Marketing is always a hot topic for moving company owners. The questions I get on a regular basis are “what are the best lead sources for moving companies?” or “if you were starting your moving company all over again, what would be the number one area you would spend your marketing budget on?” I understand the desire to know the answers to these questions, the problem is what works today may not work tomorrow. Instead, I believe the focus should be on timeless moving company marketing principles.

At one point my companies we were spending $250,000 per month on yellow page ads. It was an investment — we put money in and we got much more money out. So if you asked me where to spend your marketing dollars 15 years ago, I would have said yellow pages. The point is, things change over time. That’s why I want to share these moving company marketing principles with you, they’re timeless.

5 Moving Company Marketing Principles

1. Marketing is an investment – Start looking at your marketing as an investment instead of an expense. Yes, technically it’s an expense (for all you CPA’s out there). But treat it as an investment, you put money in, in order to get more money out. Like any investments, there are good and bad investments. Each individual lead source should be looked at as it’s own separate investment, the same way you would look at stocks or real estate.
2. Run monthly ROI reports – With your marketing being an investment, it’s important to track your investment to see how it’s doing. You should be running a marketing ROI report every month that tells you exactly how each source of marketing is performing and what your return on investment (ROI) is. You need to know your numbers.
3. Build trust & capture leads – When designing a piece of marketing whether it’s your website or postcards or even the lettering of your truck, it’s important to remember the purpose of it all. The purpose of all your marketing is to build trust with prospective customers and then capture leads by having them call you or request an estimate online.
4. Testing, tracking & tweaking – To manage your marketing efforts effectively you should follow three steps. The first is to test. Try out different sources to see what works. Second is track. Track where every call and lead is coming from and then report on the return on investment of that source. Finally, tweak it. There are so many things you can do to adjust marketing sources. From Google Adwords to Moving Leads, you can make adjustments and tweaks to the campaigns to make them more profitable. Only after you have tested, tracked and tweaked a given source should you make the decision to add more money to it or cut it off.
5. Schedule marketing on your calendar – I believe that every important area of your business deserves a block of time on your calendar. Create a block of time on your calendar every few weeks at least, where you sit down and work on all things marketing. It’s better to have a set time so that it doesn’t get neglected and you’re being proactive about it.

The days of being able to own a moving company without also being a marketer are over. You need to have a steady flow of leads coming in, but they need to be profitable. Use these 5 moving company marketing principles as the foundation of your marketing efforts and you’ll remain successful year after year, regardless of what the new “hot lead source” is.

Watch the video above for the full episode.

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Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

How do you handle the marketing for your moving company? Are you an amateur marketer that’s still in the mindset of, “You know what? I don’t need to be a marketer because I’m a moving company owner”? Or are you a pro marketer, someone that understands the fact that, in any and all business, you need to know, you need to understand, you need to apply certain marketing principles into your business if your business is gonna survive. Listen, in this modern day of the internet and the way things are changing so fast with technology, you have to understand certain principles that make marketing work. Knowing which marketing sources to use, that’s okay, but what you learn today will be obsolete tomorrow. I used to spend tons of money in yellow pages, tons of money in yellow pages, and that’s what was working. That’s what was hot. That was the thing for years, years before I was even in the business. But guess what? It’s not working anymore.

So, you look at what’s out now, you have leads, you have Yelp, you have Google Pay Per Click, there’s still direct mail. You look at all these different things and you say, “You know what? How can I become good at those?” I feel like it’s more important to become good and understand the principles behind marketing and understand how that really plays into your moving company. Because, listen, if you don’t have a steady flow of new leads coming in and you don’t have a way to book those leads as they come in, you’re gonna be struggling for moves.

So, I wanna talk to you about these principles ’cause they’re really, really important. I put some videos out in the past about marketing, and the responses that I’ve gotten I just… I wanna make sure that you understand, as a business owner, your role with marketing, and how you need to step into this role as a marketer and not just say, “I’m a moving company owner, I don’t need to deal with marketing.” Because if you want your business to thrive, you need these leads. If you want your business to thrive, you need the phone ringing. As great of a job as you might do, all the repeat and referral customers, you need additional flow of business.

