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.
Two tools that StoragePug utilizes when building out Facebook Ad campaigns for self storage facilities are re-targeting and lookalike audiences. These are two relatively simple tools Facebook provides to make your self storage advertisements successful.
We will discuss what each of these tools are, how they are beneficial, and how you can start using them to generate qualified leads for your self storage facility.
Facebook re-targeting is one of many powerful tools Facebook arms you with to create killer ad campaigns that generate real results. It all starts with Facebook tracking user engagement on your website, Facebook page, or Facebook posts.
Facebook then allows you to create a "custom audience" that only includes people that have engaged with your website, liked your page, or your posts. This way if a user leaves your website without making a rental, reservation, or contacting you, you can give them a friendly reminder next time they are on Facebook to come back and make that rental.
For example, if a user is browsing your self storage website and views a unit but fails to complete the online rental process, they will be shown an ad next time they are on Facebook.
You might be saying, "Sounds fancy, but what makes that so great?" It all comes down to money.
Facebook is a platform with over 2 billion users, so fine-tuning who is most likely to rent from you can be a difficult task. Re-targeting gives you the ability to only show your ads to people who are already showing interest in your facility.
All of this translates to lower cost per leads and an overall higher conversion rate.
The novice Facebook advertiser often overlooks lookalike audiences because they are not fully understood, but they are not as complicated as they may seem:
Lookalike audiences outperform general targeting time and time again.
Like re-targeting, lookalike audiences allow you to narrow your target audience to people who are most likely to rent from you based on the actions or characteristics of the user.
To get started re-targeting you will need a few things:
Unless you are in control of your website and tech-savvy, then the Facebook tracking Pixel and the Facebook Conversions will likely need to be done by your developer.
Once you have those three things taken care of it takes just a few minutes to get started.
First, you will go to the audiences section on Facebook Ads Manager and create a "custom audience." You will be prompted to choose what type of audience. Choose "website traffic."
Now you can choose who you want to re-target based on the actions the user took. This is where Facebook Conversions come into play. If you create a conversion for every time someone clicks "Reserve" and have a conversion for every time someone completes the reservation process, then you can set up your audience to include people who "clicked reserve AND exclude those who reserved successfully."
Now you have a group of people to display your ad to that have shown interest but didn't complete the reservation process. Save the audience and move on to creating a campaign.
Once you create the ad, you can assign it to the audience you just created, and you are on your way!
What you need:
Similar to re-targeting, you start by creating an audience. This time, however, you will choose to create a "lookalike audience."
Once you click to create a lookalike audience, you need to choose a source. You will have your Facebook Pixel, Facebook page, or custom audiences you have created as options.
It is best to use a custom audience as the source. For instance, if you used the custom audience that we created for re-targeting as the source, Facebook will find other people that resemble those who have clicked "reserved" but didn't complete the reservation process.
Now you can apply this audience to an ad and let Facebook find you, new customers!
Both re-targeting and lookalike audiences are extremely powerful when used correctly and can deliver astounding results at a low cost.
If a self storage advertiser is not utilizing these tools, then his or her ads are not reaching their full potential. The name of the game when it comes to advertising on Facebook is finding the needle in the haystack.
Both re-targeting and lookalike audiences allow you to do this while putting in minimal effort and letting Facebook do the heavy lifting.
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