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.”

 

In a simple sale strategy, the online traffic would see and ad. If they were interested, they would click a call to action (CTA) button in the ad and that would take them to a landing page.
 
A landing page is a simple web page that gives only one simple choice – take the offer or leave. There are no other distractions, links, or menus on the page to distract the prospective client. I will show you how I create them.
 
My old online expert used to send the traffic to our website. Good idea, but there are a lot of cool things on the website to look at. Right now I don’t want them looking, I want them making a decision.
 
On the landing page, if they don’t have enough information to make a decision, you can put a link to your website. But for the most part, I just want them to click yes and claim the offer or leave.
 
If they claim the offer, they can either rent or reserve a unit right there using the offer or print or save an offer to bring into the facility.
 
If people go to the Landing Page but do not click and take the offer, you can either start a different email follow up campaign, preferably automated, or retarget them in another ad campaign.
 
The goal of either or both is to take them back to the landing page or into the facility to rent a unit.
 
This is a simple “ad funnel” or “sales funnel” for what we sell in the industry (“funnel” is another cool word they like to use in the online marketing world).
 
Creating Your Facebook Ad Campaign
 
When I am setting up a campaign, I usually work backward from the goal of a strategy.
 
In this case, it is renting a unit. A second goal is to get a prospect’s name and email address so I can market to them through email later.
 
So what will you need to execute this strategy?
 
Well, obviously you need units to rent.
 
The execution of the Facebook ad has two components. The link in your Facebook ad will take them to a landing page that explains the offer and benefits and a form to fill out in order to claim the offer. This is usually fairly simple – just first name and email address.
 
After they have entered their information, they will get a follow-up email or “Thank You” email. This is where you send them the actual offer. This not only allows you to grow your email list but is the easiest way to tell if your ads are “converting.” Meaning, people are responding to the offer and not leaving your landing page before they take the offer. This is done through a Facebook pixel – codes the Facebook tracks to follow users as they move around online. More on this later.
 
Can someone rent your units online?
 
If they can, great. You will need the link to the page on your website where they can do that on the Thank You page.
 
If not, no worries. You will need to send a coupon for them print or take into your facility on the Thank You page that is designed to get them into your facility or call to rent a unit.
 
So the traffic will claim the offer on a landing page. This means you will need the ability to create a landing page. There are some simple programs out there for that as well. Again, more on that later.
 
If you want to automate email sequences to them on an ongoing basis (with all the emails you are collecting through your landing page form) there are programs you can purchase to do that as well. We’ll get deeper into that topic in another post.
 
So to get to the Landing Page you will need a Facebook Ad. To create the ad you are going to need a Facebook Company Page on Facebook and an ad account in Facebook created.
 
Then you need to have an offer. Create some kind of offer you think will attract and get the attention of potential customers in your area as they look at Facebook.

Assignment

This week your job is to create a Facebook Company Page for your self storage company if you don’t have one.
 
Then, create an account in Facebook Ads Manager. You can have different pages for multiple facilities under one Facebook account, so you’ll only need to create one Ads Manager account. You can tie the ads to specific pages within the Ad Campaign.
 
Based on your occupancy rate, create an online advertising budget.
 
We have facilities that are in lease-up and have space just coming online. For these, we have an aggressive budget of $350 to $750 per month.
 
I’m telling you, with that kind of money you can do great things if you know what you are doing. The days of $25,000 per year or higher are gone.
 
Next, come up with what you think would be a good offer.
 
For me that changes depending on what’s going on in the submarket the facility is located in and what the competition is doing.
 
A year ago I ran a three week Facebook ad campaign for a facility we have in lease-up. In that three weeks, we had five people claim the offer and rent a unit.
 
The ad campaign cost me $265. The offer was for $25 off the first month’s rent or retail sales.
 
Five times $25 is $125. So if we add the $125 and the $265 together, the entire ad campaign cost us $390. The average value of a customer at that facility was $1,850.
 
So with five new rentals, we made $9,250. It cost $390 to get that. Would you do that?
 
Obviously yes.
 
I ran the same campaign three months later and not one lease.
 
Then I realized why. A new competitor in the submarket was online with lower rates than us offering the first month free.
 
So the offer you come up with must be relevant to the market you are in and what your competition is offering.
 
Know both. How full is your submarket?
 
Is there new space online?
 
Where are your rates compared to your competition?
 
All of these need to come into play as your design an offer.
 
Now if you are full and everyone has a waiting list, obviously you don’t need to be aggressive. You may not even need to offer a discount.
 
But design something. Give a lock away. Somehow create an offer that separates your facility from the competition in the form of an offer.
 
Do all of these and come back next week and we will start designing a campaign together.
 
See you then and keep your eyes open as you look in Google and Facebook to notice ads. Notice the ones you like and the ones you don’t.