Let’s just talk about these five principles that I wanna share with you that I think will really help you look at your marketing differently and help you excel to that next level that I know you’re looking to get to. First thing you need to do is understand that marketing is an investment into your business. It’s not an expense. Yes, it’s an expense on your profit and loss statement, but you have to start looking at it as an investment. You put money in to make more money out. You put in $10, you get out $100. That’s an investment. That’s not an expense.

A lot of companies are looking at people that they have to spend money with to get leads and they tighten up about it. They’re like, “I don’t wanna pay for leads. I don’t wanna pay to make the phone ring. That’s crazy.” It’s an investment. If you could put in $10 and get out $100, if there was a machine somewhere where you could put in $10 and get out $100, would you not do that all the time? Would you not invest in that stock? Would you not invest in that real estate? So, invest in your marketing ’cause that’s how you’re gonna scale your business. You could sit around and you could wait for the repeat and referral customers, or you could spend money to make money, and marketing is the best way to do that.

Understand that it’s an investment. Even when you don’t wanna spend it, you have to. If you wanna keep your business going, you have to spend it. And with every investment, you need to know what your return on investment is. So, you need to be running monthly ROI reports, monthly return on investment. And this is gonna give you the breakdown for every single lead source, every single piece of advertising that you do, that you spend money on, what the return is. I put in $10, did I get back $100? Or did I put in $10 and get back $50? You need to know what your return on investment is for every single marketing source, and you need to track this monthly. Period.

I’m challenging you, as a moving company owner, to start thinking like a marketer, to start looking at yourself as the director of marketing for your business ’cause nobody else is going to do it. You need to make sure that every single month you know what’s working and what’s not working. If you were investing in stocks, you’d be looking at the stock market to see how your stock is doing. You need to be looking at your marketing, your investment, to see how that’s doing. So, so important.

This right here is what helped me scale my business to $20 million a year. If I didn’t know these numbers, I would have no idea which marketing sources to continue to invest in, which ones to pull back out of, which ones to tweak and modify by doing this report every month. This puts some real, real power in your hands when it comes to knowing what’s working and what’s not. You wanna talk about clarity? This is the ultimate clarity. This is gonna tell you, “Hey, again, I put $10 in, I get $100 out,” or, “I’m putting $10 in, only getting $50 out.” You need to run these every month. You need to review them every month.

Number three, third principle I wanna share with you for marketing, the only purpose of all your marketing is to build trust and capture leads. That’s it. That’s all you need to do with every single piece, with your website, with your postcards. With everything that you do, it’s designed to build trust with the customer and capture leads. You could have a beautiful website, but if it doesn’t build trust, if it doesn’t give that feeling that they could trust you, it’s a waste. If there is not… If your phone number is not placed in the right spot, if you don’t have the correct type of web forms on there to capture a lead, in the correct places, you’re basically losing those customers that end up on your website.

So there’s more to just getting somebody to your website. Once they get there… And this could be anything, this could be a direct mail piece that you sent to their house. Once they receive it, it needs to build trust and it needs to capture a lead. When I say lead, that could be a phone call or that could be a request for an estimate. Every single piece of marketing that you do, you need to look at it and say, “Is that building trust? And is it designed to capture leads?” If not, redesign it, rewrite it, do what you need to do, build trust and capture leads, the purpose of every piece of marketing.

Fourth principle, you need to basically be testing, tracking, and tweaking your marketing. This is how you manage it. Maybe you’re hopin’ for the magic bullet, like this is the lead source to use, this is the ultimate… But that changes. That changes. I used to spend $250,000 every single month with yellow pages, every single month. And it stopped working. We started spending the same kind of money with leads and Google Pay Per Click. You need to be on top of it. You need to test everything, track it to see if it works, and then tweak it. If there’s a lead provider that you know about, if there’s a certain source, test it out. It’s the only way you’re gonna know if it works. I could give you all the lead sources, I could tell you what to use, but it’s gonna be different in each market.

