How to Grow a Removal Company

As a youngster, I was always told that the only way to be successful was to work hard.

The harder you worked, the more hours you put in, the better you did your job, the more money you would earn.

Nobody ever mentioned working smarter.

Many years ago I worked closely with some companies overseas. Labour was very cheap and in plentiful supply. If there was a problem, extra hands were hired to get over the immediate problem.

But they would never look at what caused the problem or how to prevent it from happening again.

They certainly worked hard, but not smart. They threw money and resources at a problem, only for the same issue to recur a month later.

Marketing your removal company to grow sales can be just like that. You need to work smarter, not harder, nor do you need to throw money needlessly at the problem.

In this week’s home moving blog we show you how you can let someone else do the hard work of marketing your removal company for you, either for free or at a low cost.

And we ask the question: Should I buy home moving leads or pay for targeted advertising?

How do you Market a Removal Company?

Having an online presence is essential for removal companies to attract new customers, and having a company website and social media page is the way every company chooses to go.

But to attract customers they need to be able to find your website. That is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in, and where your problems begin.

SEO is an ever changing set of rules designed to ensure that the results Google display to a user are relevant and answer the question being asked.

In 2010 Google made around 400 changes to improve the searchers’ experience, in 2018 they made 3,200 changes, and updates are now rolled out on an almost daily basis.

Keeping up with SEO is a full-time, and expensive, undertaking beyond the capabilities and budgets of most removal companies.

So the idea behind online marketing and good SEO is to bring customers to your business. But they will only find your website if they specifically know your business name, or your SEO has been done properly.

But there is another, and smarter way, to promote your removal company and attract customers. Where all you have to do is carry on providing your customers with an excellent service.

Of course potential customers must still be able to find your social media pages and website, but you can steer them towards finding your company in a free and easy way.

Free Advertising for Removal Companies – Reviews

Reviews are the easiest way to get free advertising for your removal company.

People very rarely buy items or hire services these days without reading reviews.

And the best review websites have teams of people working on SEO so that they continue to attract plenty of reviewers.

Therefore a person looking to move home will search for local removal company reviews, find your latest reviews, like what they read, and click the link to your website.

So, as a removal company, it pays you to get as many legitimate and verified good reviews as you can.

Be sure that any customer that you help move home receives a link to your review profile so that they can leave you a review.

The higher your rating, the more informative and useful the reviews, the more recent your reviews are, the higher up the listings your removal company will appear.

And the removal company review listings are targeted to specific users utilizing the very latest SEO, which has cost you nothing to take advantage of.

But don’t just get listed and walk away. Take the time to respond to reviews and to check that the reviews left are actually for your company, left by people that you have actually provided a service to.

It is not unheard of for rival companies to try and post negative reviews about a competitor, so keep an eye out for that.

Must read: Removal Company Owners: How to Improve Your Online Reputation. An in-depth guide for removal companies on how to improve their reputation and gain the maximum number of new customers.

Must do: Claim your free company profile to start getting your reviews listed.

How Do I Promote My Removal Business?

So we are all agreed that reviews are a smart way to advertise your business for free.

But what if you are in an area with a high number of excellent removal companies, who, on the whole, all have great reviews, how do you stand out and grab the lion’s share of people looking to move home?

Targeted Advertising for Removal Companies

You know that when you Google something yourself you will be presented with pages of results, but we rarely look below the first few answers. Most people will click the first 3 results.

So although you may have some great reviews, if there are many removal firms listed in your area you may not even appear on the first page.

The only way to guarantee that your removal company is listed at the top of page 1 is by targeted advertising.

Targeted advertising is where someone is looking for a specific thing, for example, someone looking for a home removal quote may search for ‘local movers in Bristol’, or ‘moving from Bristol to Edinburgh’, and your removal company details are displayed before the other company listings.

Whilst this will cost you money to advertise, you know that the people who are seeing your ad have asked specific questions, or searched specific counties, cities or towns, and your advertising profile has matched that request.

If you were to choose a Google ad campaign for example it could end up costing you a small fortune and many people choose to ignore Google ads and click on the organic search results.

This is where excellent SEO comes in again.

If you were to choose a platform such as www.removalreviews.co.uk to have a profile where your reviews were displayed, their constantly updated SEO will ensure that they appear at the top of the organic search results in Google.

Choose to advertise on that website and you can be assured that your removal company advert is seen by the maximum number of people.

Discover more about how to advertise your removal company.

Home Moving Blog

Years ago it was enough to have a keyword on your website multiple times to drive searchers to you, for example: Top Bristol Removal Company.

Today however, that is not the case. The relevance of the content on your website to what the customer is searching for is king.

Excellent content beyond all else is what drives traffic to a website.

