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Pre-Move Shopping Insights
Luci:
So you’re a researcher yourself, David, and we’re also seeing how consumers do research when they’re looking at goods and services. Is there anything interesting you see in these categories in terms of the timing that consumers execute when researching some of these things for the move?
Some of these are really far in advance of their of their move, even at the very beginning of their move journey.
David:
I think what we found in this research is very important and we saw this last year as well. There’s a significant number of new movers who are doing their homework ahead of time, and they’re doing their research perhaps on the obvious things like mortgages and insurance as we’ve got listed here, but they’re doing this 3 or 4 month in advance.
We’re finding about half of the new movers are doing their research for these kinds of services in advance prior to the move. This is certainly also conversely an opportunity here. This means that the other half are not necessarily doing it prior to the move, and perhaps that’s a group if you can find them, can quote and educate a little bit better and provide them information ahead of time.
They will be better prepared, better organized, maybe feel better about where they are headed if they are able to look into things like home insurance, moving services and inspections ahead of time.
Luci:
Clearly the moving services data didn’t surprise me being that I come from the moving and storage industry. And even when I was CMO at PODS, I was always so surprised at how far in advance people booked their moves. That was always very surprising to me. I don’t how much you know about the origin of Porch Group Media’s data and the audiences they create for customers. But being a division of Porch, they have the advantage in accessing unique premover data that they get from Porch.
It’s such an amazing advantage they have in getting data to form these audiences. You can see why it’s so important to leverage a partner who is able to have access to that data so early. We’re just showing a few examples here of industries, and where people make those decisions. On the next slide, we show a more in-depth look at probably four times as many industries or product cohorts and how movers make those decisions and when they look.
If you look at the bottom of this chart, the dark blue is the decision made prior to moving. The gray is within the first month of moving. And then the orange color is after moving. If you put together the categories of “prior to moving” and “within the first month of moving”, as a marketer, I’m thinking, “OK, need to reach all these customers who are prior to moving, or within the first month of moving before they move.”
As they’re doing their research and thinking about these different products or services, they will have to decide if they will have to make a change. Whenever I see this research, I’m always so surprised at how many decisions are made prior to the move, which for marketers means you’ve got to get hold of this data to be able to market to your consumers who are in their homeowner journey.
David:
If I could just add to that, Luci, if you take the blue that’s listed from top to bottom, the top items are perhaps more obvious like moving services. People need to do that prior to the move, but it also includes worrying about their finance and banking needs, the roof, roof repair, automobiles, solar, healthcare, all of these things are items and services that new movers are doing prior to the move, maybe several months prior to the move.
Then when you look in the middle in the gray area, the things that are done the most are towards the bottom. These may be kind of obvious such as within the first month of moving, people change internet, utilities, and cable. All of that is probably pretty obvious, but then things like furniture, home security, home improvement, these are things that new movers know they have to tackle fairly soon after moving. Within that first month, they have to be able to function. So for marketers to be able to approach new movers and say, “Here are all the things that you need to be worrying about. So if you can, why not try to educate yourself in advance of your moving date.
This slide always surprises me, or rather this data I would say always surprises me. If you’re one of our folks in the audience today and you see your category listed to the left, really take note that it’s really that pre-move marketing that needs to be done well in advance of that move-in date. It’s really important to start your audience targeting and messaging to those movers, and especially your current customers, especially when I look at the service providers here listed in the left.
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