Some companies, their leads are really good in certain places. Some markets, you could get highly profitable Google AdWords traffic, and in other markets, you’re spending too much money. The idea is test everything out, track it with your marketing ROI reports, and then tweak it and make some adjustments. There’s a lot of adjustments that could be made within certain campaigns. You could make a lot of adjustments within a pay-per-click campaign. You could make adjustments with your direct mail pieces. You could make adjustments with lead providers on which leads you’re taking, what the filters are. Testing, tracking and tweaking, that’s how you’re managing your marketing.

Fifth principle I wanna share with you, you need to schedule marketing on the calendar. If you just sit around and wait for the next lead provider to send you an email, or somebody to call you and tell you about some type of marketing that they have that you should get involved in, or you see maybe your competition doing something and you just jump on it, you’re constantly gonna be behind, you’re constantly gonna playing catch-up. If you wanna be on top of your marketing, you wanna do all these principles, you wanna know what’s working now, you wanna know what’s your return on investment is, you need to have time on your calendar weekly or every other week to sit down and work on marketing stuff. I’m a big believer in blocking time, creating blocks of time in your calendar when you only work on certain things, marketing needs to be on there.

This is some of the best advice I could you give you on marketing. We could talk about lead sources, we could talk about where to spend your money, what the return is. These right here, these are principles, these don’t change. These could be used now, these could be used 20 years from now. As marketing comes and goes, this is the stuff that you’re gonna wanna learn. This is the stuff that you’re gonna wanna ingrain into your mind and dive into and just let it become part of your habit.

If you’re still in the mindset that, “You know what, I’m just a moving company owner and I don’t need to know these things, I don’t need to take my marketing process seriously. I don’t need to take my sales process seriously.” Then, you know what, I hope that you have a lot of repeat and referral business, I’m sure you do. And I hope that that’s good enough for you. And if it is, that’s okay. If you’re happy with the amount of business you’re getting, if you’re happy with the return on investment that you get from whatever it is you do, that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. Not everyone wants to go to that next level. But if you wanna go to that next level, and when you get to that level, go to the next level, these are the principles you need to start following for your marketing.

Until I see you next week, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you later.

They booked fewer moves from Yelp and their return on investment was drastically reduced.

I previously posted a video called Diversify Your Marketing. This change by Yelp prompted me to follow up with part two.

Here are 5 steps to help you diversify your moving company’s marketing:

1. Know your return on investment – The only way to effectively run your marketing is off of the numbers. If you’re serious about becoming more profitable in your business, make sure you know which sources of marketing are profitable and which ones are not.
2. Test out new sources – Once you have a marketing report that tells you if your sources are profitable, you’ll have the confidence to try out new sources. Remember you don’t want to get stuck with one or two sources, you want to diversify.
3. Review marketing report monthly – It’s so important to get in the habit of reviewing your Marketing ROI Report every single month. This will give you the ultimate clarity of your marketing.
4. Make adjustments – Nowadays there typically aren’t year long contracts for marketing. Meaning you can make adjustments and turn sources off if they aren’t working. So once you know your numbers then you can make adjustments.
5. Don’t get comfortable with winning sources – Back in the day, we were spending $250,000 per month on yellow pages ads. I was comfortable for a while because they were working. Then, more and more people started shopping for movers online and we had to scramble to diversify our marketing when the ads stopped producing as well. Just because you have a winning source of marketing does not mean you shouldn’t diverse, you never know when that source might stop working.

Not only will diversifying your moving company’s marketing prevent you from being stuck if one source stops working, it will force you to try new sources which will help you grow your business. If you need a list of marketing sources, you can download a free copy of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company.

Watch the video above for the full episode.

Like this episode? Please share it! My blog and videos are ad-free ONLY because you share my work!

How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

Follow Louis on Instagram for daily tips and motivation to grow your moving company.

Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. Earlier this year, Yelp made a change to their algorithm, and it left a lot of moving companies, hundreds of moving companies, in a position where they lost a lot of five star reviews, and four star reviews, and positive reviews got filtered. I’m sure a lot of you have been affected by that. I just wanna bring up the point, again, that you need to diversify your marketing. This is so, so important. I did a video on this months ago and consider this part two of that, because, essentially, when you put all your eggs in one basket, you have no control over that marketing source, you have no control over Yelp. I know a lot of companies that were spending a lot of money every single month on Yelp, and all of a sudden, they lost those reviews, and they weren’t able to compete in the same way they were before, and the money they were spending in marketing wasn’t as effective as it was before.

I’ve seen it happen to moving companies that had a ton of money invested in their SEO. They ranked really high on the first page of Google, organically. Google made some adjustments to the algorithm and it dropped like that. It happens. It’s just part of it, you have no control over it. You need to make adjustments and you need to try to get back on track as quick as possible, but you don’t wanna have all your eggs in one basket. For me, since 2000, I was investing heavily, heavily in the Yellow Pages. There was a point, we were spending $250,000 every single month in the Yellow Pages. And around 2007, 2008, when more people started getting smartphones, right around when the iPhone came out, and more and more people started shopping online, all of a sudden, that money that I was spending in Yellow Pages wasn’t as effective. I wasn’t seeing the return on investment, like I was years earlier, and I was heavily invested there. I needed to kinda scramble, and those of you who’ve heard my videos, you know that’s around the time when I really started diving in, and learning internet marketing, and other ways, to make sure that I was diversified, and I wasn’t counting on one source. You need to make sure you’re doing the same thing.

I wanna walk you through some steps to make sure that you’re diversified, because I don’t wanna see you in a position where, essentially, you have a winner, you have something that’s working, you block everything else out, and then, whether it’s six months, a year, two years, three years down the line, that source goes down, you’re stuck. You don’t wanna be in that position. Diversifying your marketing’s also a very good practice to get in, to just be able to bring in more business. I’m gonna walk you through these steps, make it really easy for you. First thing you need to do, is you need to know your return on investment for marketing. You need to know your ROI. This is the foundation for all of your marketing. Once you know how profitable each source is, how much you spend on a particular lead source versus how much it brings in in revenue, that gives you all the power to make the decisions that you need to make, to diversify, to make adjustments, to tweak, and to add more marketing here, take away some marketing there. This is everything that you need. If you struggle with marketing and you don’t know your ROI, start with that. It’s so important.

Number two, test out new sources. Once you know your ROI, once you know what works, what doesn’t work, ’cause you could see the numbers, you know what’s profitable, you know what’s not profitable, try some new sources. Try some leads, buy a few leads, advertise a little bit here with Yelp, do a little pay-per-clicks, send out some post cards. Diversify a little bit. If you haven’t already downloaded the “10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company,” I’ll put the link. It’s an e-book that I wrote. I wrote out a bunch of sources that you could try in there. You could download that for free. It’s on my website as well. I’ll put a link down below. But test out some new sources. And then, every single month, review your marketing report, your ROI report. Make sure you review it every month. It’s crucial. Marketing’s gonna be one of your biggest expenses in your business, if not, already the biggest expense in your business. You need to make sure you’re reviewing it monthly, because once you review it monthly, once you know what’s profitable, what’s not profitable, you can make adjustments. That’s the beauty of this modern day 2017 marketing, which is you can make adjustments to almost everything. You’re not stuck in anything.

Years ago, you put an ad in the Yellow Pages, you were in there for the year. You’re on the contract for the year. Now, if something’s not working, if certain lead sources aren’t working, or Google pay-per-clicks not working for you in a certain area, you can make adjustments, you could stop it. There’s not much marketing now that’s a long-term commitment, that you’re stuck with. You can make adjustments, but you need to know your numbers to make adjustments. You don’t wanna be making adjustments off your gut and how you feel about something. You wanna do it, basically, black and white, here’s the numbers, make the adjustments.

