With times getting a bit tougher, you are probably looking for new marketing ideas for your storage facility.
Grassroots marketing refers to targeting a niche or specific audience in order to build interest in your product (instead of appealing to a wider audience with more generalized marketing).
This can be an especially effective marketing method, but it does require more hands-on work and a lot of thought about how to reach those niche markets!
So, which tactics are right for your self storage business?
Stacie Maxwell of Universal Storage Group sat down with Tommy and Melissa to talk about grassroots marketing. Here's what she had to say about choosing the right tactics for your business!
Question: "Which grassroots tactics should you try at your business?"
Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:
In this Gabfocus Session: Does Grassroots Marketing Work in 2024?, Tommy and Melissa were joined by Stacie Maxwell of Universal Storage Group to talk about how you can use grassroots marketing methods to improve your business as competition continues to thicken.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what Stacie had to say:
Offer a killer referral program and don't make it just for your tenants.
And don't make it expire when they move out.
Any person, any day, anytime. We'll pay that referral fee. No expiration date. We pay $50 minimum. Some of our stores even pay $100 now for referral fees because the cost per lease has gone up over time.
So that's okay, too.
Definitely visiting the high value targets like your real estate agents, your apartment agents, the ones who are in the middle of people moving and storing, moving companies, the guys on the trucks, they're a great source for referrals.
One of the things that we've always done that is very successful is on site events at our stores, especially community based ones that make it easy for people to have a good reason to come to your facility.
Like we do photos with Santa Claus. Photos with the Easter Bunny. We'll do trunk or treat, we'll do yard sales. But those first three that I mentioned, that makes it easy for parents to have a nice, safe place for their kids to come and enjoy the holiday and trick or treating.
Sometimes, depending on the market, can be like the residential areas. It can be a little scary for parents sometimes nowadays. So having a nice trunk or treat at a facility where you've got cameras and lights and all the things, I mean, I'd take my kids there in a heartbeat, but that helps.
Anytime you're having an onsite event, if you can involve some sort of community drive, like a charity drive, you could do like pet adoptions, you could do a canned food drive, you can do warm coat drives, blanket drives, toys for tots, any of these nice charitable drives you can have. That gives you good brownie points, as you know.
Of course, somebody mentioned earlier, sponsorship of the little league, getting your banner on the fence at every ball field in the county, do it.
That's a great way too.
And put on that banner that you pay for referrals. So people remember, earn $50, send somebody to us. You don't have to do business with me. Just send somebody else who does need storage.
Because the truth about self storage is, I say this all the time. You cannot put it on sale [and make] people come running to rent self storage. I mean, it's not the big 60 inch tv on Black Friday that you have five tvs at home, but that's a $200 60 inch, and I'm buying it.
It's not like that. Either you need storage or you don't. So you want to be the brand they think of when the time comes."
—Stacie Maxwell
