You’re on a family road trip, and everyone’s getting a little hungry.
Maybe everyone’s getting a lot hungry. You’re hearing stomachs rumbling and kids snipping at one another in the back seat.
Are you driving an extra fifty miles to get your favorite fast food? Or are you grabbing whatever sounds best at the next exit?
Most of us are going to choose the business that’s close at hand. We’ve got a problem, and someone at the next exit can solve it.
Storage customers are the same. They have an issue - often a fairly urgent one - and they’re not terribly picky about which storage facility they use to solve it.
According to the Self Storage Association’s 2023 Demand Study, more than half of all self storage renters rent from the first facility they contact. Around 25 percent contacted two facilities in total. Only a small percentage (around 15%) of customers really shop around.
“Contact” here can mean calling, walking in, or visiting the facility’s website.
This is one of the many ways that self storage is a unique industry. While a lot of businesses compete to be the one a customer chooses after lots of shopping, self storage is more about who gets to the customer first.
This has huge implications for your self storage marketing! But don’t worry. We’ll go over everything you need to know here so you can craft your strategy to fill up your facility with paying tenants.
What sets our industry apart? Why don’t people take their time, compare deals, and talk to multiple facilities?
Some of you may be wondering why don’t people see that my deals are better than the REITs?
One of the major reasons is that most people don’t know anything about self storage! All of your amenities run together. They don’t know which amenities are useful to them and which might be wasted money.
On top of that, most people aren’t looking forward to storing. It’s not something they’re doing for fun - it’s a chore, carrying boxes, packing up their stuff, and often they’re storing for negative reasons. Death, divorce, displacement, downsizing, however many "Ds" you want to count, none of them are fun.
Your tenants want to get moved in with the least amount of headache and then get on to solving their other problems.
Combine these two factors and you get customers that aren’t going to do a lot of research. They may just rent at the cheapest, closest, or first facility they encounter.
With this in mind, how should we change our marketing? How do we ensure that those customers find and choose your facility?
If your tenants are going to rent from the first facility they find that means you need to be the first facility they find!
And, if you can’t be the first, you need to be the second.
You can increase the number of rentals you get by increasing the number of people who see your facility. That means billboards, signage, and of course, a great web page.
Be careful about overreaching with your marketing, though - people won’t rent from a facility that’s significantly out of their way. Again, they’re looking for the easiest solution to their problem, and driving an extra 20 minutes each way isn’t convenient.
Billboards are great if they’re on major roads near your facility. Signage on your facility itself is effective for the same reason. Give people driving by your facility a reason to remember you, and a reason to rent from you - this can be an amenity that you’re really proud of, a discount, or whatever else you find the most success with.
The same goes for your website. You need to show up for the people near you, which almost always means showing up in Google’s Local Pack. If you’re showing up in the Local Pack (the three to five businesses at the top of the page right under the ads), then people looking for storage are going to find you.
So, if most people rent from the first facility they contact, your job is done once they click your website, right?
Well… not exactly. Those numbers only count people who rent at all. A lot of people will check out your facility, visit your website, then put off renting until they no longer need storage, or convince themselves they don’t.
40+% of people who do rent storage choose a different facility than the first one. Your conversion rate overall will be much lower than 50%.
Once you’ve made sure your facility is findable, the big thing you can do to help your business is improve that conversion rate. While some operators may try to do that by offering deals, calling leads, or touting their flashy amenities, the single best thing you can do to improve your conversion rate is to make renting easy!
The single most important thing you can do is offer simple online rentals!
When a customer visits your website, especially if they found you through the Google Local Pack, you’re going to be close to them. You know you offer a good value for your storage units. If your website is up to snuff, you’ve showcased those values for your visitor.
All you need to do now is get out of the way.
That means when a customer decides to rent, they see a great big RENT NOW button. They see the units. They see the amenities. They see the sizing guide so they can get the right fit. Then, when they make the choice, they can fill out everything and pay for the unit before they leave the site.
You don't want potential customers clicking out and then trying to come back later. If they search from a different place, you may not even be an option later.
Get the rental as quickly as you can. If the customer doesn’t choose you right away, they may not come back.
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At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
