I know most of us to turn over the marketing of our self-storage facilities to vendors to handle because, for many of us, it is a world we don’t want to figure out. It is really like learning a foreign language. Add the leavers and dials needed for marketing, it seems over whelming.
However, I’ve never been very happy with the marketing results when I just turn it over. Are you?
Today I want to take one aspect of online marketing and work on it. My experience is if I take one thing at a time, and then repeat the process, I can learn new tricks.
Let’s look at this new trick for many of us.
Retargeting
Here is just a fact. The vast, vast majority of visitors you have to your website are not going to rent from you. It’s just a fact.
So we run Google Adwords, or a Facebook ad, or print ads, then run people to our web site. Very few ever convert (i.e. rent from us).
Think about how you use the internet to find out about products. What was the last thing you researched or purchased off the internet? Your Google searches will tell you.
A few days ago I was looking for someone to shoot a professional video for our church which is involved in a capital campaign. I was looking for a videographer within a certain area to do the work. Not when I go to Google, open my inbox, or even log onto Facebook (the three best ways to retarget), I see adds for professional videos.
Look at the add on the right “David Lynch teaches Creativity and Film master class”.
Also, the fourth item in my Facebook newsfeed, the same time was this add was:
Now you may turn your nose up at this, but it is effective. Retargeting just works.
Who To Retarget
For our conversations today, we are going to keep it fairly simple.
Who would you think would be a good person to target?
Many people say anyone who goes to my website. Well, we just confirmed that the majority of people who go to your website are not going to rent from you.
That is what many people to retarget and why many people think their marketing isn’t effective. I wonder how many “experts” in self-storage online marketing do this?
How many sites have you gone to and didn’t buy anything?
On the sites you did end up buying something, how did you behave?
You most likely read about what you were researching. You probably went two to three pages into the site and most likely found out how much what you were looking for cost.
Then you probably went to another site to compare.
Wouldn’t you think those are the people to “retarget” if you were going to set up a retargeting campaign?
I do.
Let’s get a basic understanding of what actually happens.
How To Retarget
The two best platforms to use for retargeting are Google and Facebook. Approximately 90% of all online advertising is done on these two platforms. Both work approximately the same way. Today we are going to use Facebook for our example 4.
Also, I have had better success using Facebook as well.
Open your Facebook Manager and create a custom audience. This assumes you have created a Facebook adverting account for your facility.
Go to Tools, then Assets, then Audiences.
Custom audiences are the main focus of a retargeting campaign. You are creating a group of people to send your adds to.
So this is your web site, or if you are using landing pages, that URL.
Be sure to enter people who go to specific pages, like the price, or reserve page, not just the home page.
You can also get more specific like visited 10 x 10s or clicked specials, but we won’t explain that here. Just know you can drill down further if you want.
Conclusion
This is an effective way to stay in front of potential customers.
Remember, it usually takes a person a while to decide if they want to buy something or rent something. Especially people who want to feel like they are making good choices.
Effective marketers stay in front of them, not everyone. Retargeting is an effective way to do this.
Experts say it takes a minimum of five touches to get a sale in many cases. Retargeting is an effective way to do that just to people who are most likely really be the ones who are going to rent self-storage in your market area.
So even if you are not the ones who are going to handle the online marketing, use this to talk intelligently with your vendor. This is too important to just hope they know what they are doing.
