Self-storage customers don’t always decide to rent a unit during their first visit to your website. In fact, it isn’t uncommon to see a high percentage of site visitors leave without taking any kind action, such as getting a rate quote or booking a unit.
Just because they leave, though, doesn’t mean you’ve lost them completely. Through remarketing, you can continue to reach these prospects while they’re mulling their options, by displaying your advertisements to them across the web. When they visit another website that displays ads, it can be yours they see! This strategy can be leveraged across all major advertising platforms.
Still confused by this somewhat “spooky” marketing tactic? Let’s take a closer look.
Why Use It
It makes sense to deploy remarketing as part of your larger marketing strategy because in many cases, the situations that drive consumers to look for self-storage don’t happen quickly. Things like relocating, downsizing or a change in relationship status can take time and planning. As a result, rental decisions aren’t necessarily impulsive or made in one day. Before choosing, many consumers research different companies or gather quotes from multiple providers.
Remarketing allows you to reach these prospects while they’re still considering their options. Not only does this allow you to advertise directly to people who have shown an active interest in your services, it helps build brand awareness. Generally, the more interaction a customer has with your brand, the more likely they are to rent with you. Remarketing is a great way to ensure you’re top-of-mind when it comes time for them to make a storage decision.
Platform Implementation
The various advertising platforms have different methods for remarketing implementation. It’d be too difficult to go through every scenario in this article, so let me just give you an overview of how to do this on Facebook, Google Ads and Bing Ads.
In general, remarketing requires you to add a relevant tracking code to your website for each of the platforms you wish to use. This allows you to tag prospects who’ve visited your site or completed certain actions there. The tag enables advertising sites to direct your ads to those specific users.
Facebook. Facebook’s tracking is done through a “pixel.” This tracking code can be put on your website directly; however, if you use WordPress, Squarespace, Google Tag Manager or other Facebook integrations, you can add tracking without having to make changes directly to your site code.
Once the pixel has been added, you can use Facebook’s event setup tool to identify parameters, and track and measure whichever actions on your site are important to you. In-depth information on implementing a Facebook Pixel can be found in the Business Help Center on the Facebook for Business website (facebook.com/business).
Google Ads. Google Ads offers a few ways to install a remarketing tracking code, though the easiest is to link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account, which allows you to create audiences comprised of people who’ve visited your website or completed actions you deem important.
Another way is to add a global site tag to your site, which must be configured through your Google Ads account. Similarly, this action will also allow you create audience lists in your account for remarketing purposes. Additional information on setting up tracking through this platform can be found on Google Ads Help (https://support.google.com/google-ads).
Bing Ads. To remarket with Bing Ads, all you need to do is add a Universal Event Tracking tag to all the pages of your website. This’ll record the actions people take when they’re on your site and allow you to create remarketing lists based on pages visited or actions completed. Conversion goals can be based on the quantity of people who visit a specific page on your site, the amount of time visitors spend on your site, number of pages visited and more. In-depth information on setting up remarketing through Bing Ads can be found on the Universal Event Tracking page of the Microsoft Advertising website (https://ads.microsoft.com).
Maximize the Strategy
While a basic remarketing campaign can provide excellent results, there are a couple of things you can do to make the strategy more effective for your self-storage operation.
Create different audiences based on user behavior. As we’ve discussed, the easy approach to remarketing is to take everyone who’s visited your website but hasn’t rented a unit, and group them together into one big targeting list. Though this’ll suffice for some, you can enhance your efforts by grouping these visitors into more specific lists and then displaying different advertisements for each.
For example, you could create a display ad targeting site visitors who haven’t requested a quote, inviting them to get one. For visitors who’ve received a quote but haven’t yet made a purchase, you could create an ad with a move-in offer. By narrowing your focus, you can design ads to be more relevant to specific audience members and improve your interaction rate.
Use responsive display ads. If you’re running ads on the Google Display Network, you can take advantage of this feature. These ads are dynamically generated for you by Google, and all that’s required is a selection of the ad headlines and descriptions, along with a few photos and your logo. Google Ads will then use these assets to generate display ads that can be used all over the web.
There are a couple of major benefits to responsive display ads. Unlike static banner ads, which usually require some design skill to create, these ads are autogenerated. This saves on the cost of ad creation and allows you to update them more frequently. In addition, the responsive aspect allows ads to appear almost anywhere on the display network. In contrast, static ads can appear only on sites that accept those particular dimensions. The responsiveness increases your reach and has a positive effect on click-through rates. As a result, these ads can often outperform static banners.
Start Tagging
As you can see, remarketing can be a valuable way to stay top-of-mind with your self-storage prospects and assist in your branding efforts. I hope you’re encouraged to give it a go and see the results. If you don’t use remarketing, you’ll miss out on a cost-effective way to drive visitors back to your website and convert them into paying customers.
Ben Hook is a marketing strategist at Storist, a digital-marketing agency providing services exclusively to the self-storage industry. His website provides storage marketing advice and updates designed to help increase online visibility and occupancy rates. You can reach him via email at [email protected].
