Self Storage PPC Agency

What is Paid Ads Management for Self Storage Companies?

Storage Unit PPC management consists of creating and optimizing paid advertisement campaigns for self storage companies. Despite that simple explanation, let's explore it further.

To provide professional PPC management, a paid ads company for storage units often starts by getting to know you. This information helps determine the next steps, since the way you'd approach paid advertising for a local self storage company is much different from how you'd handle it for nationwide storage unit ecommerce site.

Local self storage companies, for example, are often only looking for contact form submissions or calls. To accomplish this, paid ads can drive traffic to a landing page or sales funnel that is optimized. We recommend Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those pages/funnels don't exist or need to be reworked.

Alternatively, ecommerce-focused self storage companies are most often interested in online sales. This can be accomplished through PPC advertising that increases traffic to an optimized product page or category page. Google Shopping Campaigns might even make sense to include for some online businesses. Our team has even used sales funnels to help sell products and subscriptions.

To optimize and scale storage unit paid ads campaigns, it's important to understand what metrics will be used. For some self storage companies, that means looking to platforms like Google Analytics. However, there are other options out there too, like Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

To be successful with paid advertising, your self storage company should utilize multiple advertising plans and marketing tools. For example, the best self storage company PPC advertising plans will include plans to:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social media channels, and third parties.
• Make money online or through qualified leads for your self storage company.
• Integrate third-party attribution tools to better understand ad attribution.
• Showcase social proof through case studies, white papers, video testimonials, and other factors.
• Build and nurture relationships through user generated content, story creation, and email address collection.
• Place ad creatives across various ad placements and media formats to see which performs best.

Tips for Managing Paid Ads for Storage Units

Our team of paid advertising specialists is knowledgeable in the latest PPC trends for storage units and other industries.

Here are some of our best tips to follow for keyword research, audience research, landing page / sales funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, and ad creation.

1.) Keyword Research Tips

In the context of paid advertising, you'll find keyword research for storage units mostly relates to search network campaigns on the Google Ads and Bing Ads platforms. After all, Bing and Google only show ads based on what people search for that your self storage company is targeting.

A search for "nearby storage unit" on a search engine, for example, might lead someone to a self storage company website in their area. It wouldn't be necessary to conduct extensive keyword research to target that exact phrase.

However, what if that exact match keyword wasn't producing enough search volume and the self storage company needed to increase their advertising reach? The solution would require keyword research.

Typically, the PPC advertising manager will discuss with the self storage company about what types of products / services to target more often. There may also be a need to broaden the keyword targeting.

Suppose the paid ads manager discovers that there is high traffic volume for "nearby self storage companies" or even "storage unit services." The first phrase is targeting a type of business or organization in the area. In the second phrase, a service is being targeted, which might result in a more lucrative conversion opportunity.

You can also benefit from keyword research when building out negative keyword lists. Negative keywords are used to stop your paid ads from showing in search queries that you know won't bring in rental customers.

For example, an individual searching for "free services from self storage companies" or "when to advertise to storage units" is unlikely to convert. Your PPC advertising may appear if you use broad keyword targeting without negative keywords such as "free" or "advertise".

You can see that as you scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend, the needs for keyword research become more complex.

2.) Audience Research Tips

When you hear audience research talked about for self storage company paid advertising campaigns, it is often within the scope of scaling social ads on Facebook and Instagram. Google Ads and Bing Ads also offer audience targeting options.

Let's take a look at audience research and targeting within Facebook Ads.

Self storage company paid advertising managers used Facebook's custom audiences extensively in the past. In fact, one of Facebook Ads' most appealing features was the ability to collect data on users, which advertisers for self storage companies eagerly took advantage of.

A number of factors, including data privacy and machine learning, have had an impact on custom audiences over time.

When Apple released its iOS 14.5 update, they included a pop up message that allowed users to easily opt out of personalized ad tracking. This had a negative impact on Facebook's ability to track user behavior on mobile devices. Even ad attribution reporting was affected.

For most storage unit-focused advertising agencies, machine learning algorithms greatly reduced the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences. With such sophisticated algorithms, it's often more harmful to choose your own interests compared to letting Facebook figure it out for you.

While there will still be plenty of self storage company paid advertising firms relying on custom audiences, the trend is moving toward broad targeting. You can see it in every update within Facebook Ads Manager as they slowly remove interest-based targeting options, or push for "Advantage Detailed Targeting."

This blog article from Social Media Examiner does a good job of talking about recent changes to audience targeting.

However, audience research and targeting aren't going away. The targeting options within storage unit ad campaigns will likely always be manageable to boost performance.

3.) Landing Page Creation & Optimization Tips

It is important to focus on a high quality landing page when running paid advertisements for storage units.

When we take on the management of a PPC advertising campaign for storage units, we start by looking over the landing pages to see if they follow best practices. Here are some of the factors we look for in this review:

• Do you have a headline that emphasizes benefits?
• Is there an image above the fold?
• Does the content engage the reader?
• Am I able to find a lead form right away?
• Are the call to actions easily noticeable?
• How fast does the page load?
• Does social proof exist?
• Does the page load on mobile devices?