And the last one, don’t get comfortable with the winning sources. This is what happens. I’ve seen this happen to a friend of mine, last year, that had really good SEO, was kind of avoiding everything else, then wasn’t doing any direct mail, wasn’t doing any pay-per-click, wasn’t buying any leads, was ranking one and two in his market for movers, and was getting a ton of business. Google made a change to the algorithm, lost his placement, and was pretty much suffocating for business. Do not get comfortable. The minute you find yourself getting comfortable with the lead source, use that as a reminder. The minute you say, “Man, this is awesome, we need to just continue doing this,” when you find yourself saying that, remember this video. Remember that it’s time to diversify. Don’t get comfortable. When you get comfortable, and when you fall asleep, and don’t diversify your marketing, you’re gonna get stuck in a bad spot. And I can tell you from being there, it’s not fun. If you have any questions, as always, leave ’em down below. I really hope this was helpful. Please diversify your marketing. Don’t get stuck with all your eggs in one basket. Go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you next week.

After you buy moving leads, follow these 6 steps to book more moves.

1. Accept that leads have a low booking percentage – This is one of the biggest frustrations for many movers. The leads they buy are converting at a very low rate. For every 100 moving leads you buy, you’re only going to book between 2 – 15 (2-15%) of them depending on whether it’s local or long distance. That is much lower than leads that come directly from your website which should book anywhere from 25 to over 50 for every 100 leads. (25-50%). The first step is to accept the fact that they have a low conversion rate.
2. Focus on your ROI – Accepting that the booking percentage will be low, choose instead to focus on the return on investment (ROI). Even though moving leads may not convert at a high percentage, they can be very profitable. Run your marketing ROI report and see if you’re making money from the leads.
3. Treat leads like they’re ringing phones – When your phone rings at your business you don’t just let it ring and ring, you answer it right? Well, treat your moving leads the same way. Try to call the customer back as soon as you receive the lead. Don’t let them sit in your inbox or CRM getting cold.
4. Have a set lead follow-up process – You have to develop a set process for how many times you are going to call the leads when you receive them and when. I like to call them two times on the first day then one more time on the second day. If I’m not able to get them on the phone then it’s time to move on. Your time is better spent following up with customers you already gave estimates to.
5. Roll out your own red carpet – When someone goes to your website and then decides to call you, it’s because they like what they see. Your website essentially “rolled out the red carpet” and made an introduction for your salesperson. When calling moving leads, you have to make your own introduction and “roll out your own red carpet”
6. Follow up after you give an estimate – This goes for all of your leads, not just moving leads. You must have a follow-up process for after you give the customer an estimate. If you want to increase your closing percentage then you need to be following up to book the move. You can’t wait for them to call you back.

If you aren’t buying moving leads, I suggest you start. If you are buying them and need some help booking more of them, follow these 6 steps and watch your numbers go up.

Watch the video above for the full episode.

For FREE Video Training on How To Build a “Sales Machine” for Your Moving Company Click HERE. 

Like this episode? Please share it! My blog and videos are ad-free ONLY because you share my work!

How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

Follow Louis on Instagram for daily tips and motivation to grow your moving company.

Full Transcript

[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO, Moving Mastery, and founder of Moving Sales Academy. Do you buy moving leads now? Did you try to buy moving leads at some point and maybe you gave up on them? Regardless of where you’re at, I’m sure you know the frustration that could come along with buying moving leads, but they’re a very profitable source of business if handled correctly. Listen, if you’re used to Yellow Page advertising or SEO on your website, or pay per click, or sending out postcards, or advertising with Yelp, you know these sources convert much higher than moving leads. And the reason is, essentially, those sources are rolling out the red carpet for you.

Let me give you an example. If someone receives your postcard in the mail, they look at your postcard. They like what they see. They’ve already read some bullet points about your company, maybe they go on your website, they see some more stuff. Then, they pick up the phone, and they call you. They’ve already had an introduction to your company. They already like what they see, and they chose to call you, or they chose to go on your website and request an estimate. With moving leads, they’re just going online looking for a good deal on a move. They request some moving estimates from a lead provider. And they know they’re gonna get a call from however… Three, five, sometimes 10 companies for their moving quote. But they don’t know you specifically. They just know that you’re one of those companies.

