The Most Effective Self Storage Marketing Strategy

As a self storage operator, you are aware that you work in an industry that is not only highly competitive, but also more difficult to market to the public than many other products or industries are. Let’s face it; self storage isn’t sexy, it isn’t glamorous, and it can be hard to find the right advertising platform and methods to use to entice new tenants to choose your storage facility over your competitors. Print advertising has been widely used as the industry standard in storage marketing for many years. While being listed in these print directories may still bring in a few calls a year from prospective tenants, chances are they aren’t delivering the results you need to stay ahead of your competition and keep your facility occupancy percentages high. We live in an ever changing world, and the way people find the businesses and services they need is rapidly changing with it. Consumers are using search engines now more than ever to find what they need, and often times it is a company’s online presence that makes that important first impression when a searcher is comparing self storage facilities, or anything else for that matter. Building a significant online presence has become a crucial part of marketing for storage facilities, and there are many different ways to do so without spending an arm and a leg on advertising.  A successful online self storage marketing strategy consists of a multifaceted suite of storage marketing services. These services include: Website design optimization, content writing and blogging, brand building techniques, social networking, paid search advertising (PPC), event promotion, and much more. By building a fully optimized website that is both aesthetically pleasing to users and properly configured for search engines, your self storage company is able to give searchers a first impression good enough to make them choose you over another storage facility in your area. Quality original content is important for driving traffic to your website, increasing your online visibility and bringing your site to the top of organic search results. Consider the following search engine statistics collected in a study performed by Forrester Research:

• 93% of all internet traffic is generated from internet search engines. Out of that 93%, 89% of them are first-time visitors.
• 92% of search engine users do not search beyond the top 30 results (first 3 pages)
• 76.7% of Google users use the natural search links (organic, unpaid listings)
• 65% of online revenue is generated from websites in the top three positions on search engine results pages (SERPs)

Considering these statistics, the value of implementing an online self storage marketing plan far exceeds that of other advertising mediums, and for a fraction of the cost of most other forms of advertising. In many industries, especially self storage, search engine optimization can be the best marketing value for your money. Deciding to implement a proven method of search engine marketing for self storage has the potential to save you thousands of dollars on advertising costs, and allows you to work personally with a professional SEO marketing consultant individually assigned to construct a marketing plan tailor fit to meet your self storage company’s specific needs.  Especially for small to mid-size self storage companies that are going up against large, nationwide, publically traded self storage companies, dominating the search engine results can help you compete with these larger establishments and generate more revenue for your business.