This is where a home moving blog is essential. A good selection of articles and guides that answers a multitude of your customers’ questions is the most important part of any SEO strategy these days.

But a good home moving blog is very time consuming and difficult to create and maintain.

Find yourself a review platform with an authoritative and comprehensive home moving blog section and that will guarantee a steady stream of targeted users to your profile. Readers will often come to a blog with a question and if appropriate, the answer will be designed to direct them to the best removal companies to move them.

You can see an example of one of the best home moving blogs in the UK here.

And if you would like to link our home moving blog to your removal company website just contact us at support@moveavisor.com

Home Moving Leads

The most efficient way to bring sales directly to your company is through home removal leads.

A potential customer will complete an online quote form and then that information will be shared with registered companies whose parameters meet the customers needs.

With leads sent directly to you, your sales team will not be wasting time answering calls from people that are moving outside your area or looking for services that you do not provide.

Most lead providers will tailor their leads to suit your business model, whether you are looking for local, national, or international home moving leads. But be aware that not all lead providers are the same.

Some you will be tied into a fixed contract, others you need to pay upfront for your leads, others will not void bad leads, and some will share the lead with up to 10 other companies, so be careful when choosing a lead provider.

One of the most frequent questions that those who do buy leads ask is ‘how can I get more leads?’

The more parameters you apply to the leads you request, the fewer leads you will get.

From the latest data released in this Moving Industry Trend Report 2020, you will see that there is a huge increase in the number of partial loads that people are asking to be moved. We are seeing this trend worldwide, people are moving fewer belongings these days.

So if you only move houses of 2 bedroom plus for example, there is a huge chunk of business you are missing out on.

Obviously it is not always profitable for you to move the smaller loads but lead providers such as www.moveadvisor.com have the ability to filter load size right down to postcode.

So for example, you could say, I will pick up partial moves up to a 5 mile radius of my depot postcode, 1 bedroom up to a 10 mile radius, and all sizes over that radius.

Some removal companies only work within the city limits. As you saw in the trend report above, many people are now moving to the suburbs or to the countryside. Expand your area of operation to include the suburbs or popular parts of the countryside and your lead volume will increase.

Another new development within the lead providing industry is the transfer of exclusive live calls.

Rather than the removal company receiving the lead data via email or into a CRM, the actual call from the customer is directed straight to your sales team, you have the customer on the phone, it saves your sales team time, and the conversion rate for these type of leads is extremely high.

Learn more about buying the best Leads for Removal Companies

Should I Buy Home Moving Leads or Pay for Targeted Advertising?

Both buying leads and having targeted advertising have their pros and cons.

Despite the best lead providers having software that verifies the contact details within a lead, often quote requests can contain incorrect information, it is just a fact of life when buying leads.

That is why when choosing a lead provider make very sure of their bad lead returns policy, some do not allow any voids at all, others will never charge you for bad leads.

But you do know that the person who is requesting a quote has submitted details that match your business model precisely.

If you are only paying for the good leads, and have a good conversion rate, then buying leads is a very cost effective option.

Just remember that buying leads is a numbers game. You have to look it as a long term strategy. Some months you may convert nothing, others you may convert a very high percentage.

With targeted advertising, on the other hand, you are never sure exactly what services the person reading your ad wants. So if they do not read the information within your profile, or click onto your website from the ad, then they will call and waste your sales people’s time with a request that you cannot fulfill.

The advantage of advertising is that many people would prefer to deal directly with a local removal company, so they would have read your profile, your reviews, and your website, seen what they liked, and called you directly.

Choose the areas where you choose to place your ad wisely.

There may be a number of removal companies that choose to advertise in the main cities, but if you select the suburbs or surrounding towns then you are far more likely to be listed at the very top of the page, and often be exclusively listed.

Choose to have your ad placed on your most profitable routes, for example, Bristol to Belfast. There may not be many companies that cover that route who advertise, so again you may appear at the very top of the listings page.

Your ad is also riding on the back of the authority and SEO of the review site. So if you have chosen a review platform like www.removalreviews.co.uk who consistently appears at the top of Google page rankings, you can be assured that your ad will be seen by many many people.

So although you will have to pay a set sum to advertise, the returns can more than justify the small outlay.

And then there are those removal companies that choose to both advertise and buy leads, maximizing their marketing strategy.

Leads do not work for everyone, advertising is an unknown for many and requires an initial outlay, and reviews are a guaranteed route to exposure, whether through good or bad reviews, but you could end up buried amongst the masses of other companies.

Good luck with whichever route you decide to take to expand your removal business.

If you have any questions regarding advertising or buying leads contact us at support@moveadvisor.com.

If you have a query about your company profile on Removal Reviews then contact the review team at customerservice@removalreviews.co.uk