Do you wish to learn how to promote your moving company using Facebook? Are Facebook Ads the answer for businesses in this sector? Hi, my name is Francisco, and I am the owner of Planet Marketing, a Digital Marketing Agency. My company specializes in Facebook Ads, Google Ads and remarketing. Over the years, I have handled marketing for quite a number of moving companies. Today, I am going to share that knowledge with you. This article is divided into the following sections;
- Should moving companies advertise on Facebook?
- Marketing options on Facebook for moving companies.
- How to create your own Facebook Ads.
Should Moving Companies Advertise on Facebook?
Is Facebook the right platform for doing paid ads for moving companies? That’s a question that I get a lot from people. The answer to that is; it depends on how well you lay out your Campaigns. In reality, all businesses that are out there can benefit from advertising on Facebook.
But moving companies have a particular challenge. Indeed, this challenge is an overall Facebook Ads challenge. People who go to Facebook do not do so to look for moving companies. They go there to chat with friends and family and to share the latest gossip.
It’s different from Google. A person who looks up “movers near me,” clearly intends to hire the services of a moving company. The same applies for someone who searches for “restaurant near me,” or any other search query. In the case of Google, a person that carries out these searches clearly is looking for a particular service.
With Facebook, things are a lot different. People do not go there to look for restaurants. That’s probably why Facebook Ads have a lower conversion rate than Google Ads. However, that doesn’t mean that Facebook Ads are a dud.
In fact, they work very well, even for moving companies. The trick lies in knowing how to run top range Campaigns, and that’s what I am here to show you. The following are some of the reasons why Facebook ads make sense for moving companies;
Facebook is huge
Find more statistics at Statista
How many people use Facebook on a daily basis? How about 1.7 billion? You can check the current stats in the graph above from Statista.
In essence, there are 1.7 billion chances for you to reach your target audience. Facebook is huge and contrary to what you may have heard, it continues to grow. So, this is the platform on which to be for moving companies that seriously wish to achieve growth.
Facebook ads are great for raising brand awareness
Yes, Facebook Ads may not have as many conversions as Google Ads, but getting people to buy is not the only goal when advertising. Or rather, to put it more clearly, there are several ways through which you can get people to buy.
Facebook Ads are great for creating brand awareness, as an example. Nothing beats Facebook as far as getting the word out about a business is concerned. So, this is something that you should consider when deciding whether or not your moving company should start advertising on Facebook.
Facebook ads are cheap
You may be worried that you are not going to be able to afford to advertise on Facebook. However, that is actually not the case. Facebook Ads can be very cheap.
As an example, you can boost a post on Facebook for less than $1 per day. And for that, you will be able to reach thousands of people beyond your circle of friends and followers.
You can create your own Facebook Ads
If you have the time and tenacity, it won’t be difficult for you to learn how to start handling your own Facebook Ads marketing Campaigns. That can be useful as far as cost savings are concerned. Most people prefer to hire experts like me, but Facebook ads are doable by the standard individual. In fact, this article is dedicated to showing you how to get started.
Facebook Ads can be highly targeted, increasing their chances of success
Again, I need to repeat that it can be difficult to advertise moving companies on Facebook. However, it’s doable. You only need to know what you are doing.
One way of boosting your chances of success is by ensuring that your ads are reaching the right people at the right time.
That’s a major point of strength for Facebook. You can get your ads to reach the right people, meaning they will be more likely to convert.
You can use retargeting to improve the performance of your Facebook Ads
Diagram of Retargeting
If you ask some marketers out there, they will tell you that Facebook Ads do not work that well for moving companies. Fact is, these people are neglecting the power of remarketing. Remarketing is sometimes referred to as retargeting.
Most of us will have come across ads, particularly those from Google, that seemingly follow people across the internet. That’s remarketing at play. It’s basically keeping track of what people are doing on a participating website, and then showing them relevant ads elsewhere on the web.
An example of remarketing
Let’s assume that somebody has landed on your moving company’s website from Google, Yahoo, Twitter or elsewhere. These leads are hard to come by, as you may well know. You have to do lots of SEO and that takes years to come to fruition.
The unfortunate thing is that the overwhelming majority of these people will leave your site without taking the desired action. The eCommerce conversion rate stands at only about 2%. So, it’s bound to happen to you. But what can you do?
This is where remarketing comes into play. For Facebook, remarketing works with what is referred to as a Pixel. What happens is that you install a piece of code on your website. Once everything is set up, this code will track what people are doing while on your site.
The next time that they visit Facebook, they are shown ads featuring the products in which they were interested on your site. Let’s say a person was interested in your pricing section. You can create ads offering them discounts the next time that they visit Facebook.
It’s essentially a second chance for you to get a conversion. And remarketing, if handled correctly, can boost your conversion rate by as much as 400%. That’s one of the things that make Facebook Ads for Moving Companies worth it.