The way that you approach moving leads, and the way that you relate to them in the big picture of your marketing has to be completely different than the other sources, like Google pay per click, and Yelp, and your postcards, and whatever else you’re doing. Moving leads are completely different. I’m gonna give you six things that you can do to help maximize moving leads so that you can really dive in any time of the year, buy some moving leads, and make money with them.

You just first have to start by accepting the fact that it’s gonna be a lower booking percentage, period, just accept that. That’s part of the frustration. That’s part of why a lot of people will start with moving leads and then give up on moving leads, because they don’t convert as high as other sources. If somebody’s coming from your website, if somebody submits a request for a quote from your website, depending on the market you’re in, your booking percentage, your closing ratio can be anywhere from 25% to even 50% on a lead that’s coming in off a request on your website. Whereas a lead provider, whether it’s local or long distance move, could be anywhere from 2% to maybe 15%, maybe. That’s very high. But typically, it’s gonna be 2% to 5%, maybe 10% with some lead sources that don’t sell to as many moving companies. You have to accept the fact that it’s just gonna be a lower booking percentage, meaning that you’re gonna have to call, you’re gonna have to speak to more people in order to close as many deals, alright.

You might not like the sound of that, but what you wanna focus on, is you wanna focus on your ROI. Because although you may have to make more phone calls, although you may not book as many of these leads, you wanna focus on your ROI. Because if that… When I say ROI, that’s a return on investment, okay. Your return on investment is how much did you spend for those leads versus how much did you make from those leads. That’s the number you wanna focus on. Because if you focus on your booking percentage, it’s just gonna be discouraging. It’s not gonna look like they’re working. But if you get 100 leads, and let’s say you only booked three of them, let’s just say only three, look at the math and see how much money did you bring in on those three jobs versus what you spent on the leads. That’s your marketing ROI. That’s the number you wanna focus on.

The third thing is, you have to treat these leads like they’re ringing phones. And let me tell you what I mean by that. I used to always say this in my office, “Treat the leads like they’re ringing phones.” If the phone was ringing, you wouldn’t let it just ring, and ring, and ring, and ring. Somebody would pick it up, right? With a moving lead, when it comes in and it hits your inbox, you need to get them on the phone immediately. You can’t just let it sit in the inbox for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, two hours, half a day, one, two days till you call it back. You wouldn’t let the phone ring that long. Don’t let a lead sit in an inbox that long. Imagine it’s a ringing phone. Imagine every time it comes in, it’s just ringing, and ringing, and ringing. It’s very easy for your staff and for you to let them take the back burner because it’s just sitting there in an inbox, or it’s sitting there in your CRM. There’s no reminder that these people are waiting to hear from you. They’re waiting for an estimate. You wanna be quick and responsive getting back to leads to be able to book more of them.

You also wanna have a set lead follow-up process. You can’t just buy leads, bring them in, and not have something set up in your company for exactly when you should call them, how many times you should call them, and when you should stop calling them. I’ll give you an example. In my company, what we did was we did a two plus one. That means on the first day, we call them twice, on the second day, we call them one more time, and this is to get a hold of them. This is before you even ever speak to them to give them an estimate. We call them twice on the first day, one more time on the second day, and after that, that was it. But we made sure that we made those three contacts because sometimes, you may call a lead once and never call it back. That’s not enough follow up.

Other companies will sit and they’ll call a lead 10 times until they finally get them on the phone. Now, what I say is if you’re spending that much time trying to get a lead on the phone, you need to be spending more time following up with customers that you already gave an estimate to. There’s more money in that than chasing down leads that you don’t know if there’s even a real person on the other end. Make sure you have a set lead follow up process when leads come in. And this goes for all your leads, not just moving leads, this goes for all your leads and make sure everyone in your company is following that.

Number five, we talked about rolling out the red carpet with, when you send out a postcard. When you have a lead, you have to roll out your own red carpet. You have to change your pitch a little bit. You have to change what you say to these customers a little bit because they don’t know you. They haven’t already seen your tracks or they haven’t already seen your website. You have to give your own, roll out your own red carpet and give your own introduction on these leads. These are ways that are gonna help you book more movingly leads.

