• Storage
• Self Storage Marketing: How To Build Leads For Your Storage Business

Self Storage Marketing: How To Build Leads For Your Storage Business

21 April 2021

When running a business in an ever-growing field like the self storage industry, it is always crucial for you to find ways to help your business stand out. One of the best ways to do this, of course, is by exploring the various self storage marketing strategies that have already been proven to be valuable and effective to various self storage businesses.

 

However, there are various self storage marketing techniques one may use, and they may or may not work for your business. Hence, it is crucial for you to avoid blazing through every marketing strategy known to man. Instead, you will want to take each of the many self storage marketing ideas out there into consideration and carefully determine just how helpful they will be, depending on the factors surrounding your self storage business. 

 

Factors To Consider Before Choosing The Best Self-Storage Marketing Techniques For Your Business

   

Because setting your business apart from the rest is one of the primary goals in any marketing campaign, it is crucial that you first identify how you want to make sure that you are going to be executing the self-storage marketing strategies that are best suitable for your business. To do this, you will want to take into consideration the following:

 

Your Target Customer Base or Potential Customers and Their Behaviour As Consumers

Before anything else, find out to whom you are marketing your storage business. Some questions you will need to find out are:

• Who is most likely to rent a storage unit?
• What are the most common reasons to rent a self-storage unit?
• The age range and income bracket of your prospective customers.
• What is the most common device used by your target audience to browse for self-storage options?
• How long they are willing to travel to the self-storage unit?

 

With the information mentioned above, it will be much easier to develop a tailor-fit strategy for your customers. You will want to check out the Self Storage Association UK’s Annual Industry Report for such information and more.

 

The Location Of Your Self Storage Facility

 

Based on your self-storage business location, it will also be much easier to determine the marketing approach you should be using. For example, if you plan to market a storage facility in London, your approach would be much different than when you are planning to market a self-storage facility in Birmingham, Glasgow, Bournemouth or Cardiff. 

 

There are, after all, many factors such as geography, population, demand, culture, and economy that can affect your audience’s response to your marketing efforts. 

 

Your Storage Company’s Economic Data and Marketing Campaign Budget

 

How is your company standing economically? Do you have the means to fund a full-blown marketing campaign with out-of-the-box marketing ideas, or will you have to let it take a back seat to be able to fund your operations, among many others? 

 

These are some questions that you will have to answer before deciding on a course of action for your marketing strategy. 

 

The Marketing Activities Of Your Competitors

 

Lastly, take into consideration how exactly other self-storage owners are executing their marketing campaigns. Try to dissect their methods and determine which strategies are working and which methods are not. Moreover, you will want to break down why these methods worked or why they did not. 

By doing so, it will be much easier for you to gauge what you can do to improve upon their tactics, and more importantly, which of your marketing ideas may or may not work for your business.

 

Best Self Storage Marketing Strategies To Generate More Leads For Your Business

 

Here are some of the best marketing strategies you can choose from. To make it much easier for you to determine which ones will be most useful for business, we have divided them into three parts. Here they are:

 

Part 1: Increase Your Digital Marketing Efforts

 

The first thing you can do is improve your online presence. Here are some of the ways you can use do that:

 

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation or SEO is one of the most effective ways for you to improve your online presence, especially on Google, increase the clicks to your site, and quite possibly, the number of storage unit rentals as well. Employing the services of an organic SEO agency can be the game-changer your online presence needs. These specialized agencies understand the intricacies of search engine algorithms, enabling them to strategically build links back to your website. The number of links has always been a major player in how the algorithm ranks your site on Google. And while this has become only one of Google’s many ranking signals, it is still crucial for you to make sure that there are various links to your site on the internet.

 

To do this, you will have to make sure of the following:

  1. Your site is optimised to ensure an above-average user experience. That means your site should load quickly, be interactive, and have a few layout shifts as possible. It should also be safe, secure, visually appealing, and, most importantly, mobile-friendly. You may read more about Core Web Vitals here. 2. Pages on your site should have the proper headlines, subheadlines, tags, meta descriptions, and optimised images.  3. Content should be relevant, informative, and of high quality. That means, that if you have a self-storage website, your content should be relevant to your facility’s location, services, and amenities.  4. Build links back to your website. The number of links has always been a major player in how the algorithm ranks your site on Google. And while this has become only one of Google’s many ranking signals, it is still crucial for you to make sure that there are various links to your site on the internet. 5. Your Google My Business listing should be accurate, complete, and verified. This will help any target customers in your area find your business quickly and without hassle.

Social Media Marketing

You will also want to take advantage of how prevalent and widely used social media is in the present. There are two ways in which you can handle social media marketing.

 

First, of course, is the organic route. All you will have to do is build an online community by posting images of your storage units, sharing interesting and informative articles relating to storage, showcasing quirky employee-centric videos, replying to comments and reviews, publishing company updates, and informing your followers of any promotions you have in store for them. 

