Moving Company Marketing & Advertising Tips [Complete Guide]

In this moving company advertising & marketing guide, I’m going to show you several marketing/advertising methods to implement for your moving company, then explain how they can work together to create a strong marketing plan for your moving company.

Furthermore, if you’re looking for information specifically on how to get moving leads for your moving company, check out our article on Moversville Connect:

17 Ways To Get Moving Leads For Your Moving Company

Your website is the foundation of your online marketing & advertising efforts.  Whether you’re marketing through SEO, Paid Advertising, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Mailers etc. the purpose is to drive targeted traffic to your website to convert visitors into moving leads.

Here’s what your moving company website should have:

• Clear Call to Action – People need movers, often times ASAP, so displaying a clear call to action (Quote Form/QF Button and Phone Number) makes it easy for them and easy for you to increase your moving leads.
• Pictures & Videos of Your Moving Company – Visual media provides visitors a representation of what moving day might be like and who might be in their home, handling all of their life’s possessions.
• Pictures & Videos of Happy Customers – Many people feel uneasy when it comes to other people moving their prized possessions. Displaying happy customers gives the prospect a feeling of success and comfort.
• Customer Reviews – Reviews assure people about the quality of your moving services. Display these reviews throughout your website and keep them updated. If you can ask the customer if you can use pictures of them alongside their review in your marketing material.
• Awards, Accreditations, Badges, Memberships etc. – These small pieces of content sometimes give the prospect that last final nudge and reassurance that your moving company is the one they should be using.
• Search Engine Optimization – Most people simply search Google for moving companies in their area. Being organically ranked at the top will land you many moving leads without paying for anything.
• Branding – Your brand image on your website should match other promotional materials & everything else in your moving company. Correct colors, name, tagline, etc.
• Retargeting – Explained next.

The moving business & retargeting are a perfect match for each other, here’s why:

The relocation process, from selling a home to moving into a new one, can last several months. If you have retargeting set up on your website,  your moving company will remain seen throughout a prospect’s entire process, beginning to end.

Many movers overlook retargeting, which gives you a competitive marketing edge over your competition.

Retargeting should be set up BEFORE other online marketing campaigns since it supplements your efforts that drive people to your website.

What Exactly is Retargeting?

You’ve probably seen this before – you were on a website shopping for something, then for the next couple days you began seeing ads everywhere for what you were previously shopping for. This is retargeting.

Retargeting happens through Google Ads, which display on millions of other people’s websites, and through Facebook Ads, which display within Facebook & Instagram.

By adding certain code to your website (which Google & Facebook give you) and setting up Retargeting campaigns in Google Adwords & Facebook, when somebody lands on your website, a cookie is placed in their browser, and they start seeing your ads on all websites that display Google ads, Facebook, and Instagram.

If you can get people onto your website who are at the beginning of the relocation process (this is where blogging comes in and I’ll talk about that later) you’ll be advertising to them throughout their process without doing anything.

With retargeting, you pay per click, and impressions are free. Here is an example of a 30-day Google Retargeting report from a moving company we recently set this up for:

In this 30-day report, ABC Moving Systems (Los Angeles Moving Company) got over 14,800 impressions and 37 clicks to their website for less than $36.

Networking may sound good in theory and it might be something that you’ve thought of or even tried at one point. But are you doing it consistently? Getting out of the office is a great way to drum up additional business. There are companies out there that are working with people every day that are in the process of moving. Wouldn’t you like them to refer your company?

The top 5 places to focus on networking with are:

• Real Estate Offices (Realtors)
• Apartment complexes (Leasing agents)
• Mortgage lenders (Loan officers)
• New home builders (On-site sales)
• Self-Storage facilities (Facility manager)

Here are 2 resources we found online for networking with Realtors:

Jae Burnham: How To Set Up A Realtor Referral Machine: Secret Advanced Strategy To Boom Your Moving Business

Grow Your Moving Company Podcast: Interview with Realtor Julieanne McGuinness of Keller Williams Team Dynamo

This was literally my first job for my fathers moving company, peeling & sticking mailing address labels on postcards for people whose homes were for sale. That was 15 years ago, and still to this day his company sends out hundreds of postcards every week.

The point is, is that mailers work. About 10-15% of his business comes directly from his postcards.

There is a great company and leader in the moving industry that provides listings of homes for sale in every city in the U.S. Check out USAHomeListings.com. They provide both new homes for sale listings and daily updates on when they go pending. They have a FREE trial as well to get started.

USAHomeListings.com.

Email Newsletter Marketing is by far the best way to stay connected with everyone you’re networking with, done business with, and want to do business with, all at once. Especially if you have a moving company software that you can easily access the email addresses of all of your previous customers.

There are many platforms where you can set up an email newsletter yourself – Constant Contact, MailChimp, Aweber, Verticle Response, just to name a few.

You can also third-party it out to Moversville. We are an email marketing service for movers who are both experts in email marketing & the moving industry. The benefits hiring us are not having to worry about content, coding, or finding the time to do it every month. It just gets done. You’ll also be streamlined into a proven system rather than guessing & sending.