Number six, follow up after you give an estimate. I can’t tell you how many people are falling short here and leaving so much money on the table. After you give somebody an estimate, don’t just sit back and say, “You know what, if they wanna call me, if they like, if they wanna book their move with our company, they’ll call me back.” No, you have to have a set follow-up process for all your leads; not even just moving leads, every customer that calls in after you give them an estimate, you need to make sure that you’re following up especially on moving leads.

If you follow these six steps, I would… If you’re not doing this stuff now and you’re not buying moving leads, go buy moving leads, start using these six steps, track your ROI, see how it’s going, make some adjustments. You’re leaving money on the table if you’re not buying moving leads. And if you’re buying them now and you’re not on top of the follow-up process, you’re not treating them like a ringing phone, you’re leaving money on the table. I hope this was helpful. Go out there, maximize these moving leads. It’s a huge, huge piece. It may not seem like you get as much business as you get from maybe your postcard campaign or maybe your Google pay per click campaign or maybe you have a great SEO campaign going with your website and you get a ton of calls and a ton of leads, this is extra business. I have no problem putting in a little extra work to get some extra business and you shouldn’t either. Until next week, go out there every single day, profit in business, thrive in life. I’ll see you later.

7 Pillars of Moving Company Marketing Success

1. Know Your Marketing R.O.I – This is the foundation for everything. If you don’t know your return on investment for every marketing source you have, then you can’t make good decisions on where to spend your marketing dollars. You have to know what is working and what is not so you can make adjustments to maintain profitability.
2. Diversify Your Marketing – Once you know your numbers and how well each source is performing then you will feel confident to try new forms of advertising. You can try sources out, track to see if they are working and then make adjustments accordingly. But remember, what works today may not work tomorrow. So don’t put all your eggs in one basket and always know your numbers.
3. Cultivate Your Online Presence – In the modern day of marketing, your online reputation is just as important as anything else. When a customer “Googles” your company’s name, what do they see? What does page-one of Google look like? Are there areas you can improve?
4. Content is King – You need to be putting out fresh content on a regular basis. This means blogging, posting to social media and shooting videos. This will help drive business to your company as well as provide value to new and existing customers.
5. Join the Community – When you get involved with your local community, you’ll find that people are eager to refer business to you. Volunteer for a local charity, sponsor a local sports team, join the chamber of commerce and network with realtors to increase your local presence.
6. Trust & Capture – The purpose of all of your marketing is to build trust with prospective customers and capture leads. You build trust in the way your marketing is designed and worded and you capture leads by receiving requests for estimates and phone calls. Design all of your marketing around building trust and capturing leads.
7. Create Raving Fans – When you focus on creating raving fans, you will get more repeat and referral customers. When you have more repeat and referral business you spend less money on marketing and your profits go up.

There are no “magic bullets” in marketing. You have to be able to try different sources and then track them to see what works. Once you know what’s making you money and what’s not, you can make adjustments. That’s the key. Testing, tracking and tweaking. Follow these 7 pillars for your moving company marketing success.

You can find a list of different moving company marketing sources in my eBook “10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company”. Download your FREE copy HERE.

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Full Transcript

[The following is the full transcript of this episode.] 7 Pillars of Moving Company Marketing Success

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. Have you ever struggled to figure out where you should put your focus when it comes to marketing for your moving company? You know, I believe that in all areas of your business you need certain principles that you always come back to, that are just kind of the guiding light for what you do in that particular department. All right, so what I want to do is share with you the Seven Pillars of Marketing Success for moving companies. These are the same Seven Pillars that I use what I’m figuring out what I need to do in marketing next and what the come back to, because there’s really so much out there that could distract you, so many new leads sources, so many new opportunities, you see your competition doing this or that. And you know, it becomes overwhelming, so you need to have a core set of principles that you come back to to remind yourself what’s really important to be focused on.

