The recent pandemic has changed the face of business. Moving company businesses, in particular, have been affected by labor and supply chain shortages coupled with changes in the transportation business in general and an ever-increasing demand for moving services.
However, it’s not all bad news. If you own a small moving company and are looking for how to grow your business or are considering starting one, there may be no better time to do so than the present. It all starts with a plan.
Make a Plan
The first step regarding how to grow a moving company is to have a business plan. New moving company startups need to create a business plan as a first step. If you have an existing company, now is the time to expand your business plan to include growth strategies.
If you haven’t done so already, be sure to include the acquisition of any necessary permits, registrations by state, federal registration, and insurance in your plan before going forward.
The most important asset for a new or existing moving company looking to grow is knowledge and understanding of how the moving industry works. Your business plan will reflect your knowledge and creating a sound plan will help you understand the industry deeper. Below are areas of focus to include in your company’s plan.
Your business plan can include any number of definitions, goals, and objectives. One thing that needs to stay consistent in your plan is how to measure the company’s achievements. As your company grows, it becomes increasingly important to accurately measure several components of your business at a glance. Create a system of metrics early and maintain consistency throughout the planning and execution processes.
Current Business Status
The first step in getting where you want to go is figuring out where you currently are. Create an exhaustive list of the people involved and compile an inventory of the company’s physical assets, possible customer relationships, and available time. During the process of preparing your business strategy, you may find it helpful to consult this list as a starting point.
Goals
Setting business goals is a bit of an art. Once you have a clear picture of where you’re company is at, seeing areas that need improvement right away may be glaringly obvious. Or maybe not. Either way, set both long and short-term goals, and don’t be afraid to stretch what may look like the limit.
Plan of Action
Planning your journey is crucial for the success of your business. Determine how to reach each goal listed: short-term, long-term, easy, or seemingly impossible. Along with each plan of action step, include a timeline that you can refer to later to ensure the business is on track.
Marketing Strategy
Regardless of where your company is financial, it needs marketing to remain successful. Marketing may mean a word of mouth advertising, national advertising, or anything in between. Today’s technology has changed how marketing gets done and how your customers make buying decisions and purchases. Whether your business goals are lofty or simple, you may consider hiring a marketing strategy company for assistance in this area.
Make sure that your marketing mix includes performance marketing initiatives such as Google Search, Bing Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing, and Local Search Campaigns. A reliable customer relationship management system that can assist in maintaining lead-to-conversion and marketing channel attribution tracking, in addition to a high-quality website and mobile application. You should also make sure that you are growing your brand weight by performing a few of the top-of-the-funnel marketing strategies such as TV spots promoting what your company stands for and why customers should choose your company over the competition. In addition, you should make certain that you are growing your brand value by performing a few of the top-of-the-funnel marketing strategies.
Even though brand advertising might not directly result in immediate sales, it will help in increasing the sales conversion ratio of the traffic that is directed to your website and call center as a result of performance marketing techniques. In other words, it will help you make more money from the traffic that you already have coming to your website and call center. When there is a better sales conversion rate, the cost of obtaining a new customer is reduced. This is because there are fewer customers lost during the process. Your company’s return on investment (ROI) and profitability will increase as a direct result of this development.
It is of the utmost importance to have a customer relationship management system (CRM) solution that is completely integrated to be able to track which marketing channel traffic is converting better. If you are aware of this information, you will be in a better position to maximize the effectiveness of the money you spend on marketing.
And last but not least, make sure to invest wisely in employing suitable personnel. This is by no means the least important step. You mustn’t allow the stress caused by hiring internal resources to get to you. You should delegate the management of your marketing mix to one or two key personnel, and you should recruit external marketing freelancers and agencies to assist the various channels. This is because the technology used in marketing is always being updated, and it is essential to stay abreast of these changes. It is essential to keep in mind that you do not require specialized knowledge to be an amazing marketer who is capable of establishing a highly effective marketing engine for your company.
Develop Business Relationships
Nearly all businesses rely on relationships with other companies. Those that are growing benefit the most from reliable business partnerships. Partnerships allow you the freedom to grow your company by reducing the need for significant investments and by creating an open supply chain to serve your customers better. Your company can efficiently and effectively provide services that would otherwise be out of reach for an average startup through partnerships.
