How to Target Homemovers in Your Area

The average home mover spends over £1000 throughout their move. These costs may be spread across a couple of different services, but many of them are almost essential to the moving process. This makes the home movers market a reliable and lucrative source of customers for many related businesses.

However, finding new customers who need these specialist services isn't always as easy as it sounds.

This is unfortunate, as customer retention is often difficult for many of these services as well. A service such as removal or van hire companies are often a one-off investment. This puts a lot of weight on your marketing performance to deliver high customer acquisition rates.

When you're marketing to people who are moving home, you have to keep your campaigns highly targeted to stop you from wasting time, money and effort reaching out to people with no need for your service. One easy and effective way to do this is through local targeting.

What is Local Targeting?

Local targeting means that you aim your marketing strategy directly at potential customers who are within a certain radius of your business.

It is up to you to decide how big that radius is, depending on the service you provide and the customers you target - many businesses will set around a 10-mile radius, but there is no set distance.

The Importance of Local Targeting for Home Mover Marketing

Home movers are generally considered an 'active' market. This means they will make regular and high-value transactions throughout their home move period. 

These purchases and expenditures can also cover a wide range of products and services. Some, such as removals, are almost essential. Others such as cleaners, home improvement companies or self-storage, are also highly likely investments.

This makes home movers a great opportunity for lead generation across many businesses.

The moving home period is also a time when people are more likely to rely on local companies. Whether they're looking for removal services, cleaning companies or self-storage, they will want someone who is close to at least one of their homes (new or old).

In many cases, this makes sense for both you and your customer - it is well worth embracing. By targeting your home mover marketing based on local locations you make sure you are targeting people who are definitely in need of your services, in the area that they will be looking for them.

How to Target Local Customers

If you want to target home movers in your local area, here are a couple of tactics you can try.

1. Be Discoverable on Google

If you want to target local home movers, start in the same place that your customers do - with Google.

Up to 46% of all searches on Google are specifically looking for local information, so you need Google to know where you are. You also need Google to think your business is worth sharing - the only way to do this is to tackle your local SEO.

Start by spring cleaning your Google My Business page. This is the main service that Google uses to populate its local search and Maps pages, so having up to date information here is a must. As well as your address you can include important details like your operating hours, your website address or contact details and keywords. This is also a fantastic spot to collect customer reviews.

After this you can turn to your website itself, making sure it's optimised for search engines. This is something that can take a lot of time and skill which is another reason to prioritise your 'My Business' page first and then work through the rest.

2. Make the most of your customer reviews

When it comes to local targeting, reviews from previous and existing customers hold an awful lot of weight. Consider them the modern equivalent of word-of-mouth - even if these recommendations are coming from strangers, your target audience will still place a lot of value on the fact that people are taking the time to share good experiences with your business. 

From your perspective, this means you need to make it as easy and rewarding as possible to review your business.

Invite existing customers to share their experiences on your platform of choice. Equally, you can show the best of your customer service by replying to reviews, even if it's just a quick line to say thank you.

Google My Business is a great platform to collect your reviews on because it is so readily available and will be associated with your brand as the very first touchpoint. Review sites like Trustpilot.com will also allow you to show a feed of recent reviews on your website, and to keep feedback on your specialist service visible to entice new customers.

3. Partner with other local business

When you're targeting the home movers market, you are in a fortunate position as the average home mover follows a standard process and needs similar services. This means there are quite a lot of natural partnerships you can make with other local businesses without running the risk of gifting customers to your competition.

Look to establish a reciprocal referral service with other businesses that target home movers. Attend local fairs, conventions or other events and connect with other services that people make use of during the home move period. You could target services in the early stages of the home mover process, such as letting or estate agencies, through to cleaning companies, storage, van hire or removals businesses.

By focusing this in your local area, you will have access to many more new customers who require your services with the chance to contact them before your competitors.

4. Pay-per-click campaigns

If you're after a quick win with local marketing, then Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are a worthwhile investment.

Use customer data to decide which platforms your target audience is already using. A Google Ads PPC campaign will make sure your ads sit at the top of the search page for certain keywords, and location targeting will help maximise the number of new customers you get against the cost of the campaign.

Plenty of other platforms also offer paid campaigns that can really pay off too.

Social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter will all let you run location-based paid campaigns. Again these will guarantee exposure to local people who could need your services - find out which ones are most used by your desired demographic before building your campaign.

5. Direct mail marketing campaigns

When it comes to home mover marketing campaigns, direct mail marketing can really pay off - particularly when it's highly targeted.

The home move process is a time of high stress and constant change. Even the most organised people may struggle to keep on top of all the planning and critical information they need.

A postcard or envelope dropping through their door can be an impactful reminder of a service they may not even have thought of yet. And even if they don't act immediately, people are more likely to keep physical material around if it's actually relevant so when they are ready to reach out, you will be at the front of their minds.

All these standard benefits of direct mail marketing have maximum impact with home movers, and running an effective campaign based on unique home mover datasets can deliver an outstanding ROI.

How MoverAlerts can Help with Your Targeting

If you want to target your home mover marketing, MoverAlerts offer services that can make the process quicker, easier and (most importantly) cost-efficient.

We have access to national statistics that cover up to 99% of residential moves within the UK, across the rental and sales markets. We can use this to supply you with all the home mover data you need to find relevant leads in your local area, from customer address to property size.

With our subscription service, we filter this down to meet your specified postal districts or areas. You can also pick which stage of their moving journey you want to target home movers.

Our fulfilment service makes local targeting even easier. As well as finding the home mover audience you want to target, our specialist service will create and even distribute your direct mail marketing for you.

If you want help targeting your home movers service locally, contact us today.