Submitted by jannet on Monday, December 7, 2009 - 07:35

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Marketing is an essential part of any self storage business. Whether you are a multi-facility operator or have one facility, marketing is what brings tenants in your door. You can have the best state-of-the art facility, but without marketing, you will be sitting all alone at your facility waiting for the cash-flow to come.

Marketing can take many forms, from subtle marketing such as a smiling manager and great curb appeal, to overt marketing such as direct mail or a community event. With so many different marketing options, how is a smart operator to know what to do?

You may have people telling you that Yellow Pages is the way to go…that the Yellow Pages is still the best source of new tenants for the self storage industry. But, is it really safe to assume that if you simply have a Yellow Pages ad, your facility will be full and you can forget about marketing for the rest of the year? In today’s competitive age, the answer is a resounding NO!

Most operators can’t be successful with just a Yellow Pages ad anymore. In fact, many operators are seeing their Yellow Pages results decrease. So how can you be a successful marketer and reach your occupancy goals without spending a fortune on advertising?

Track the Volume
The answer is realizing that marketing is not a once-a-year decision. Marketing is a science, a system, and a cycle. Every form of marketing must be implemented, examined, and then analyzed on an on-going basis to determine what works for your facility.

But how do you figure out which forms of marketing are working for you and then weed out those that are wasting your money? It all comes down to tracking. Only when you begin tracking your marketing can you realize what is working for you and what isn’t.

Remember when I said that some operators are seeing a decrease in the effectiveness of their Yellow Pages ad? They know this because they have in-depth tracking in place; meaning that they rely on more than customer feedback to determine how they found the facility. Savvy facilities are now using unique phone numbers on their Yellow Pages ads to track call volume. It’s very inexpensive to purchase these unique phone numbers to use on your different forms of marketing. The information you learn and the savings you see will be invaluable.

Let’s say you spend $3,000 per month in the Yellow Pages. With a tracking number in place you are able to see exactly how many calls you received for that $3,000. This helps you determine exactly what it costs you to make the phone ring. With tracking numbers in place on all of your marketing efforts, you know that your $3,000 Yellow Pages ad brings you 100 calls per month. Your website (which costs $500 to maintain and advertise each month) brings you 50 calls, and a direct mail piece (which cost $1,000) also generates 50 calls.

You can now do the math to analyze how much you spent to get the phone to ring per marketing effort. Step 1 in marketing tracking – figure out how many prospects each medium is bringing you.

Track the Source
You will get even more accurate data if you also use unique promotions on all three of these forms of marketing. We all know that just asking customers how they found your facility is not the most accurate way to track.

Customers may actually have multiple exposures to your brand that work together to influence their decision. For instance; they might drive by your facility on their way to the grocery store, have a friend who recommended you and finally look for you on the Internet. After all of that, they might call you from the phone number listed on your website.

So you see, when you ask them how they found you, they could say any one of these three things. However, if a customer sees an offer, such as 50% off their first month, he or she will be sure to mention that offer. If you are using a different promotion or coupon code on each form of marketing, you can - with certainty - tie that customer back to a specific marketing effort. Step 2 in marketing tracking – use a unique promotion on each form of marketing to precisely track customers back to the source.

Now I realize some operators don’t like to offer specials, but consider this: even if your facility is full and you don’t need to offer any concessions for new customers, consider the impact it may have on your bottom line to discover that one form of marketing that costs $5,000 per month is only bringing 5 new tenants per month ($1,000 per tenant) and another form of marketing that costs $500 per month is also bringing 5 tenants per month ($100 per tenant).

Implementing these tracking methods will help uncover these things and enable you to make smarter marketing decisions. Without them you will continue spending $5,000 per month, your facility will continue to be full, but you will be throwing away money without even knowing it.

If you haven’t already guessed – marketing is all about return on investment (ROI). How much return are you realizing for the marketing dollars you are spending? If you think about it, nothing else matters.

The next important metric to track is Cost per Acquisition (CPA). How much does it cost you to acquire a new tenant? Without proper tracking you will never know this essential information.

Convert the Inquiry
Regardless of your marketing efforts and your ability to effectively track them, without proper follow up and sales skills, you will never see a great ROI. We work with owner/operators across the country every day and since we’re an online marketing firm we often talk with people about their marketing ROI both online and offline.

Our experience shows that online marketing, when done right, can provide you with an extremely high ROI by bringing you new tenants at the lowest cost. Why? Mainly because it is less expensive than traditional forms of marketing.

However…even though online marketing can bring you prospects for a very low cost, they are still just prospects until converted into a tenant. The most effective way to convert these prospects to tenants is with timely, detailed, and persistent follow up. The goal of marketing is to get prospective tenants to your door (or phone, or website). Without proper follow up on these leads it’s impossible to turn them into tenants and see a positive return on your marketing investment.

With proper follow up you will not only see an immediate increase in your ability to convert leads into tenants but, even better, you will get more tenants without spending any more money on marketing!

When you combine proper follow up with proper tracking you will discover the secret to making smart marketing decisions. You will convert more leads into tenants, will know exactly which marketing efforts are bringing you tenants at the lowest cost, and will get the biggest bang for your marketing buck.

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