Working together with a company that is an industry leader in the transportation of autos is an excellent example of a successful collaboration. This is especially true when taking into consideration the fact that your firm specializes in the moving and relocating of household goods as opposed to being a company that moves automobiles. You won’t have any issue delegating this responsibility to a dependable auto transport company if you can identify the right company. Ensure that they can readily integrate themselves into the logistical workflow that you are using and that this can be done without any difficulty.
Employment Service
As your firm expands, it is possible that there could be periods of increased or decreased job volume, which can be difficult to correctly estimate. Establishing a working connection with a provider of temporary labor enables you to avoid going through the hiring and firing phases associated with a permanent workforce during these periods. It is a costly endeavor that your business should probably tackle once it has established a reliable workflow before considering the possibility of hiring staff.
Financial Institutions
Creating and developing business relationships can lower the capital needed to grow your business. However, to achieve high-level growth, you’ll likely have to leverage a bank loan or other form of funding eventually. Taking the time now to develop a banking relationship with a reputable lender can pay off later in terms of lower interest rates and better loan terms.
Good methods of earning your bankers’ trust are to take out small loans initially and pay them back on time, be open and honest about your company’s goals and finances, and allow them to inspect the physical assets of your business if they like.
Storage Provider
It’s possible that your new company won’t have the capital it needs to buy storage space to offer it to customers until you’ve established credibility with a financial institution. The provision of storage solutions to customers is made possible for your company when you form a partnership with a storage facility. If potential consumers require storage both during and after their move, but your organization is unable to provide it, your business will suffer.
Vehicle Transportation
A reliable vehicle transportation company can take a run-of-the-mill startup moving company into a one-stop-shop for all of your potential customers’ needs. Having the ability to move vehicles is perhaps the most important extra service that your company can offer. Finding the right transport company may even mean that your company never has to look any further for a different vehicle transportation solution.
Material Supplier
To operate at a high level in the moving sector requires the utilization of a vast assortment of different supplies and resources. It’s a long list, but it includes things like boxes, wraps, protection, crating, tools, dollies, and trucks. There is a good chance that your organization will begin using multiple sources of supply initially. However, as your company expands, it will become increasingly vital to ensure that your supply chain maintains its previous level of consistency. It is essential to have reliable providers for moving tools and equipment, as well as vehicles, parts, services, and one-time-use supplies. You’ll be thankful for the smooth flow, and your clients will be prepared for what to anticipate when they get in touch with you.
Marketing and Sales Consultant
Entrepreneurs tend to be jack-of-all-trades type people. You may find yourself performing all of the marketing and sales for your company when you begin operations. And it works pretty well. However, as your business grows, less and less time ends up devoted to marketing. It may not cause an immediate problem, but it could, and that’s not a good chance to take.
Just as you spend all day, every day engaged in the moving industry, marketing companies spend their days creating new and innovative ways to promote your company. They’re good at it, and their paycheck is often directly influenced by how to grow a moving company for you. Performance is key to their survival. You can trust that a reputable marketing and sales company is doing all it can to provide you with the best solutions possible.
About Your Website
It’s a massive understatement to say that your website is important. Today’s consumers shop online for everything, whether physical goods or services. If you have a limited marketing budget, focus first on your website and ways of getting your future customers to see it. Hiring a website designer if you’re not yet using a marketing and sale company is an excellent idea that can cost relatively little in the big picture.
The more services you can offer your customers, the more customers you’ll have. To get answers about how to grow a moving company, pay extra attention to highlighting your company’s abilities. Being able to offer more services is where having strong business partnerships allows you to expand your customer base without putting up a significant investment in infrastructure.
Expand Your Company’s Reach
The old rule of thumb about starting a business small and growing it slowly can still apply in some situations. However, employing today’s technology to expand your company’s reach and expose more customers to your service than ever before possible makes that rule of thumb less applicable to moving companies in general.
Recent supply and demand struggles due to global market challenges and the pandemic have caused challenges within the industry. As reported by the Better Business Bureau, the resulting uncertainty in the wake of these events has opened the door for some who would take advantage of the opportunity to cheat customers.
That may not sound like good news. However, growing moving companies that can provide a wide range of high-quality services, an excellent work ethic, and excellent customer service while capitalizing on a network of reliable business partners are in the right place at the right time. Another bonus occurring now for moving companies is the unprecedented demand in the industry for movers of all types.