Email Newsletter Marketing Tips (if you decide to do-it-yourself)

• Be Consistent – Many movers who do their own newsletters get excited about it initially, then slowly forget to send it out. Don’t do this. The more consistent you are over a longer period of time, the more benefit you’ll get.
• Send Once (or Max Twice) Per Month – Too little is not enough for people to remember you, and too much is annoying (from a moving company). The more you send, the more inevitable unsubscribes you’ll get. From our experience, for the moving industry, 1-2 times per month is the sweet spot.
• Include Helpful and/or Engaging Content – Great content increases open rates, decreases unsubscribes, and decreases your chances of landing in spam folders. You can choose to add your own blog posts as content or link out to other articles or videos you might find interesting. Of course, with Moversville, you don’t ever have to worry about content – we include fresh engaging content that we know works.
• Create Clean & Mobile Friendly Emails – People are looking at their emails on many different devices, so what you see on your screen, may not show the same on other screens. Make sure you test your emails on all devices possible. And remember, the fancier you are with your email, the less likely it will render properly on all devices.
• Always Send an Ice Breaker Email – Before blasting out your email newsletter, it’s best to write and send a plain text email beforehand. This warms them up to your next emails and also humanizes your messages.

Benefits of Email Newsletter Marketing by Moversville

Getting listed means adding your business listing to popular directories & review sites like Google MyBusiness, Yelp, YP.com, Merchant Circle, Kudzu, CitySearch etc. Make sure to create high-quality listings that display consistent and accurate information.

Now, not many people search these directories anymore for services (aside from Yelp), but getting listed on these business directories and review websites increases your Local SEO.

Resources For Getting Listed

• From Moz: How To Set Up Your Local Business Listings
• List of Business Directories To Add Your Listing
• From Google: How To Improve Your Local Ranking On Google

Social media marketing can be a bit of a monster if you’re not familiar with it. The first, most basic thing you should do is set up your accounts with all of your information & pictures. Be sure to keep your brand image consistent throughout all of your accounts.

If you’re starting out and don’t yet have a following, running paid advertising campaigns on Facebook targeting real estate agents, and people who will be moving in your service area is a good start. Be sure to set this up with a budget and run it consistently for a few months and track your results. (don’t just try it once and quit).

Remember, any traffic to your website should trigger your retargeting. Social media is a good way to find people who are in the relocation process and target them to land on your website.

• [Video] Jae Burnham – How to create effective Facebook ads For Your Moving Company
• 5 Social Media Marketing Posts That Work For Moving Companies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no walk in the park. But, if it’s set up properly, being found in search engines can account for most of your business.

You can either do SEO yourself or hire a company to do it. If you’re going to hire a company, my best advice would be to learn about it as much as possible first, then pick the best SEO company for you.

Research your SEO company thoroughly and make sure they know what they’re talking about. There are many SEO companies who will charge thousands of dollars every month and get you nowhere. If you can find one that specializes in moving companies or local services (who need rank for multiple city based searches), even better.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about SEO because then I’ll go on forever. But SEO it’s definitely necessary for your moving company advertising & marketing plan. Here are a few things to have for your website, then I’ve included a link to a great resource to understand the basics.

What To Have On Your Website For SEO:

1. Basic Pages – Home page, service pages, about us, contact us, blog posts.
2. Location Based Pages – It’s likely you service more than one city, so having a landing page for each city that you service will expand your reach to those who are searching for movers in those cities. Not only does this expand your reach, it’s likely that there are no actual movers in those smaller cities, so ranking will be easier. Make sure your basic on-page keywords & title’s are set up with proper SEO.
3. Keyword Research – include keywords such as “movers (your city)” or “your city moving companies” in the titles, headings, and content of your pages. Mix it up throughout your content because not everyone searches the exact same phrase.
4. Site Structure – Make sure all of your most important pages that you want to rank are only 1-2 clicks away from your home page. When blogging, link to your location based pages, service pages, and home page with keyword anchor text.
5. Backlinks – These are other websites linking to your website. They tell search engines how popular your website is on the internet. High quality backlinks can improve your rankings, low quality or spammy backlinks can hurt your rankings.
6. Quality Local Directory Listings – These directory listings help Google understand the location of your business.
7. A great website health & research tool like MOZ. MOZ has one of the best keyword research tools, it crawls your website and tells you where you can improve, and finds opportunities for you. They have a 30-day free trial as well, plus someone you can schedule a one on one walk-through of how to use it. If you have an SEO company, they most likely will already subscribe to this kind of service that they’ll use for your company.

There are many more tips and information regarding SEO that I have not included here, so here’s a link to a great guide online for the basics of SEO.

• MOZ: Beginners Guide To SEO

When it comes to blogging, many moving companies don’t really understand how to use it to get more business. Blogging isn’t about posting random content, hoping your posts will be seen. It’s actually used it to increase your targeted reach & SEO.

Here’s How Movers Should Be Blogging:

In the SEO world, blogging gives your website fresh content, which search engines love. And when you internally link to the pages you want to rank (city based landing pages & home page), it can increase those rankings. But, search engines can also determine low-quality content from high-quality content. If your blog posts don’t offer the reader with much value, your efforts can be a waste.

Write High-quality Blog Posts & Market Them Via Sponsored Social Media Posts & Email Marketing

1. High-quality content can be used in social media to attract targeted audiences to your website. For example, if you write a post about “We Surveyed Our Movers: Here are their Top 10 Restaurants in Miami” and you use Facebook to “boost” or “promote” that post to your targeted audience (ex: Miami Realtors & people in Miami who are moving etc.) on Facebook, you’ll attract targeted viewers to your website. If you’ve targeted your audience correctly, and have retargeting set up, you can start to establish automated advertising to people who are in the relocation process. The key is to make sure your blog topic is something you know your community would be interested in – you know your community best!
2. Search Engines like to see that your blog posts are attracting new visitors and those visitors are actually spending time on the page, reading what you have to say. When that blog post’s value score increases, and links to your location based pages, it can greatly increase your rankings for the pages you want to rank in google (“movers your city”).