How to Build a Strong Reputation for Movers
January 3, 2022
In this day and age, every business needs a strong reputation. Your reputation plays a vital role in the decision-making process for consumers, and it’s not something you can opt out of or ignore.
Regardless of whether you decide to manage it or not, your reputation matters, and that’s especially true for local businesses that require a lot of trust from their consumers, like moving companies.
There are a lot of factors to consider when hiring a moving company, including rates, services, experience and insurance, but none of these things matter if consumers don’t trust you. At the end of the day, the most important thing you can do to build trust is to build a strong reputation. Here’s how.
5 reputation management tips for moving companies
#1. Have a presence on local sites and directories
A key tenant of marketing is that you need to have a presence wherever people in your service area are looking for movers. These days, people are looking for movers in all kinds of places, including Google, Facebook and Top Rated Local®, just to name a few.
Make sure that each and every one of your local listings has accurate and up-to-date business information. If your phone number or address is outdated, it will make it that much harder for prospective customers to trust you or to even get in contact with you.
It’s also important that your business information is consistent across listings. Even little things, like using “street” instead of “st” can make a difference.
Pro tip: Use listings management software, like the Marketing 360® Listings app, to manage your listings across more than 50 of the most popular local websites, apps and directories at once. This ensures consistency and saves you the time and energy of having to make updates one listing at a time.
#2. Ask for mover reviews
You can say that you’re the best mover in the business until the cows come home, but until your customers start saying it, you’re just wasting your breath. That’s why every moving company needs five-star reviews.
Getting great reviews starts with providing great customer service. The better the job you do, the more likely you are to get reviews. Sometimes, even when you provide the best service, it’s not enough for people to write reviews on their own, but when people do write reviews, providing next-level service means you’ll get better reviews.
The easiest and most straightforward way to get reviews for your moving business is to simply start asking for them. A simple, “We’d love to hear how your move went! Would you mind letting us know in a review?” can go a long way.
You should also consider using email marketing to ask for reviews. After a move, send an automated follow-up email asking about the experience with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.
Send happy customers to the review sites you’re listed on, and send unhappy customers to an internal form so they can give their feedback straight to you. This allows you to address customer complaints head-on.
#3. Respond to your reviews
It may only take a few minutes to write a review, but that’s time not everyone has in abundance, especially people who have recently moved. Acknowledge the time it takes to give you feedback — and acknowledge the feedback itself — by always responding to your reviews.
If the review is good, simply thank your customer for the review and their business. If the review is negative, however, you may need to be a bit more careful in how you respond. Here are a few tips:
- Take a minute to cool off – Sometimes, negative reviews can seem personal and offensive. If a review has upset you, take a few minutes to cool off and gather your thoughts before responding.
- Listen – Most negative reviews contain valuable feedback you can use to make your business better. Do yourself a favor and listen. You may learn something.
- Apologize – Even if the feedback doesn’t seem fair or truthful, always take the time to apologize, if only for the customer’s negative experience. You don’t necessarily have to own up to something you didn’t do or think is unfair, but you should say sorry that the customer had a bad experience with your business. Remember, the world is watching!
- Make it right – Responding to negative reviews gives you a chance to show off your customer service chops. If someone has had a bad experience with your business, demonstrate to other prospective customers how you’ll handle other similar situations by making it right.
- Don’t argue in public – Some people aren’t interested in an apology or how you’ll make the situation right. They just want to complain. Instead of getting into a public back and forth with people like that, invite them to contact you directly about the matter by giving them your phone number or email address.
#4. Monitor your moving company’s reputation
Whether we’re talking about losing weight, learning a new skill or improving your performance at work, it’s hard to develop a strategy to get better if you don’t have a good understanding of where you’re at. The same goes for your reputation.
By monitoring your reputation with the right reputation management software, like the Marketing 360 Reputation app, you’ll be in the know about where your reputation stands. From there, you can develop a strategy to improve it.
With the right reputation management software, you’ll also be notified when you get new reviews. This will allow you to respond to your review in a timely manner, which is what your customers expect from you.
#5. Dominate the search results for your brand
When someone searches for your business name on Google or Bing, you want the results to be things like your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook page, etc. What you don’t want are negative reviews or articles painting your business in a bad light.
There are lots of things you can do to dominate the top of the SERP (search engine results page) for brand searches. Here are just a few of them:
- Optimize your website – Make sure to include brand-related keywords on your website, and create brand-related content for your blog.
- Take advantage of search ads – Control the top of the page by running search ads for brand keywords, including your business name.
- Create content for your social profiles – It’s not enough to just have a Facebook Business Page or a Google Business Profile. You need an active presence on your social media profiles to make your brand stand out.
- Get reviews – One of the best ways to rank higher in Google Maps is to get reviews and have a high average star rating.
Start building a strong reputation for your moving company with the Marketing 360 Reputation app. See our plans and pricing.
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