 

As an alternative, or as something you may do alongside organic social media marketing, you may also run some ads on various social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and many more. 

 

Facebook’s comprehensive ads management tool also offers ad retargeting or remarketing, which means you will be sending out ads exclusively for those who have already previously interacted with your site. If done correctly, this technique can be effective in driving customers back to your site.

Email Marketing

When a customer registers to your website or requests a self-storage quote, you automatically capture their email address. Make the most out of this information by sending them a reminder to finalise their self-storage booking or offer them additional promotions or incentives for renting a unit at your facility.  You may also use it to thank a customer for choosing your facility over another, encourage them to get in touch should they need anything for the duration of their stay in your facility, and even request that they leave a review for you. Here’s a list of how you can use email for your marketing efforts:

 

1- Welcome Email

  The best email marketing strategy for self-storage businesses is to send a welcome email to new customers and make them feel at home. A welcome email will keep your customers and prospects engaged and interested.    You may also use it to answer any of their questions and provide a free customer survey to engage them further. A customer survey can help you improve customer retention and increase your lead generation. Following is a simple welcome email for self-storage customers.    

2- Product Promotions

  Many customers do not just support products or services because of their brand name and logos, but also because they need it. If your product doesn’t provide the functionality that the consumer is looking for, they will not purchase your product and will instead look for a better option out in the market. Therefore, it is important for you to let your prospective customers know why they need your product. You may do this by putting out ads on TV, the radio, and even social media, but an email campaign may just help you as well.    In fact, because of your audience and demography, email marketing may just be the best way to promote your self storage business. The people who come for self storage are highly educated and digitized. So, the chances of them opening an email is high.     Moreover, there is a psychology behind people using email marketing to promote their products or services. For example, when someone reads an advertisement on social media or on the internet, it becomes merely a generic ad that people often ignore. However, if the same content is sent to someone’s email, it becomes a personalized experience and people tend to react strongly to it in the form of inquiries, website visits, unsubscription from the mail service, or email deletion.   That means, although it is not guaranteed to be positive, emails will almost always garner some form of response.  

3- Seasonal Updates

  Different self-storage providers have different seasons, one of the most widely used marketing strategies in the self-storage industry. Some seasons drive high occupancies and others impact on the sale of products, thus, it is key to provide seasonal updates to existing and potential customers.  For example, during the winter season, people tend to sell their personal belongings. To help retain your customers during the winter season, you can offer a discount in return for their unused personal belongings. Sending offerings at the last minute instead of giving consumers your standard sales promos, can grab the attention of potential consumers and increase your sales revenue.  

4- Customer Engagement

  When you are writing emails, you have to consider what your customers like and what they want. If you are making people do an action, for example, moving their things from one place to another, they would want you to engage them on a personal level and speak to them in a friendly way.  One of the best ways to engage with your customers is by answering their questions, solving their problems, and assisting them. Thus, this strategy will drive all your visitors to buy more products from your website or register on your online portal. When your customers keep coming back, it will create trust and brand loyalty which will drive more visitors to your website and help you generate more leads and eventually increase the revenue.  

5- Customer Loyalty

  The customer loyalty program of self-storage businesses can be a lucrative email marketing tactic to grow sales and profitability. It’s advisable to engage your customers and keep them updated about your products and services by offering new and unique products and services. Customers who love your service and products would appreciate you and return as customers.    The best way to get customers to stick to your brand is to offer them perks. It’s a well-known fact that every customer wants something free. If you have an exciting offer, people will love to spread the news and earn money through affiliate marketing. Using a combination of affiliates, loyalty programs, advertising, and email marketing can create a powerful customer retention strategy for the self-storage business.   Affiliates are the people who are already clients of your company, are looking to invest in storage facilities, and would like to earn money. If you have a low price, no installation fees, and excellent customer service, you can place ads for free to affiliate marketing websites. Let your affiliate signup for your affiliate program, and enter some basic information.    You can offer your existing customer in an affiliate or referral program and give them a healthy sum of commission to make them motivated and engaged with your organization.    If you are doing email marketing, here are some tips you will want to keep in mind:  

• 1. Build email lists by having customers fill out a form directly, do newsletter signups, offer discounts and deals, and do popup forms. For the last one, though, you will have to remember that such popup forms are not provided by free email services. Instead, you will have to use a paid email marketing tool like Mailchimp Popups. Such tools are very easy and convenient to use! You just have to set up once to see your email list grow!
• 2. Send a bulk email at least once every 30 days to make sure that you do not burn through your email list quickly.
• 3. You should have a customized welcome email and change the subject lines from time to time to send out different messages to your target audience. 
• 4. Manual changes might be very uncomfortable and time-consuming, so you can use some Google Add-ons if you are using Gmail for your email campaigns
• 5. Email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Sendplus, etc, however, will have all of the tools you need to be enabled. 