Quality landing pages are the result of many factors. Here is a great write-up about what makes a high converting landing page.

Until you have a landing page that follows best practices, don't spend money on paid advertising. Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your sales pitch.

4.) Revenue Funnel Tips

Rather than a landing page, you might want to consider building out a sales funnel. Our lead generation, email marketing, and even online purchases are heavily dependent upon sales funnels.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from your local area. While managing their online marketing we built multiple sales funnels within Click Funnels. These are some of the funnels we made:

• By using squeeze pages, we captured email addresses and raised awareness for the program.
• Lead magnets provided health and fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peeks in exchange for email addresses.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your self storage company isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

5.) CRO Tips

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 product or service on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 people who visit your website you sell 1 product or service.
3. You have a $1.00 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person who visits your website you spend $1.00.
4. To sell 1 product or service, you need 100 clicks from paid advertising, which would cost you $100. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 1x, meaning for every dollar spent in PPC advertising you get one dollar in return.

For most self storage companies, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable. Sadly, we often see this type of ROAS when jumping into new client accounts.

To improve the situation, you hire a paid advertising agency to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your website you now sell 2 products. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might be profitable now selling that product or service, if your margins are good.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your paid advertising.

6.) Ad Creation Tips

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account, but it also applies to Google Display Ads.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads for storage units, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You should develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need to build out great ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a good ad, it will eventually become stale. You should change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people nearby.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You should understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You should understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

Pricing for Self Storage Company Paid Ads Management

If you want us to dedicate more time to your campaigns, the price of our PPC management plans will be adjusted accordingly. Below is the starting cost for our PPC management services, but we are happy to have a conversation about adjusting the budget if your ad spend or service requirements exceed our initial estimate.

Types of Paid Ads for Self Storage Companies

For self storage companies, there are many ways to run paid advertising. The following are some of the most common paid advertisements options for storage units.

1.) Local Business Ads

You can use nearly any advertising platform to run local ads for your self storage company. One platform may be more effective for your local self storage company than another. To find out which option works best for you, you should try all of the options available. Now let's discuss some nearby advertising options.

There are going to be two options from Google.

The first is to run traditional Google Ads, potentially using their newer campaign type of Performance Max. With this ad campaign type, the Google algorithm can find the best combination of headlines, images, videos, and service locations to bring you customers. Local professionals such as accountants, lawyers, dentists, and physicians frequently use Performance Max campaigns.

Google's second option for qualifying businesses is their Local Service Ads. Using Local Service Ads, you get charged a flat fee for each lead the platform generates. Home service contractors, such as plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers, frequently use Google Local Service Ads.

You can also use Facebook Ads to target people in your local area. This is a little more straightforward, since it just involves setting up a campaign that has ad sets with geographic restrictions. Local Facebook Ads are often used by self storage companies of all types.

2.) Social Media Ads

Almost all online ads you see on social networks qualify as social media advertising.

The trick to social media marketing is keeping the ad creatives fresh. If you don't rotate out ad creatives every few weeks your campaign performance will slowly decrease. It might be necessary to look at weekly ad creative updates for campaigns with higher spending.

Using social media ads allows you to reach audiences who have never thought of your product or service, or aren't thinking about it right now. It's quite the opposite when you run search engine ads since you only get to show them when someone searches for what your self storage company offers.

However, this benefit can also be a curse, since conversion rates are typically lower when people aren't closer to making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Advertising

If you know people are searching online for the products or services you offer, you'll want to invest in search advertisements.

There are some people out there who refer to this as storage unit Search Engine Marketing, or SEM for short. There are different ways to explain search ads (not to be confused with SEO), which are advertisements displayed on search engines' search results pages.

If you have been running search ads on Google for a while and have been successful, consider copying your campaigns over to Bing Ads. In an October 2022 study from StatCounter, Bing was the primary search engine used by approximately 3.57% of online users.

4.) Display Ads

You'll find display ads on all kinds of message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (sometimes even nearby news stations), gossip websites, and more.

Google Ads and Bing Ads commonly offer these campaign types.

With display ads, you just need a set of ad creatives in different sizes. Both ad platforms have algorithms that help you increase results from your ad spend if you have an understanding of your target audience.

5.) Retargeting Ads

There is a good chance that not everyone will convert during their first experience with your self storage company website, landing page, or sales funnel.

It is almost always recommended to set up retargeting ads to help bring people back to your website after they've had time to think through different options.

You can run retargeting ads on any ad platform, too.

6.) Shopping Ads

It was Google Shopping Campaigns that popularized this form of search advertising.

If you want to promote your self storage company through Google Shopping, you'll need an ecommerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), and a Google Merchant Center account.

With these tools in place, you'll be able to provide Google Ads an updated list of all your accurate product data, including the title, SKU, image, price, and availability. From there, they will be able to find the right types of search queries to display your products at the top of the search results page.

7.) Video Ads

YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and other social networking sites allow you to run video ads.

Using Google Ads, you can run YouTube Ads by creating a video ads campaign or performance max campaign.

Facebook Ads is required if you want to run video ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Video is an excellent ad creative in terms of conversion opportunities. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, look to implement them into your paid advertising campaigns.