When creating Facebook Ads, you can create ads that are targeted at your remarketing audience. These are people who have been to your site. For moving companies, everything needs to happen quickly. Somebody that lands on your site probably already has a pressing need.
So, keeping them interested through remarketing on Facebook is a good way of ensuring that they do not forget about your brand.
Marketing Options on Facebook for Moving Companies
Facebook is not all about paid ads. In fact, there are a lot more marketing options on Facebook for moving companies. The good news is that some of these options are free;
A Facebook Page
If you are serious about using Facebook to promote your moving business, then a Page should be your first port of call. Facebook Pages are created free of charge. You can check out my article on the best way of running a Facebook business page.
All that I can say here is that a Page on Facebook acts as the hub for your business, allowing it to meet its customers on the platform. Your Facebook Page needs to be well put out, however. Otherwise people will not take you seriously.
Facebook Ads for moving companies
The great thing is that Facebook Pages appear on Google Search results. You can see an example of that in the above screenshot. Notice how one company appears twice on the results; once for its web page, and once for its Facebook Page.
So, if one of your potential customers searches your name on Google, your Page will be among the information that appears. If you have a well laid out Page, it can be useful in convincing people that you are the real deal. Your Facebook Page should include the following;
- Images of your business.
- Testimonials from former customers.
- Regular posts.
What should you post about?
Most people make the mistake of posting things that are all about their business. That’s not going to work when it comes to promoting a Moving Company on Facebook. What you need to do is to produce content that’s designed to help people as they go about their day to day lives.
An example in this case would be if you were to produce a small video showing people how to properly pack household furniture to avoid damage while it is being moved. That’s a crucial piece of information that even those who are not interested in hiring your services at this point in time will be interested in.
Boosted Facebook Posts
I have an article in which I talk about Facebook Boosted Posts and whether or not they are a good option for those looking to market their brands on the platform. I have to say I am not entirely convinced by boosted posts, but they work in some instances.
Let’s say you have produced an article as described above. Or maybe you have published a post on your website and have shared it on Facebook. How are you going to get it to people? This is where boosted posts come into play.
Normally, your posts on Facebook will only reach your circle of friends and followers. Posts may also reach others who through searches made on Facebook.
If you want to reach people beyond your friends, boosting a post is the best option. That way your post will be shown to thousands of people who would otherwise not have heard about your moving business.
The great thing about boosted posts is that they cost so little. You can get started for as little as $1 a day.
Paid Facebook Ads
Paid Facebook Ads are the main focus in this article. They are a good option for those wishing to market moving companies on the platform. Again, Facebook’s strength lies in its ability to direct your ads to the right audience. You just need to know how to set things up.
Creating Facebook Ads for Moving Companies
Facebook Ads are created in Ads Manager. You need to have a Business Account to get started. The process of creating Facebook Ads is composed of the following steps;
- Choosing a Campaign Objective
- Setting up your Audience in the Ad Set
- Creating your Ad
Choosing a Campaign Objective
This is the first step on the way to creating Facebook Ads for moving companies. The Campaign Objective is important. It answers to your overall goals for a Campaign. For moving companies, the following are possible goals;
- To generate leads.
- To raise brand awareness.
- To get people’s contact details.
- To have people reach out directly through Messenger or WhatsApp.
- To take people to a landing page.
Facebook provides 11 Campaign Objectives. However, you can only have one per Campaign. The following are the available Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives;
- Brand awareness
- Catalog sales
- Lead generation
- Reach
- Store traffic
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Video views
- App installs
- Messages
- Engagement
What Facebook Ads Campaign Objective works best for moving companies?
Choose a Campaign Objective
People always get into a bit of a dilemma here. They are not really sure what Campaign Objective to choose in their particular case. However, that needs not be the case. In fact, there is nothing stopping you from exploring a number of these Campaign Objectives.
Of course, some will work better than others. As an example, you cannot really choose Catalog sales as your Campaign Objective in this case because you don’t have that many things in your Catalog. That works best for ecommerce stores.
In this case, we will go with Messages as our Campaign Objective. The assumption is that we will be targeting a Pixel audience that’s composed of people who have already shown an interest in us via our website. So, we wish to have these people quickly get in touch to hire our services.
Setting up your Target Audience in the Ad Set
This is really where some people who set out to create Facebook Ads for moving companies falter. The Ad Set section is importance.
It’s where you define who you wish to target with your Facebook Ads. So, you need to take your time here. What you do can be the difference between success and failure for your campaigns.
Messaging Options
Choose a messaging app for your Facebook Ads
The first thing that you will need to do in the Ad Set is to define the messaging apps that you wish to choose. This option is particular to this Campaign Objective.
Something that you will notice is that how you get set up will be different depending on the Campaign Objective that you have chosen. In terms of Messaging apps, you have the following options;
- Messenger
- Instagram Direct
Note that you can choose any number of these messaging apps.
