What Makes Them Click Rent? | SSALA Webinar

What Makes Them Click Rent?

How do you make sure your business is successful online?

You've heard a lot about needing to drive traffic to your website through things like SEO, digital ads, blogs, or even social media to be successful. You've probably also heard a lot about automation, being unmanned, API's, and remote management. These things matter when people who land on your website decide to actually use the website.

How do you make sure you're converting traffic into rentals? In this virtual session, we'll cover:

Features of a website that convert online traffic.
How to establish trust with potential customers on your website.
Educating to help sell your product to potential customers.

Featured Speakers: Alex Keller

Aired: August 21, 2024
Duration: 44:44

Overview

If you don't have time to watch the whole session, here are some of our favorite parts:

At 2:50, Alex highlighted three things that will help make your website successful.
5:20, he discusses conversion rate and why it matters to your business.
Starting at 7:30, our expert digs into the 4 D's that typically try customers to need storage.
At 10:20, Alex covers the unique challenge of converting and handling a self storage customer.
12:55, he highlights how you can use your website to build trust with potential customers.
Around 16:30, Alex shows some examples of good photos and what to pay attention to when taking your own.
At 19:55, he covers the instances that you should consider using stock photos, if only sparingly.
24:05, our expert covers the danger of using stock photos and how they can lose customer trust.
Starting at 26:40, he goes over the importance of social proof and ensuring your reviews are front and center.
Around 30:35, Alex talks about how to use your website to properly educate potential customers.
32:00, Alex discusses the importance of highlighting your amenities and highlighting them prominently.
At 34:00, he talks about how you can use photos to better highlight the amenities your facility offers.
Starting around 38:10, our expert covers the amenities that customers want most from storage facilities.
41:00, he reviews the specific steps to make sure your website is converting more traffic into leads.

Presentation

Want the slides from the workshop? You can download those here!

Learn more about SSALA

The Louisiana Self Storage Association was formed in 2007 to respond to the needs of self storage owners and operators throughout the state. Their mission is to strengthen the self storage industry in Louisiana, promoting professional standards and quality and presenting a unified voice on issues affecting the industry in the state and in its communities. Visit their website to learn more and for information on joining and additional educational resources.

Learn more and join SSALA

Carol Mixon-Krendl

SkilCheck

Website: https://www.skilcheck.com/
Email: carol@skilcheck.com

Hailey Teal

Jenkins Organization

Website: https://www.jenkinsorg.com/
Email: hailey@jenkinsorg.com

Resources from this session

Awesome Quotes

“Once your operation is in place, you can become more dynamic with your pricing, but that requires data. You need some method of being able to record the data that you need to know whether your price is in the right place - whether you need to move it up or start giving some concessions.” - Warren Lieberman

“I never want to downplay to what someone else is doing. I'm better than they are, then I'm going to be worth a higher price. That's what value is. If you go out to a restaurant and get really good service, would you go back? Yes! What if it was pricier? You'd still go back because you got better service and a better product.” - Jim Mooney

"It's good to be informed on your competition. I don't want to ignore them, but I don't want to respond too strongly to them either." - Warren Lieberman

"We did a survey of 10,000 facilities on their pricing. We found out that two-thirds of those operators didn't change the price of a single unit of the course of a month." - Warren Lieberman

“Rate increases and value pricing are the number one ways to grow your revenue.” - Jim Mooney

"Tenants in more convenient units tend to be less price sensitive." - Warren Lieberman

"The size of the unit is only one aspect of what people are willing to pay for." - Warren Lieberman

Highlights

Foundational marketing strategies to have in place - whether leasing up or stabilized:

Website
Set up listings (Yelp, Google My Business, Apple Maps)
Social Media
Establish Local Partnerships

Lease up marketing strategies:

Lead Generating Strategies (like digital ads)
Aggregators (Sparefoot, Storagefront, etc.)
Awareness Campaigns (like billboards, flyers, and sponsorships)

Your average customer value
Find the average stay length of all tenants. Next take your economic occupancy and divide by how many units you have. That will tell you what the average customer pays.

Multiply the average length of stay by what the average customer pays, and that's the average value of a customer.

For example, if a customer stays for 12 months and pays $100 per month, then their value is $1,200.

Your average lead value

Figure out your closing rate (or conversion rate) i.e. how many leads do you turn into tenants? Multiply that by your average customer lifetime value to figure out what your leads are worth.

Pro Tip: see which lead sources are converting the best. It may be that certain sources have a higher conversion rate, so those leads are worth more to you than a source that barely converts.

Typical Lease-up timeline

According to our panelists, it's typical to see a 3-4% increase each month, putting your facility at 36% after the first year, and 72% after the second.

Alternately, you can look at your lease up goals through the lens of your units, aiming for 20 units rented per month.

For Nick and StorageMax, they pro forma their economic occupancy at 85% with their sweet spot at 92%.