid out above you will turn this into a real, consistent business for yourself and family. Interested? Here is our free advanced guide of
Tripling Your Moving Business by Getting Your Internet Marketing Right
Real case studies and testimonials of clients going from 50 moves a month to 250 a month, and clients going from 250 a month to 500.
We believe that it all comes down to proof. An outstanding SEO company should always be able to show you substantiated examples and case studies of other Moving Company clients who have had great success using their services. Here is one such example for a client in Atlanta, Georgia who work in an extremely competitive market. We have been able to get them top page placement on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing for a number of their most important keywords in their area.
