When coaching people on their self-storage journey, I often say, “I reserve the right to be wrong.”

I am going to say that here as well.

Anything I say in this episode could be wrong, and I may change my mind later.

I hope someone in the industry reads this and changes my mind.

They will have my business.

The approach I take and advocate for in this article may not be for everyone, but it could be for anyone.

I ultimately took this approach to online marketing because I could not find a vendor who produced results or results I liked. 

The Problem (as I see it)

Your storage facility has to be on Google.

That is the problem.

You not only have to be on Google, but you also have to show up on top of Google to really be relevant.

No one will be scrolling below the fold (what shows up on Google without scrolling down), or if they scroll down, they will not go much, if any, beyond the map.

You have got to be on top.

Not only do you have to be on top, but you have to have something people see that not only has them click but has them rent.

You have a couple of seconds to do this.

And not only that, you have to compete against companies with full-time people whose only job is Google online marketing.

But that is not your biggest problem.

Your biggest problem is the size of your market.

How many people live in your trade area?

Let’s say a five-mile radius is the size of your market.

In our business, let’s say we have 50,000 people in a five-mile radius (and that is a lot).

At any given moment, only about 5,000 of them need a unit, and a large percentage of those people already have one.

You have a very small market.

At least for online marketing purposes.

Using vendors or agencies to market online on a national, regional, or worldwide basis works great. You see, there are enough people and clicks to see what is working.

An agency can create effective A/B testing that collects meaningful data. Because the ads are being exposed to hundreds of thousands or millions of people, one can see trends.

The cost of using these vendors and agencies is no small fee, but when selling to large vast audiences, the cost is small compared to the results.

To market online correctly, where someone is monitoring add performance, adjusting weekly or biweekly based on conversions, tweaking campaigns, testing headlines, colors, text, etc. for 10 to 25 move-ins, is very cost prohibitive in the self-storage business.

So, what most vendors do is have an “aggressive, moderate, or low impact choice” of monthly fees, where they look up keywords, create ads, or buy keyword searches within the budget you agree to pay, then …well, that’s it.

So, when I wasn’t getting many move-ins, I was told, “Well, we are getting a good click-through.”

“They must not like your pricing.”

They could not have liked the website (the website creators were the vendors I was using).

Or they may not like the ad.

Or…there are many reasons, but no one was testing.

And I get it. I wasn’t paying them enough to test. I could not afford to pay them what was needed to do a good job.

The Solution (as I see it)

I had no intention of ever being someone who does online marketing.

But someone has to do it.

By virtue of being a small investor who can’t really afford an online marketing person on the payroll, I just figured the job fell in my lap.

Here is what I discovered.

You never figure out what is working, set it in place, then sit back.

It changes constantly.

Keyword searches change, and competition changes. However, what changes most is Google.

An average of 600 to 800 algorithm changes per year.

So, I could have three facilities in the same city, but what works well at one falls totally flat at the other facility.

And what works well at one facility three months later is no longer working.

Given that I am not the smartest person out there at all, but I really needed help and couldn’t afford to really do it right by hiring someone to manage the way I thought it should be managed, I hired coaches.

The best results I have had come from hiring a Google coach, having that person work with me to set up my ads, monitor them, analyze the analytics and how my ads are doing compared to my competition, and figure stuff out.

I have learned way more than I ever wanted to about Google, but I still know very little.

I have had to change coaches a few times as well.

But given the amount of self-storage supply on the market, and given how much of that supply is run by big companies, I have to do something.

And I know small investors who are way better at it than I am. I coach one who consistently outperforms the REITs in the markets he owns the property.

How?

He constantly monitors, changes quickly, alters his campaigns, and on and on.

And he spends what is needed to outperform his competition (you can see in the analytics how you compare to your competition in terms of market share, click-through rates, etc.).

He has actually inspired me to continue on this way of online marketing with a coach and do it myself.

(There are many ways to find a coach. YouTube. Upwork. Fiver etc.)

At least until I find a vendor in our space, who can out-produce at the same or lower cost to me as the coach.

If you are a vendor out there who has a better idea, let me know, please. I am waiting.