By Holly Fiorello
When two self-storage facilities are similar in location and price, what can make the difference in persuading a customer to choose one over the other? In a word: reputation. There’s something about those glistening five gold stars on an online review that beckon your future customers to read more. Comments such as “The manager was super-friendly and nice” or “They let me use a free truck to move in” carry weight.
You can say all these things and more on your website and other marketing platforms, but it’s so much more persuasive and effective when your customers tell the story for you. Below are five steps to garnering more online reviews for your self-storage business and ways to capitalize on these appraisals.
Step 1: Offer Amazing Customer Service
Superior customer service is your foundation for positive reviews. Be friendly and helpful. Anticipate the needs of your tenants. Answer the phone when it rings and return voicemails in a timely manner. Smile! You need to go above and beyond what you consider excellent service to ensure tenants feel welcome and appreciated. A sunny disposition can cheer up most people when they’re having a bad day.
Step 2: Claim Business Listings and Review-Site Pages
You’ve likely heard how important it is to claim your business listings in online directories as well as ratings aggregator and review sites like Citysearch, Google+ Local, YellowPages.com and all the social media platforms. Not only should you claim your listings, you need to monitor your reviews on these sites. Address all of them, regardless if they’re negative or positive. Add links to these review sites to your own website and e-mail signature to make it easier for tenants to write a review.
Step 3: Create Review Cards
Create a business card that includes the URLs to your review sites. When you’re having a pleasant experience with a customer, hand him a card and ask if he’d be kind enough to write you a review. Explain to him that a positive review helps you grow your business.
Step 4: Thank New Tenants
Send an e-mail to each new tenant after a move-in welcoming him to your facility and asking him to leave a review if he had a good experience. To curtail negative feedback for a poor experience, encourage your tenant to you contact directly if there was a problem. When customers are displeased, they often just want to be heard. Providing an offline option for them to vent will help keep your online reputation pristine.
Step 5: Add a Testimonial Page to Your Website
Monitor your incoming testimonials from review sites and add them to a page on your business website. This can quickly increase rental conversions. You can even take this a step further and add a survey tool. For instance, after a tenant pays his bill, add a module that opens a survey with a comment section. Include a box tenants can check that gives you permission to post any positive comments to your testimonial page.
Endorsements from your current customer base speaks volumes. When products and services become a commodity, a robust review platform can highlight and differentiate your self-storage business. Alternatively, negative reviews that aren’t addressed can damage your reputation.
Even if you’re ranking first on search-engine results pages, a rating on a review site with less than three stars will kill your traffic. No one wants to have a bad experience, even if it does come with a $1 move-in coupon.
Holly Fiorello is the vice president of marketing and customer success at The Storage Group, an online-marketing agency for the self-storage industry. The Maitland, Fla.-based company offers website-development and online-marketing services, including ClickandStor Online Rentals and PMS integration, as well as social media, pay-per-click, and branding and logo development. For more information, call 407.392.2328; visit www.storageinternetmarketing.com.
