Free
The Google Business Profile fields, and the three things to do first.
This is the free guide the signup forms on this site send you to. It is how Hercules got its first customers before it had a truck or a name anyone knew: a name, a business line, three real photos, and a Google Business Profile filled in the way ours is. The profile fields are below, word for word, and they stay free because Google is free. The Craigslist post, the text to your contacts and the seven-day plan are in the course.
- Costs almost nothing to set up
- No truck needed to post it
- Three photos you can take today
- Start the profile today. It takes weeks to count
Before you post
Three things, one afternoon.
The ad only works if it looks like a company posted it. That takes a name, a number and photos. Not a logo, not a website, not a truck.
1
A name
Two words and "Moving" or "Movers." Not your town, because you will outgrow it. Not "cheap," "budget" or "discount," because you are pricing for double and the name would argue with the price. Say it out loud as if answering the phone. If it sounds like a company, keep it.
2
A number that is not your personal cell
A business line on your existing phone, so the company has a number before it has anything else and every lead is saved somewhere. We use Quo. Set it up today. It takes twenty minutes and every ad below carries this number.
3
Three photos
Taken with your phone, today, in your own place: a wrapped piece, you with the gear, and the gear ready to go. Nothing stock, nothing borrowed. A real photo of a real wrapped dresser beats a stock family with boxes every time.
Google Business Profile
Start it on day one. It takes weeks to matter.
This is where most of our jobs come from now, and it is free. It will not get you the first job, because Google has to verify you first and that can take days or weeks. Start it today so it is working by the time the Craigslist jobs turn into reviews. What a profile with reviews does to your price.
Fill it in exactly like this. Google suspends profiles that stuff keywords into the name or list an address they do not operate from, and getting a suspended profile back takes longer than doing it right.
- Business name
- [Company Name]. Exactly the name, nothing added. Not "[Company Name] Movers Best Cheap Moving [Town]."
- Primary category
- Mover. Add "Moving and storage service" and "Piano moving service" only if you do those.
- Address
- Choose "I deliver goods and services to my customers" and hide the address. You are a service-area business. Do not show your apartment.
- Service area
- The towns you will actually drive to, by name, up to twenty. Not the whole state.
- Phone
- The business line. The same number as the ad.
- Hours
- The hours you answer the phone, not the hours you move. If you answer at 8 PM, say 8 PM.
- Services
- Local moving, Loading and unloading, Furniture moving, In-home moving, Packing (only if you will). One line each, plain words.
- Description
- "[Company Name] is a local moving company in [your town]. We move apartments and houses across [your area], load and unload rental trucks and containers, and handle single heavy items. Every piece is wrapped in blankets and shrink wrap before it goes on the truck. You get a written agreement, a real quote from photos the same day, and an arrival window the night before. Text [555-0100] with a few photos for a price."
- Photos
- The same three, plus a plain photo of you. Google shows the profile photo next to the reviews, and a face gets more calls than a logo.
The honest part
Licensing, insurance, and what you can take this week.
Most states, including ours, require a permit to move household goods for hire, and customers with anything worth moving will ask if you are insured. Neither is a reason to wait a year. Both are a reason to know the rules in your state before you take a full-house move. Labor-only work, loading and unloading a truck the customer rented, is usually outside those rules, which is why it is on the ad and why it is the first job most people can take this week. What the permit and the insurance cost, how long they take, and the order to do them in is different in every state, and it is one of the things we go through on the call. We are not lawyers. Check your state's rules, and do not let a form you have not filed yet stop you from posting the ad today.
Photo 1, the way we shoot it: one wrapped piece.
Two people, one tote. A real job beats a staged one.
Photo 3, once you have it: a loaded truck.
The ad, today
What the Hercules listing looks like now.
This is the full-service ad as it runs on Craigslist in the Capital Region: crew photo, the number, the license numbers, what is included. It is where a share of our jobs still come from. The day-one version, for one person with no truck, is shorter and different, and it is the post in the course below.
In the course
The post, the text and the seven days are in Moving Company in a Month.
The profile above is free because Google is free. The post, the text and the day-by-day plan are in the course:
- The Craigslist post, title and body, word for word, and why each line is there
- The text to the twenty people who already know you, and why the last sentence matters
- Which first job to take, and how to treat it
- The three photos to take today, in your own place, with your phone
- The seven days, day by day, from posting to the first review
All course sales are final, so every module is listed on the course page before you buy.
The ad makes the phone ring. The script gets the job.
Both are in the course, with the brackets explained. If you want us to look at your market and your number before you post, that is an hour with both of us.