 

An email address is truly a powerful piece of information to possess. However, even then, you should remember that it is not something for you to abuse. Do not bombard your entire listing with frequent emails, as this will not only make them feel exploited, it will also put them off reading your emails altogether.

Run Google PPC Ads

You may also run Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads to attract potential customers to your website. All you will have to do is bid on specific keywords in which your site will be part of an advertising pool. Then, every time a keyword search is initiated, Google picks a set of ads to appear on the search results page. As the concept implies, advertisers will pay for each click on their advertisement. 

Consider Online Lead Generation Services

It would also be helpful for you to partner up with a third-party company that can help you generate more leads and find more customers to serve. Such websites offer your potential customers a much more convenient way of comparing and finding the right self-storage unit based on their lifestyle and storage requirements. 

 

If this is something you might be interested in, you may sign up with WhatStorage, a marketplace for storage and removals services all across the UK. By signing up with WhatStorage, you will:

 

• Get free exposure to more customers in your area.
• Receive more customer leads.
• Increase your revenue and reduce your expenses.
• Only be charged for results. 

To sign up, all you have to do is fill out our Storage Partner Registration Form, and soon you’ll be on your way to growing your business.  

Part 2: Make The Most Out Of Your Current Network

 

You will also want to take advantage of the network you currently have. You may do this by:

Form Partnerships With Local Businesses 

 

You will want to find local businesses that can help connect you with an abundance of potential new customers. You may, for example, partner up with local moving companies, man and van services, real estate agents, lawyers or solicitors, interior design firms, construction companies, and many more. In exchange for converted leads, you may provide them with a small referral fee, a discount on their storage unit rental, and maybe even business leads in return. 

 

Alternatively, you may also develop a more straightforward arrangement like exchanging flyers and discount coupons with a local restaurant or coffee shop. 

Connect With Other Parts Of Your Community 

Another way to get your name out there is by genuinely getting involved with your community. This could come in the form of free storage space for a local charity you believe in, sponsorships to local sports teams or events, and many more.

 

Remember, though, that you will only want to do this genuinely. After all, doing these things for publicity may backfire and turn people against your business.

Set Up A Referrals Program For Both Your Customers and Your Staff To Encourage Word Of Mouth

You may also have a referral program that offers enticing rewards to those who would like new customers your way. These rewards may be different for customers and your staff. For existing customers, an ideal reward would be a small discount for every new customer referral, while you can give your staff members a small honorarium for each referral. There are so many referral program examples from industry leaders that it’s a matter of setting up the referral software and letting it run itself.

 

Part 3: Traditional Self Storage Marketing Methods

 

There are also various traditional, proven, and tested methods you may just find helpful. This includes:

Consider Local Print and Yellow Page Advertising

While newspaper and Yellow Pages ads are no longer as influential as they were back in the day, it would still be helpful for you to include this in your marketing efforts. All you’ll have to do is make sure that your ad stands out and makes your prospects stop and read. 

To do this, you will want to make sure that your headline includes your unique selling point and not your business name. Make sure that your ad looks visually appealing, whether it be in black and white or in colour. 

Direct Mail Campaigns

A direct mail campaign is best used to increase awareness of your business or brand. However, such campaigns can go either way, depending on how well it is implemented. Failure to properly plan out the campaign may end up leaving your target audience with a negative perception of your business.  Hence, it is important to plan such campaigns properly, from the design and content of the collateral to the target audience who will be receiving it. 

So, if you think that a direct mail campaign is not the best way for you to get leads, nor is it the best place to spend your energy, time, and money, you may be better off focusing on something else. 

Marketing Giveaways

You will also want to come up with small gifts or tokens of appreciation to your customers to encourage lease renewals, more customer referrals, and at the very least, a brand name recall. For this strategy, you will want to have a range of merchandise, including coffee mugs, pins, lanyards, umbrellas, pens, and possibly t-shirts donning the business name and logo.

Signages And Billboards

Signages and billboards are also beneficial as they are an effective means of locally spreading awareness of your brand. All you will need is a prime location along a busy road or the city centre to ensure that you receive maximum visibility. 

Improve The Physical Appearance Of Your Self Storage Facility

Lastly, you will want your storage facility’s interior and exterior physical appearance to be at its best. This will attract the attention of passersby and give off the impression that your storage facility is clean and safe. 

 

Remember that no matter how much marketing you do for your business, at the end of the day, how you present your facility will still affect the perception of your prospective customers. Hence, it is of utmost importance that your place of business is in its prime appearance as well. 

 

Now that you’ve got a comprehensive list of the most common and effective self-storage marketing techniques finding new leads and growing your business should be quick and easy! Once again, if you are interested in signing up to WhatStorage, do not forget to visit our business sign-up page. Meanwhile, if you’ve got some more questions about our services, call 0800 161 5562.