So let’s start with number one which is: Know your marketing ROI. All right, you have to know how much return on investment each particular source of advertising is bringing. All right. For every piece of marketing that you do, for every lead source, for every you know, Google ad words, for this lead provider or that lead provider or if you’re advertising on the side of a billboard or you’re doing a yellow page ad, whatever it is you have to know the exact ROI, return on investment for each individual source. All right.

Number two is: Diversify your marketing. Once you know the numbers, once you know what’s profitable, what’s not profitable, make sure that you are trying different sources, that you’re tracking them, that you’re seeing what’s working, what’s not working, what’s profitable, what’s not profitable. And you diversify it. Right, if you need to list the lead sources that you haven’t already downloaded the 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company I’m offering it for free on my web site. Go and download it. I’ll put a link down below. There’s a whole list of different leads sources and marketing sources that you can try out if you’re not already.

And number three is: Cultivate your online presence. This is so important. What I want you to do is I want you to take the name of your company and I want you to put it in Google. And take a look at everything that shows up on PAGE ONE. That’s what your customers seeing when they check you out, make sure you cultivate that. Make sure you work on getting that first page of Google looking really, really good. Your online presence in this day and age is just as important as any marketing that you’re doing, because if not you’re spending money on marketing, your customers or checking you out and if they don’t like what they see, they’re going to go with somebody else. All right, so cultivate your online presence.

Next: Content is king. If you’re not already blogging, if you’re not doing social media, if you’re not putting out videos you need to be doing that. All right. This is a day of, you know, we’re in a, we’re in an information age. This is, you need to be putting out content, you need to be putting out information that’s going to help your customer A: Find you. And also provide value to your customer, right? Packing tips, how to prepare for your move, all kinds of different information that’s going to help your customer find you online and then provide value. Content is king.

Next: Join the community. Get out there, network with the Chamber of Commerce. Right, join the Chamber of Commerce, start volunteering at charity organizations, right. We used to give out, every single year, we used to go give out turkeys in under privileged neighborhoods. Right, we used to take our trucks, load them up as part of a charity organization and go give them out to families. Right. Christmas time we would donate trucks and drivers for Toys for Tots to go deliver toys. Right. Become part of the community, sponsor a little league team, get out there and you know, let the people that you interact with on a regular basis know what you do. They’re going to refer you business.

Next: Focus on trust and capture marketing. All right. Every time you do a marketing piece, every time you put together a Web site, every time you put together an ad, you know, focus on two things. Building trust and capturing the lead. That’s it. Right. That’s all your advertising is for, that’s all, you know, marketing is all about bringing in more business. How do you bring in more business? You build trust and you capture the lead. Right. So you know you need to make sure that you give off that feel that you’re saying things in your advertisement that’s building that trust and then you set up your web pages, that you set up your direct mail ads, everything in a way that’s going and capture leads at a high rate.

And the last one: Create raving fans. This is marketing. All right. This is not just operations this is not just doing a good job. This is marketing. Every time you create a raving fan, a customer that is so excited about the service they had from your company, they’re going to leave you a five star review, which helps your online presence. They’re going to tell their friends, they’re going to tell their family, they’re going to use you again, Repeat referral business drives down your marketing costs. This is what makes you very profitable. Repeat and referral business by creating raving fans. All right. These are the Seven Core Pillars of move marketing success, all right. Everything within your marketing lies within one of these seven. So whenever you’re overwhelmed, whenever you see all these different options out there of what you should be working on, what you should be doing. Come back to these seven. All right. Make sure you know your ROI. Make sure you’re diversified your marketing. Make sure you’re cultivating your online presence. Make sure you’re putting out good content. Making sure you’re involved in the community. All your marketing pieces should build trust and capture lead. You should be creating raving fans by doing a great, outstanding job for your customers.

This is the core of it. This is what’s going to help you propel your business to that next level. All right. Again if you need a list of marketing sources download the 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company. If you have any questions leave them in the comments below. I’ll be more than happy to answer them for you. Until next week, until I see you next time, go out and profit in business, thrive in life. I’ll see you later.

7 Pillars of Moving Company Marketing Success