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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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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.