Hiring a Professional Partner for Your Self-Storage Digital Marketing

Self-storage is a constantly progressing industry. Macro-economic factors like inflation and interest rates influence facility acquisitions as well as customer behavior. Natural disasters, new construction and evolving consumer expectations can greatly affect individual facilities or groups of properties at the local level. When you add in the forward march of technology, what seems simple—marketing your company online—can quickly become difficult.

When it comes to digital-marketing services, you need the right people and strategies to help your self-storage business grow; but the question on many operators’ minds is whether to consider outsourcing. Let’s explore it.

The Main Reason

When thinking about digital marketing, it’s helpful to compare it to a house, which has many important parts that comprise the whole. When you build one, you must have the right skills. If you don’t have the expertise to manage certain tasks yourself, you hire a professional. Still, you must have a strong idea of what makes a house good and what goes into the building process, so you can evaluate the progress and performance of your team.

Fortunately, there are lots of companies that know exactly how to build a house. They’ve done it before, and they’ve dealt with the various problems that can arise. They know what a great structure looks like, what designs to use and all sorts of tricks because this is what they do all day, every day.

Digital marketing is similar. It encompasses many types of services including website design, search engine optimization (SEO) and paid media. To do it correctly, you need specific proficiencies and knowledge. Partnering with a professional agency can allow you to focus on what you do best while taking advantage of dedicated marketers who will expend time and effort to carry out your business goals.

Services Available

Digital marketing isn’t a single monolith, it’s a collection of strategies and services that work together. A worthwhile vendor partner should offer a variety solutions that address the following important components.

Website design and maintenance. Your website is the core of the digital self-storage experience. While there are industry best practices based on what a website should look like and how it should function, the devil is in the details—and the details are many. What should your unit-size table look like? What might your location list entail? What’s in your menu, and where does it lead visitors? How should you display facility images? Can your website work with your internal technology solutions and operating software of choice?

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of having a fast self-storage website with a clean and clear online-rental feature. That’s a good user experience. To get back to our house analogy, your website is the foundation. Without it, none of the other digital-marketing options can exist or perform optimally.

SEO and content. Google’s search algorithm has evolved, but one thing is still true: It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to rank for certain online search terms without a designed effort. In our house analogy, think of your SEO strategy as the framing, shaping how your business will be interpreted. You can think of your content as the furniture that fills the various “rooms,” meeting the specific needs of each visitor but also providing your own unique image to prospective and existing customers.

An excellent organic marketing strategy involves technical SEO and content. They’re two sides of the same coin, as your content fuels your SEO engine.

Paid advertising. This is one of the oldest, most reliable methods of getting eyes on your self-storage business. Google has made it accessible, but don’t get lulled into a false sense of security. An effective paid-media strategy involves regular investigation into your campaigns and ad groups and constant tweaking. Think of your campaigns as light-dimmer switches you regularly adjust, turning them up, down, off and on.

We have access to more marketing data than ever before thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning. As a result, paid ad campaigns are an integral part of digital marketing, especially for focus facilities and markets.

Choosing a Partner

If you’ve decided to outsource your digital marketing to an agency, the next step is to determine which provider is right for your self-storage business. It’s important to remember that an effective partner is just that—a partner—and thinking of them as just another vendor won’t get you to where you want to go. Examine these factors.

Industry experience. Ideally, any digital-marketing agency you choose should have direct self-storage experience. This business can be unexpectedly complicated, and what works for ecommerce or business-to-business doesn’t necessarily work in our industry.

Reputation. Ask agencies for references and examples of their work. There are a lot of providers out there, and not all of them are great at what they do. Building a good standing takes time and effort.

Communication. The right marketing agency for you communicates well, though that could mean different things to different people. Just remember: Cultural fit is just as important for outsourced partnerships as it is for your internal self-storage team.

Accountability. Digital marketing is more trackable than ever. There’s zero excuse for an agency not to show you how your investments are performing. Establish clear goals and expectations for every dollar spent and hold your partner accountable for meeting them. Request reports and know what to watch. When in doubt, ask!

Transparency. Know where your marketing dollars are going. It’s impossible to hold an agency accountable when you don’t know what portion of your investment is going to which aspects of your overall strategy. Demand a detailed itemization of the work to be performed along with the associated costs.

Customization. Know if and where you have this flexibility with your agency before signing on the dotted line.

Choosing to outsource digital marketing can be a big step, but it’s one that many self-storage companies choose to take for lots of good reasons. At the end of the day, you want the best people in charge of the things your company does and hopes to achieve; and professional marketers are a vital part of that success.

John Jordan is a founding partner and vice president at Go Local Interactive, a full-service digital-marketing agency committed to helping regional and national self-storage operators acquire new customers. He’s participated in numerous advertising forums and self-storage events as a speaker and panel participant. For more information, call 512.779.7698 or email [email protected].