If you want to grow your self-storage customer base, retain high-value tenants, and remain competitive in the marketplace, embracing digital marketing is vital. If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s the power of hand sanitizer and the importance of a company’s online presence and reputation. It’s been a stark reminder that facility operators must adapt to succeed.
Lead generation is the lifeblood of any business, and in recent years, digitization has brought the self-storage industry to a new level of marketing sophistication. Today’s consumers make purchasing decisions before they’ve even visited your website; therefore, consider whether your facility is ahead of its peers when it comes to digital marketing, or if you’re in danger of falling behind. In this article, we’re going to unpack the fundamentals you need to drive your overall strategy and ensure you’re not eating the dust of your competitors.
The Fundamentals
While it’s not easy to stay on top of marketing trends, don’t let the jibber-jabber overwhelm you. Instead, adopt the following fundamentals. They will go a long way in boosting your self storage marketing strategy and overall business success.
Identify and understand your audience. While the simplest form of self-storage as a product is space, the reason people use it varies significantly. It’s important to understand the “life happens” moments that drive storage usage and how different target audiences are segmented.
Use ctargeted and directed messaging. The reason segmenting your potential customer base is vital is to deliver personalized and relevant messages across multiple digital channels. The importance of a specific strategy cannot be understated.
Have a clear search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. SEO plays an important role in driving traffic to your self storage website and increasing your ranking on Google (a key driver of rental enquiries). Today, it goes beyond content marketing, keywords and techniques to help search engines crawl and index your website. It’s also about setting clear business goals, using data to guide the way, making sure your website offers an exceptional user experience, leveraging online listings like your Google Business Profile, and more.
Take advantage of social networks. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be key to generating leads, so it can be smart to partner with a reputable digital marketing company that can leverage them on your behalf. Some marketers have even developed partnerships with these platforms and can access beta products through their technical and creative teams to drive more inquiries.
Social media goes hand in hand with SEO and other marketing strategies to give your self storage business the boost it needs to attract potential tenants. Choosing which platforms to invest in and how to publish content is an important first step.
Focus on mobile. Mobile traffic is still dominant when it comes to potential customers browsing and making decisions online. Websites that still use manual form filling are lagging behind mobile interaction for the instant interaction consumers now expect from their online experience.
Embrace the power of data. Marketing efforts are significantly more impactful when you analyze data. Creating a content schedule, selecting keywords and having a functional website is only half the job. The other half is looking at the results and analyzing them to get an idea.
Marketing is no longer based on the “post and hope” mentality. We now have access to incredibly detailed data. Analytics is just as important as anything else in your marketing toolbox, and while it’s a bit of a cliché, the trend really is your friend.
Partner. meIf you want to stay competitive in the self-storage market and attract high-value customers, you need to embrace the latest digital marketing trends. You can increase your chances of success by working with a professional partner who can be nimble and responsive to changes in consumer behavior, as well as understand how potential customers engage with you digitally. A company that can continually refine its marketing approach while staying focused on the fundamentals that influence demand is invaluable.
Chris Oosthuizen is the chief executive of a UK-based company Digital first, a digital marketing company specializing in demand and lead generation for European self storage operators. He is also the marketing director of Stor-Age Property REIT, a real estate investment trust that operates self storage in South Africa and the UK. To contact him, call 2721.671.3233; e-mail [email protected].
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