How to Get Reviews for Your Self Storage Facility (And Why They Matter)

In self storage, getting reviews is a critical piece of your marketing strategy. If you’re not convinced, consider these statistics from BrightLocal’s 2020 Local Consumer Review Survey.

• 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses.
• Only 48% of consumers would consider using a business with less than 4 stars, and 12% of consumers won’t use a business with less than 5 stars.
• The most important review factors for consumers were the overall star rating (84%), the perceived legitimacy of reviews (81%), and recency (80%).
• 94% of consumers said that positive reviews made them more likely to use a business, while
• 92% said that negative reviews made them less likely to use a business.
• 73% of consumers only pay attention to reviews written in the last month.
• 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.
• Consumers are most likely to look at Google My Business for local business reviews.

What these statistics mean is that your self storage facility must harness the power of online reviews.

In this article, we’ll look at how online reviews impact your self storage business and share some ways to collect online reviews for your self storage business.

How Online Reviews Impact Your Self Storage Business

Online reviews are important because they offer social proof that your facility is worthwhile. 

“Social proof” is a term coined by Robert Cialdini to describe the psychological and social phenomenon in which people copy the actions of others in the belief that, if others are doing it, it must be the correct behavior. (The term is also known as “informational social influence.”)

In marketing, establishing social proof often takes the form of sharing positive reviews and customer testimonials. By sharing online reviews on your website and platforms such as Google My Business and Facebook, you can:

• Quickly build trust with potential customers
• Drive more traffic to your website
• Improve your local SEO (search engine optimization).

Having reviews on your Google My Business page improves your search ranking and increases your local SEO—thereby driving more traffic to your website.

Because self storage is a hyperlocal business (i.e., most customers are located within a few miles of your facility), improving your local SEO affects your bottom line. In other words,  Google reviews affect your storage unit occupancy rates. 

To effectively use online reviews, you should feature them prominently on your website and actively manage your listings wherever online reviews appear, such as Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, and self-storage online marketplaces such as Sparefoot.com and Selfstorage.com.

Collecting Online Reviews for Your Self Storage Business

Here are a few methods you can use to collect online reviews for your self storage business. 

• Include a link to a review site (preferably Google My Business) on all communications with your customers (including emails, texts, and bills), along with a short invitation to review your facility.
• Have a link to a review site on your website. Make sure the link takes the user directly to the place where they can leave a review. The simpler you make it, the more likely it is that people will complete a review.
• Use social media to invite your tenants to leave a review for your facility.
• When dealing with customers in person, invite them to review your facility. Giving them a postcard with a link or QR code to a review site will help prompt them to complete this task.

The majority of people will leave a review if asked so don’t hesitate to ask and make the process simple and easy. 

Although asking customers to leave a review for your facility is a best practice, never pay for reviews. Paying for reviews can cause credibility problems in the long run and is never recommended.

The best way to ensure that you get positive reviews is to provide good customer service and an easy and stress-free customer experience.

Tips for Managing Your Self Storage Online Reviews

Here are a few best practices for managing online reviews for your self storage facility.

• Respond to reviews. Make it a habit to respond to all online reviews (both positive and negative). Businesses that do so are perceived as being attentive, engaged with customers, and concerned about customer service. It also helps to minimize the damage of any negative reviews. Your responses don’t need to be long. A simple “Thank you for your feedback” is enough.
  
  
• Learn how to respond to negative reviews. Negative reviews are inevitable. However, learning how to respond to bad reviews will mitigate the effects of such reviews and may lead to repeat business. Research has shown that almost 70% of unhappy customers will give a business another chance after receiving a helpful response to a negative review. 
  
  
• Be consistent. Because customers value recent reviews more than older reviews, consistently ask for reviews from your customers. Continually adding reviews will help potential customers (and Google!) take notice of your facility.
  
  
• Use information from reviews to improve your self storage facility. Be sure to use the information provided in online reviews to improve your facility and customer service. After all, if multiple customers are complaining about the same thing, it highlights an area that you need to work on. 

Summary

Reviews are a critical piece of your marketing strategy because they offer social proof that your self storage facility is worth using. Online reviews—particularly on your Google My Business page—can also improve your local SEO and drive more traffic to your website. 

To collect reviews, the best method is to simply ask your customers. This can be done via links on your customer communications and social media platforms and by asking them during in-person interactions. To be effective, this must be done consistently to keep a regular flow of reviews coming your way.

Finally, harness the full power of your online reviews by responding to all reviews, learning to effectively respond to negative reviews, and using the information gleaned from reviews to improve your self storage facility.

To read more about my favorite StoragePug features, take a look at

• Self Storage Marketing Playbook [Free eBook]
• The Importance of a Responsive Self Storage Website
• Urgency Badge: Increase Online Conversion Rates.
  

StoragePug is a modern marketing company for self storage. We create intelligent marketing websites that allow you to rent units & take payments through your facility's website.