Client Success: Increasing Unit Occupancy and Search Visibility for a Local Self-Storage Facility

Maximizing year-round occupancy rates is crucial for any rented property—including local self-storage facilities. While peaks and valleys can be experienced by storage units as the months and seasons change, Even a single unit vacancy represents lost revenue for the business.

In many cases, the challenges of boosting occupancy rates is closely related to the property’s local marketing and advertising success. Since many consumers turn to online search to research their local self-storage options, storage businesses must be aggressive in maximizing their search visibility to increase search referrals and conversion opportunities.

With multiple existing locations to promote, and a new RV resort park set to open in the near future, one local storage facility in the Southeast region approached Cox Media for help in achieving these awareness and occupancy goals.

The Goal

The local storage company wanted help developing an ad solution that could raise awareness of its available units to increase occupancy, revenue, and profit. While the business had already identified search engines as a crucial referral channel and had launched a paid search campaign targeted to local consumers, the client believed the campaign’s performance could be elevated with a different, more comprehensive approach.

In addition to driving referrals through its paid search campaign, the client was also hopeful that a successful search marketing strategy would boost its search engine page rank, driving even greater long-term awareness and referral opportunities for the business.

The Solution

Based on the clients’ marketing goals and the past performance of its SEM campaign, Cox Media developed a comprehensive paid search strategy aimed at reaching relevant, local consumers through strategic keyword targeting and referral solutions for both desktop and mobile searches.

First, Cox Media’s experts identified relevant long-tail keywords that could be used for paid promotion of each of the clients’ three storage locations. Location filters ensured that ads were only delivered to consumers in close geographic proximity to each location, eliminating ad deliveries to consumers unlikely to travel a long distance to a self-storage property.

This long-tail keyword strategy was also intended to raise the company’s Google page placement by demonstrating the relevance of the business to its targeted keywords. Strong engagement from the campaign’s target audience would play an instrumental role in establishing the storage company as the go-to storage provider in its local area.

Paid search ads were then equipped with click-to-call functionality to streamline referrals from mobile device users. Website referrals were also enabled to direct desktop users to the company’s home page.

The Results

After an initial run of Cox Media’s comprehensive paid search strategy, the local storage client reported the following results:

• A total of 576 clicks and 23 calls from more than 18,700 ad impressions;
• A 3.02 percent CTR, well above the industry average;
• The company’s elevation to the number two position in Google search rankings;
• Increased occupancy rates throughout the calendar year—even during the company’s traditional slow season.

Thanks to these strong results, the storage company opted to extend the paid search campaign through the end of the year, banking on continued referrals and conversions to grow the company’s profit margin.

In search of better brand awareness and referrals to grow your local business? Contact Cox Media today to see how we can help.