Smart Strategies for Moving Your Small Business Without Losing Your Customers

Smart Strategies for Moving Your Small Business Without Losing Your Customers

Moving a business can be just as stressful as moving from one home to another. If you’re like most people, change is stressful, so here are some ways to deal with it and make the move as seamless and pain-free as possible.

Get Your New Building Or Office Location

Get your new building or office location in order. Of course, location matters, so make sure you’re choosing a place that’s easier to get to for your customers, that’s larger, or that has some other benefit to your customers. You’ll need this for the launch so that you can turn your move into an event (more on that later).

If your office is in a residential neighborhood, or you’re a business that uses a converted home as an office, use a New Home Listing Service if you’re selling off an old building, and moving into a new one. For example, many doctors and dentists use converted homes as offices.

Set Up A Forwarding Address

Set up your forwarding address so the mailman knows where you’re moving to. You don’t want to assume that “somehow” everything will work out alright. A forwarding address sends your mail to your new address prior to an official change of address. This is a good thing because not all of your customers and vendors will know about the move when it happens and you don’t want to lose their mail on account of it.

Take Care Of The Phones

For many businesses, phones are an integral part of the operation. From sales to interoffice and vendor communication, phones are how you communicate with the outside world. Make sure you take care of the phone situation when you move. That means calling your current provider and having them switch the service before you move into your new location. Yes, before. Why?

Because you don’t want an interruption in service. You can always have your calls forwarded to your current office for a week until everything is moved over.

Change Contact Information On Marketing Materials

Don’t forget to change your contact information on all of your marketing materials. Your business cards, stationary, website contact information, and anything else that makes its way into the hands of vendors and clients needs to be changed. While you’re at it, contact your marketing manager or agency and have them update your contact info online so that you don’t lose local search visibility.

Announce The Move At A Special Event

Your move should be a marketing event. Most move announcements play up the “where and when” aspect of moving. And, while this is important, you should make sure that you stress the benefits of such a move – the benefits to customers.

Remember, most people don’t care about you. They care about themselves and what you can do for them as a business. Your move should tell them something about how that helps them. For example, maybe you just moved into a bigger building with a larger show room. Maybe that means that you have more merchandise. How does that help customers?

You could advertise the fact that customers get more choices and better service. Make sure you email tech-savvy clients and customers.

Frances Parsons is an independent relocation consultant. She enjoys the opportunity to share her insights with an online audience. Her thoughts have been posted on a number of relevant websites.