As competition in the self storage industry continues to heat up, digital marketing is no longer a “nice-to-have,” it’s a must. Implementing a storage-specific digital marketing strategy provides businesses with endless opportunities to connect with customers in ways that go beyond print and physical marketing. We recently blogged about how to get started with digital marketing and explained why your company should be using Facebook Business. In this blog, we discuss how to translate all the digital marketing data you collect into action. 

Digital marketing provides a wealth of information about your customers that can be used to make smarter decisions. Using today’s data to make tomorrow’s decisions helps self storage companies find the right renter at the right time with the highest return on investment (ROI).

Key Metrics for Smart Digital Marketing Decisions

The first time you open Google Analytics or Facebook Insights, you may fall into what is called “analysis paralysis” – there’s so much data! But depending on your goals, not all of the metrics may be relevant to your business. Do you know the difference between a KPI and a vanity metric? Overall website traffic, sessions, page views, and bounce rate provide valuable information, but they don’t answer two important questions — 1) Are people engaging? 2) If they’re engaging, are they signing leases? 

Determining which key performance indicators (KPIs) to focus on will help you make smarter digital marketing decisions in the future so you can increase your ROI. Rather than putting your energy into increasing overall website traffic, digital marketing data helps you drive the most-qualified users – a.k.a. the most likely to convert – to your website.

Conversion Rate and Cost-Per-Conversion

After investing in a new website and digital marketing campaigns, you want to be able to show how much money your efforts have brought in and how many leases were signed as a result. The most important metric for measuring digital marketing success is conversion rate. This metric measures the impact of website traffic on online leases. Looking at the conversion rate, or the percentage of times a user converts through a specific digital marketing channel, helps you identify which tactics are working and which need to be rethought. 

If you are leasing storage units directly on your website, cost-per-conversion is another key indicator of success. Looking at digital marketing analytics helps you determine the cost to convert a website visitor into a sale. Review each of your digital marketing channels to determine the cost-per-conversion for each. This allows you to decide where to focus your budget. 

For example, search ads may convert at a higher rate than display ads and cost less per conversion. This is a clear sign of where you need to invest more resources – into search ads. 

G5 Analytics: Putting Data Into Action

Although Google Analytics and Facebook Insights provide a wealth of data, for you to make the smartest, most informed decisions, you need an analytics platform that brings it all together in a way that is simple to digest. G5 Analytics pulls all your digital marketing data into one convenient and easy to use dashboard. Our strategists and account managers help you understand the KPIs associated with your digital marketing channels, so you focus your marketing dollars on the highest converting channels with the lowest cost-per-conversion. 

For even more great insights and self storage marketing strategies, download our latest Digital State of the Industry Report for Self Storage.