If you’re a mover, you need a website
There is a simple truth when it comes to the moving industry: every moving company needs to have a website.
In this day and age, there’s no business in the world that wouldn’t benefit from being on the internet. But companies in the moving services industry, an industry where 47.8% of companies employ fewer than five people, have perhaps the most to gain. At the same time, it’s an industry where relatively few companies are taking advantage of all the benefits the internet can offer.
If you’re a mover, an investment in a strong online presence is going to be the single most effective way to earn new customers. If you don’t have a website yet, you’re going to be kicking yourself by the time you reach the end of this blog post.
A website is the key to exposure
Most moving companies are relatively small. Only 8.5% of moving companies employ 100 or more people. This means that most moving companies have relatively small marketing budgets. If you want to get the maximum return on your marketing investment, going online is the way to make sure you’re getting the most for your money.
The big national moving companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on advertising, but the internet gives small businesses the chance to compete on an even playing field. Online marketing can be an incredibly effective way for small moving companies to dominate their local markets.
How do people find movers?
Most of the time when consumers buy something, they have a pretty good idea of where they’re going to get it. However, since most people move so rarely, when it is time to move they usually spend time asking questions, doing research, and looking around for a trustworthy company to hire. This means that moving companies have a great opportunity to take advantage of the internet’s amazing potential for discovery.
These days, when people are looking for information about anything, the first place they turn is Google. When someone types in a search looking for the best moving company in their city, you should want your company to be the one that Google suggests. This is where a website comes in.
The importance of professional web design and SEO
We’ve written other guides to online marketing, but the two basic purposes for building a website are getting noticed and building trust.
Getting noticed
Search Engine Optimization is the process of making sure your website is designed to let Google and other search engines know what your business is all about. When someone searches for something, Google decides which websites best match what that person is looking for. SEO is all about making sure Google knows why your site will be the best result for the keywords that are important to your business.
Building trust
Once someone gets to your website, the next step is to connect with them. It’s an unfortunate fact that the number of complaints against potentially shady moving companies is increasing every year. Consumers know this, so when they’re researching moving companies, they’re looking for signs that companies can be trusted.
An amateurish template website isn’t going to inspire a lot of confidence. You want to project an image of professionalism, success, and transparency, and the best way to do that is with a professionally designed website. These cost more, but your website will be yours to keep once you own it, so it’s an investment that will pay off for years to come.
Millennials: Why you NEED to be Online
Many of the benefits above apply to businesses in any industry – getting online is simply a relatively inexpensive and highly effective way to market your business to new customers and to build loyalty with existing customers. But there is a connection between movers and millennials that makes it absolutely essential for your moving company to have an online presence.
Millennials are one of the most mobile generations in human history. With the oldest members of the generation only in their early 30s, 80% of them have moved to a different city at some point in their adult lives and over a third have moved at least three times. Moreover, more of them are renting than other generations have at their age, which means they move more frequently between apartments in the same city. They’re a huge market with the potential to become repeat customers.
At the same time, millennials are hard to reach through traditional marketing. The research shows that millennials simply don’t respond to advertising the way other generations do. If you want to tap into this huge market of frequent movers, you need to meet them where they are.
And “where they are” is online.
This combination of demographic trends has created a situation that is a potential gold mine for moving companies who are able to tap into it. If you want YOUR company to be the one in your city reaping the benefits, you need to be on social media, and you need to have a website.
Don’t know where to start? Check our archives. We have lots of advice on how to get started with a website, how to harness the power of social media, and more.
Do you own a moving service that you’ve marketed online? Share any success stories or snags you hit in the comments, or drop us a line on Twitter – and don’t forget to share this article with anyone who you think could benefit from it!
[…] "Moving companies can benefit from online marketing more than businesses in nearly any other industry," says LinkNow Media blogger Lauchlin MacDonald. "But for whatever reason, movers often don't take that leap. Our new website design is intended to make the move to online marketing as easy as possible so moving companies can start reaping those benefits quickly and painlessly." […]