By Amy Campbell
My daughter is a YouTube fanatic. She became a follower of the website during the long, hot, boring days of summer after reruns on the Disney channel and Cartoon Network lost their appeal. It was the endless number of videos about her favorite characters that created the lure. Once she cruised through all the episodes of My Little Pony, she moved on to the Littlest Pet Shop. Her current viewing subject matter is Annoying Orange, which is exactly what it sounds like, much to my dismay.
Regardless of my disdain over my daughters current choice of YouTube content, one thing is abundantly clearyou can find just about anything on the social network. That includes information about the self-storage industry. In fact, self-storage in the search box offers about 152,000 results! There are parodies, facility videos, managing and marketing tips, information on investing, and so much more.
For me, the idea of creating and posting a video is a bit daunting. I havent even formatted any of my old camcorder tapes onto DVD yet! Luckily, todays technology is super simple to use. Just look at the 12 year olds who post silly videos on YouTube. If they can do it, surely we adults can master it, too.
Heres a great article from the ISS archives on do-it-yourself video marketing. Author Rachel Greenfield from Sparefoot, an online self-storage marketplace, writes self-storage operators dont need a production team to produce a quality video. Rather, it can be a low-budget, fun marketing effort that actually works in a trackable way, she writes.
Also, check out these statistics from a recent online article:
- YouTube receives more than 800 million unique visitors every month.
- 100 million people take a social action on YouTube every week. This includes likes, shares and comments. Talk about a great referral system!
- YouTube has become the second largest search engine in the United States.
- iMEDIAconnection predicts video will reach 90 percent of all Web traffic by 2014. (Heres an article on five ways to optimize your video for search engines.)
Theres no denying the impact a good video can have on your marketing program. In addition to adding it to YouTube, you can also upload your video to your own website. This gives you the opportunity to show your prospective tenants your facilitys fantastic curb appeal, clean office, security measures and more. No one wants to drive from facility to facility touring each. By using video you can offer them a tour at their convenience and save them a trip.
Taking the time to create a quality video promoting your self-storage facility will definitely be worth the effort. Not only are viewers more receptive to the visual, some statistics show the response rate (meaning theyll rent a unit!) is higher as well.
Does your self-storage facility have a video on YouTube? Has it helped your marketing efforts? Share your story by posting a comment below.