In recent years, influencer marketing has become ubiquitous across various industries, including beauty, fashion, and wellness. However, it has since made its way into other industries, including the moving industry, where companies are working with influencers to help promote their services on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
One such company that has been successful in this area is Roadway Moving, founded by Ross Sapir, whose company has moved production equipment and social media-bait décor for thousands of influencers. Roadway’s fleet of colorful trucks wrapped in cheeky taglines has become a social media star in its own right. Influencers who post about Roadway Moving on Instagram and TikTok receive free or discounted moves in exchange.
While the company has become a running joke among some social media users, the payoff for businesses like Roadway is the exposure to new audiences and the influencer’s branding sheen. It’s not just Roadway that has jumped on the influencer marketing bandwagon. Piece of Cake Moving & Storage, a New York City company founded in 2017, has also been working with influencers for the past three years. Bellhop, based in Chattanooga, Tenn., started its influencer marketing program in 2019.
To determine whether an influencer gets a discounted or free move, companies take into account factors such as their follower count, engagement rate, distance of the move, and how much stuff needs to be transported. The more complex the move, the more an influencer can benefit. For example, a move involving a 14-foot dining table that weighs 1,000 pounds would be more expensive than a move that only involves a few boxes.
Influencer moves make up a small fraction of business for most companies, about 3% to 5% for Roadway. However, through its deals with influencers, the company has become ubiquitous on social media, with both sponsored and non-sponsored posts from paying customers.
One influencer who has used Roadway Moving for three moves is Isabel Tan, known as @prettyfrowns on Instagram. Tan has nearly 300,000 followers and is a beauty, fashion, and lifestyle influencer. She posts five to 10 stories a day and about one post a day to her Instagram grid. Tan’s deal with Roadway is a standard company-influencer arrangement: Roadway covers the cost of her move, and she documents the process on Instagram.
Tan’s goal is twofold: Roadway gets her belongings from Point A to Point B, and she documents a life event for her followers—moving in with her partner. She wants her posts to be more than just pictures of the move; she wants to capture the feeling of being ushered through a major life change. In the lead-up to the move, she prompted her followers to submit advice about moving in together.
Influencers are given a personalized link and discount code for followers to get 10% off local moves and 5% off long-distance moves. Whether their followers interact with and use the information is part of how Roadway tracks the success of partnerships. Some influencers request not to offer the code because it doesn’t align with their personal brand.
The use of influencer marketing in the moving industry is still relatively new, but it’s clear that it’s a trend that’s here to stay. As more companies explore the benefits of working with influencers, it’s likely that we’ll see more colorful moving trucks on our streets and more sponsored posts in our social media feeds.
