How to Get Press Coverage for Your Moving Company
When it comes to getting your business covered by the local media, many of you may have a "love-hate" relationship with the press. You love how positive press coverage can drum up serious business for your company, but you aren't so keen on all the effort that you have to put in to actually land coverage. Besides, crafting a truly excellent pitch is hard enough as it is!
The good news is that there are a number of ways you can easily land press coverage for your moving company, starting with a few of these tips:
Poll Your Customers
Insider’s tip – reporters love writing about survey findings!
With your customer’s permission, conduct a survey, and poll your customers about moving-related topics. Relevant questions may include what they’re most excited about in their new neighborhood or the top three reasons why they decided to move into your town.
If you work with a graphic designer, create an infographic with all of your survey findings that you can share with the media. There are a number of online tools like Canva or Visual.ly that you can easily use to create an infographic. If graphic design isn’t your “thing,” sharing the raw numbers with the media works well, too!
Donate Your Truck for Charity Purposes
Does the local elementary school organize a 5K run every fall? Do the local Boy Scouts hand out coffee and donuts at a nearby highway rest-stop every Memorial Day weekend?
If so, chances are that they’ll need your “hauling help” to transport event-related items, whether that’s water bottles, outdoor tents, or snacks. Consider partnering with local businesses or charities in your area, and ask them to include your company name on some of their promotional collateral. Better yet, if they’re working with the media, let them know that you'd appreciate a shoutout for helping to donate your services. However small the mention, it’s yet another way to associate your brand with some positive buzz.
Because Everyone Loves a Feel-Good Story
Did your company collect over 1,000 pounds of food for Move for Hunger last year? Did your company collect two-hundred coats during your annual holiday coat drive?
If so, consider it newsworthy! The local news media loves covering feel-good stories about local businesses that are making an impact on the surrounding community. While your main goal is to help others, there's no harm in sharing how your company is connecting with the local community. When you craft your pitch to the media, come armed with all the stats that you can – how many coats you collected or how many years that you've been involved in the charity. It'll make it that much easier (and desirable) for reporters to write about your involvement.
Focus on the "Three U’s"
According to Infusionsoft, small businesses that wish to get covered by the media should plan on focusing on the three U’s – the unexpected, the unusual, and the unorthodox. Pitching stories related to your own internal company culture tends to work great for hitting one of the three U’s.
For example, does your company have a truck-pulling contest every spring? Did your moving team attach go-pros to their heads to capture Boston’s busiest moving day of the year? Did your movers rescue one of your customer’s dogs that fell into the middle of a frozen lake (true story!)?
Simply put, don’t underestimate the value of a unique human-interest story. Readers (and the media) will eat it right up!
Co-Sponsor an Event With Other Local Businesses
Enter one of our favorite rules-of-thumb – the more hyper-local the story, the better that it generally will play out with the media.
Instead of directly pitching the media on an event that your company – and your company alone – will host, consider co-sponsoring an event with other small business in the area. Maybe you target your first-time homebuyer customers and co-host a workshop with the local real estate brokerage on first-time home buyer tips. Or, maybe you conduct a workshop on how your customers can winterize their new homes and co-sponsor the workshop with the local home inspection company.
Pool your resources to identify any local media or press contacts you and your co-sponsor may know, and invite them to attend the event. For example, invite the reporter who owns the home finance beat at the local paper to attend your first-time home buyer’s workshop.
While getting your moving company covered by the media will require a fair amount of elbow grease to start, think of it as an important investment. The more often that your company is featured in the media, the more legitimate your business will appear in the eyes of prospective customers.