One of the things self-storage operators love about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is they don’t pay for impressions; they pay for clicks. This means that money is only spent when someone visits your website. The only problem with this is many operators don’t think it’s a big deal if they don’t get clicks, since it’s not costing them money.
The fact is click-through rate is a very important metric for self-storage operators to monitor. It indicates the percentage of people who have visited your website after seeing a paid-search ad. Really low click-through rates create two major problems:
1. You aren’t acquiring new tenants. The whole purpose behind marketing your storage facility is to bring in new tenants, right? If people aren’t clicking, then this advertising avenue is doing absolutely nothing for you. While you may not be spending money, you aren’t going to be making any either. If you’re looking to occupy more storage units, you have to focus on driving qualified traffic to your website.
2. Your ads will stop being displayed. Paid-search advertising options like Google AdWords are how search engines make their money. If you aren’t receiving clicks and paying for their services, they will stop showing your ads. It’s that simple. If your facility has high occupancy now but you need PPC advertising down the road, you’ll have to take extra measures to be shown in search results due to your previous poor performance. This might include bidding extra across the board.
Improving Click-Through Rates
So how do you improve your click-through rate and avoid these issues? Consider the tips below to ensure your paid-search ads are working effectively, resulting in qualified visits to your website.
- Create multiple ads for each ad group. If you have a specific ad group for climate-controlled storage units that targets people specifically looking for this type of storage, write copy for multiple ads. Google AdWords and other paid-search options allow you to display multiple ads for the same topic so you can see which ones are working the best. Make sure to use a different call-to-action and mention different benefits in each ad.
- Monitor your ads. Once your ads have all displayed about the same number of times, make sure to monitor how successful they are. You’ll quickly find people respond more to one or two of the ads than the others.
- Make adjustments. Once you have evidence of which ads are working best, delete the under-performing ones.
- Keep testing. After making these adjustments, keep writing new ads and repeating the process. If a certain call-to-action is working, try creating more ads using that enticement but with different messaging around it. You may wind up discovering an even stronger combination that works for your business.
If you’re running paid-search advertising campaigns, make sure attention is given to the click-through rates on your various ads. Managing this correctly will help you acquire new tenants, reduce the cost of your advertising campaign, and make long-term success easier to achieve.
Nick Bilava is the director of sales and marketing for Storage.com. He has been an active member of the self-storage community for more than seven years and can be found at various industry events throughout the nation. Nick’s goal at Storage.com is to help self-storage operators market their business more efficiently and effectively.
