As the self storage industry changes, grows and evolves, nothing changes faster than how we market for new customers.

In the first facility I was involved with, 86% of our customers came from the Yellow Pages.

The last time I ran a Yellow Pages ad, I lost around $1,200 per customer who came in from the ad. The cost was $3,400 per customer and the average value of a customer was $2,200.

We all know that the “Internet” is where most of our customers are looking for self storage. A few years ago there was a big push for good websites so customers could find us.

Now our websites are great. For the most part, customers can see how big a unit they should rent, what our facility looks like, and they may even meet the manager through a video on our sites.

They can definitely reserve a unit and some can even rent a unit online. At most facilities, they can pay their bills online and they can leave a review about how we are doing.

Our websites have evolved and gotten really good.

Then there was a big push to have our websites show up in online searches, so we learned the term SEO (search engine optimization). If websites seemed mysterious, SEO was in a whole other realm.

So we made sure our website providers also provided SEO. And we hoped they knew what they were doing because we sure didn’t.

But everything must be working because we were all at over 90% occupancy.

I guess things are working how they should be. No need to spend a lot of money on marketing.

Was this you up until about a year ago?

If this is you now, here is my prediction:  It wont last.

This industry is getting sophisticated. If you are in an underserved area, someone will figure that out and add more self storage.

If you are in a large, mid-size, or even many smaller markets, you have seen a lot of new self storage hit the market.

So what do you do?

You scramble.

If you are like many of us, you look around and say, “how can I do online marketing?”

You hire someone or go to your industry expert – your website provider.

You may even fund the “aggressive” package and throw $1,000 plus per month at positioning your facility online.

I was getting a list of reports about how many times my website was “hit.” It was quite impressive.

I even moved up slightly in “Google rankings.” Great.

The only thing was, all this money I was spending didn’t translate into new customers or new leases.

So I decided to go another route.

As much as I hated to do it, I decided to learn the online marketing business.

Sure self storage is a great business, but how different is it really when it comes to online marketing?

It is a local business attracting local customers. I know that between 82% and 92% of our customers (depending on which facility it is in our portfolio) come from areas very close to our facility.

So I know where the customers are located.

I know which platforms to use. Last year over 90% of all online advertising dollars went to either Facebook or Google.

I just needed to learn what other online marketers were doing. Because what our industry was doing, or at least the ones I worked with, didn’t seem to know how to get customers into our facilities.

Now it is not over. It is never over. People in the online marketing business are always retraining because the platforms and what works is always changing.

So I found people who are experts in the area of online marketing, much like I profess to be in self storage, and connected with them to get my education.

I want to spend the next few Episodes sharing some of what I have learned, what we are doing that works, and what we have done that didn’t work.

My goal would be to, at the very least, have you better able to interview an expert in self storage marketing so you can hire someone who can do what gives results.

Perhaps you will want to deep dive into it like I am. I am because it’s such an important aspect of our industry these days. I didn’t want to have to turn it over and hope I hired the right people.

So let’s start our dive into this world of online marketing for self storage.

I am going to start with paid online advertising. Not SEO. SEO is important, but in many ways that is like the lowest hanging fruit in online marketing.

I have made the decision, for now, to let my website provider handle the “SEO” and I will make sure they get me on the first page of all Google searches. I also institute a pay per click ad strategy (more on this later).

I have said there are two platforms today where our customers hang out online. One is Google and the other is Facebook.

My last self storage online marketing expert told me Google is the best platform for our industry. Seeing how they did so great, I’m going to start with Facebook.

I think today, from what I am seeing, Facebook is the platform where I get the best bang for my buck.

We have to be very careful and strategic or spending can run out of control fast. But it is amazing what you can do on that platform once you get in and learn how to use it.

So let’s start there.

Facebook 101

Do you have a company Facebook page?

Most of you do, but if you don’t, create one. You have to have one to run ads.

There are all kinds of strategies of what to do with this page. If you go to the conventions in Las Vegas, there are workshops and training on the different ways you can use this page.

This is not online marketing in my world. I’m sure it’s good training. We have someone in our company who creates strategies for this page and our managers are required to put post and photos on the page regularly.

All this is good.

All this is not online marketing. Do it, but learn what to do from someone else.

I want to teach you how to use paid advertising to drive “traffic” to your facility to rent. “Traffic” is a cool word experts use now in the online world for people who find you from online marketing.

Paid advertising has become even more important recently since Facebook announced changes to their newsfeed (Facebook Zero).  Over the next few months, Facebook will be changing the news feed so that more meaningful interactions can happen between friends. This means fewer posts from businesses and brands will show up on your followers’ news feeds. This might be the end of the golden era of organic marketing on Facebook where you could grow your business for free.

So what is a Facebook Ad?

There are several different kinds.

You used to see them on the right-hand side of the newsfeed page when you were on Facebook on a desktop computer.

Then as mobile became more relevant, Facebook ads started showing up in the main “newsfeed”. That is where the post your “Friends” put on Facebook show up. It is what you stand there and read as you are waiting in line for coffee (where I am most of the time I am on Facebook).

You can tell they are ads because it says “sponsored” in them at the top.

When I started paying attention to this, a whole new world opened up that I had no idea existed. It has been fun and I am still on the journey. I will be reporting back to you periodically starting with this set of Episodes.

Facebook Advertising 101

So let’s start with our Facebook online paid traffic training (see how I got that word in again).

It is funny how great minds work alike. The person I am using to learn this world says the first thing you need to do before you ever place an ad is to design the strategy for what you want the ads to do.

Does that sound like anything I have ever said about a self storage business strategy?

If you don’t do this, you will just be wasting your money.

Let me share with you a simple online marketing strategy or ad “funnel.”