[A guest blog spot by USstoragesearch.com Executive Vice President Megan Eckert.]
If youre like most self-storage operators, attracting new tenants is always on your mind. But what if you already have more than enough new tenant interest and are unknowingly slamming the door on customers when they want to rent a unit? Not literally, of course. What I mean is, in my experience, most operators have way more inquiries from prospective tenants than they even know. For example, at USstoragesearch.com, we have more than 60,000 people looking for self-storage every single month!
When consumers look for storage on our site, they either complete an online form and submit it to our member facilities, call the facility on the phone, visit the facilitys website, or just jot down the address and drive in to check out the property. But we know for a fact that some of those inquiries do not convert to new tenants due to poor or even no follow-up by the facility.
Further investigation has been done by call centers and storage-specific marketing companies. They say the problem goes beyond the Internet and actually applies to everything from Yellow Pages, direct mail and even walk-ins. To expand the problem further, consider how many times your phone rings and is never answered. Are you starting to see how big this problem really is?
As I see it, the issueis two-fold:
- Poor or no follow up on leads that come to your facility by drive-bys, phone and the Internet results in low conversion.
- You have leads you dont even know exist because the phone isnt answered 100 percent of the time.
I challenge each of you to switch your focusfor just a weekto improving lead conversion. I suspect youll discover a goldmine of new tenants that are yours for the taking simply by increasing your conversion ratio. Now, Im not naïve enough to expect 100 percent or even 80 percent conversion. But with the right systems in place, weve seen facilities increase their conversion ratio by more than 300 percent.
To learn about proven follow-up systems that will help you solve this problem at your facilities, be sure to register for our next webinar, Lead Conversion: Where Most Internet Marketing Fails and How to Foolproof Your Lead-Conversion Systems For Maximum ROI. This online event takes place on August 8th at 11:30 a.m. EST. Its absolutely free and will be worth every second you spend with us. To register, visit www.insideselfstorage.com/usstoragesearch.
As always, I hope this helps, and I welcome any comments via e-mail at [email protected]. See you in August!