Budget and Schedule
The Budget and Schedule section is also an important section in the Ad Set. It’s where you define how much you are going to be spending on Facebook Ads for your Moving Company. So, how much should you spend?
Unfortunately, there is no precise formula regarding this. What I advise people is to start small. You can then scale things up till you have struck a balance between what you are spending and the number of leads that you are getting.
Retain control of your spending
One thing that you need to do is to try and retain control of your spending. Facebook, just like Google and other platforms out there, keeps your credit card details on file. So, if you are not careful, they will keep deducting money from your account even when you are no longer interested in running a particular Campaign.
There are two things that you can do to control your spending. First, you can set up a daily budget, along with start and end dates for your Campaigns. That way, you will know exactly how much you will have spend at the end of each Campaign.
Alternatively, you have the option to set a Lifetime Budget for a particular Campaign. Again, you will know how much you will have spend at the end of the Campaign.
Audience targeting options
You have the following options when it comes to targeting people with your Facebook ads;
- You create a new target audience
- You can target a custom audience
- You can use a saved audience
- You can target a Lookalike audience
Custom Audiences
You can target a pixel generated audience
For this example, we will be directing our ads at a Custom Audience. Remember, we have already noted that we wish to target people who have been to our website, and whose activities there were tracked using Pixel. For this, we need to select Website from the options.
This audience has a better chance of success. Your ads will be going out to people who are already interested in what you have to do. That’s different from targeting an entirely new audience, where everything is hit and miss.
Options for Custom Audiences
A pixel generated audience is not the only option when it comes to Custom Audiences. You have many more options;
- Website
- App activity
- Customer list
- Offline activity
- Facebook Sources
- Video
- Lead form
- Instant Experience
- Shopping
- Instagram account
- Events
- Facebook Page
- On-Facebook Listings
Website Custom Audiences
Choose a pixel for use in your ads
You can see in the above screenshot that we will be targeting people who were tracked by our Test Facebook Pixel. We have chosen to target all website visitors. You can target people who visited specific pages on your website. As an example, you can target people who visited the pricing page on your website.
The retention refers to the number of days during which you wish to have a person remain in your Target Audience list. For Facebook Ads for Moving companies, that should probably not be that much time.
A person that lands on your site is looking for your service and the need is pertinent. It won’t be of any use to target them with your ad 30 days later, when they have already moved. So, you should probably retain people for no more than 10 days.
Creating a Lookalike Audience
This is something that you may wish to do. In many instances, the custom audience that you have created will not be enough to make your effort worthwhile. What if you have only had a few visitors to your site?
This is where Lookalike audiences come into play. They are audiences that are matched to yours by Google. A Lookalike Audiences is based on the custom audience that you will have just created.
Creating a new audience
If you do not wish to target custom audiences, you have the option to target an entirely new Audience. Facebook provides you with a raft of tools that you can use to define a new Target Audience;
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Detailed Targeting
Detailed Targeting
The Detailed Targeting section is really where you refine your target audience when creating Facebook Ads for Moving Companies. This area uses Demographics, Interests and Behaviors to narrow down on your Target Audience. In this case, we will target people who have expressed an in the following;
- Moving
- Moving company
Will this work?
It’s doubtful that this audience will do much in this particular case. These detailed targeting settings are too general in this case.
So, in this particular instance, the best bet is to go for a Custom Audience. A Pixel best audience is great because you are targeting people who have just been to your website and who have shown an interest in a particular section. So, you need to move quickly to convince them to become customers.
Coming up with the Ad
The final step on the way to creating Facebook Ads for moving companies is the creation of the ad itself. This step is important because the Ad is what people on Facebook will see. They won’t even appreciate all the hard work that was done in the background!
Ad Formats
Facebook allows the following Ad formats;
- Video
- Single Image
- Carousel
It’s up to you to explore the one that works best for you. Remember you are not in a straitjacket here. Facebook ads are great in that you can play around with the settings till you have hit the winning formula.
Primary Text
The Primary Text appears at the top of the ad. It’s what people will read first. However, it needs to be no more than 2 lines. You should not swamp people with text. Facebook Ads are about visuals. Too much text, and people will simply leave.
Summary
In this article, I showed you how to create Facebook Ads for moving companies. I noted that this particular case is difficult because people do not normally look up moving companies on Facebook. However, it doesn’t mean that there is no hope.
In fact, you can create Facebook Ads that bring terrific results by targeting Pixel based audiences. These are audiences that are composed of people who have already been to your site. Their interest on there is tracked, and they are shown relevant ads on Facebook.
Custom audiences increase your chances of success because you are talking to someone who is already interested in you. You can entice them to hire you, and not your competitor, by offering them discounts. So, Facebook Ads work very well for moving companies.
If you want to learn more about Facebook Ads, sign up for my Facebook Ads Mini Course for free. It’s contains a lot of material that will get you well on the way to creating top range Facebook Ads for your business.
