Illustration showing a self-storage unit being reserved on a phone.

How enhanced tracking helps your self-storage marketing

Whether you’re running your digital ads yourself, or have a marketing agency overseeing them on your behalf, the better optimised they are, the stronger they’ll perform and the bigger the edge you’ll have over your competition.

It doesn’t matter if you’re spending £10 or £10,000 a month on Google & Meta ads, the insights you can gain from “e-commerce data” are guaranteed to help you gain a greater competitive edge.

Understanding e-commerce data layering

Running a self-storage business is tough enough without having to worry about making sure you’re tracking the right data from your users. That’s where ecommerce data layering comes in – it’s a simple way to see exactly how people use your website when they’re thinking of reserving their self-storage unit.

In Google’s own words:

“You can set up ecommerce events to collect information about the shopping behaviour of your users. The events enable you to quantify your most popular products and see the influence of promotions.”

Once set up, the idea is to give you much better insights than you’d get from basic website statistics like page views and button clicks. Here’s an example of how it looks on a Kinnovis customer’s online booking portal.

Screenshot showing Google Tag Manager's preview function on a self-storage website.

On the right hand side, you can see someone has reached the checkout stage for booking a self-storage unit. Without the ecommerce data layering, this self-storage operator’s web analytics would only show that a user has reached this step. With the data being tracked, however, they can now see what sized unit the user has selected, their intended move-in date, how long they’re looking to store for and which insurance package they’ve selected. As they continue to move through the steps required to reserve their unit, more and more information will be gathered.

All this enhanced conversion tracking information is invaluable for digital marketing and structuring your campaigns. But, how can it help your self-storage company?

Transforming your self-storage marketing strategy

For self-storage operators looking to optimise their marketing efforts, this enhanced tracking capability delivers three key benefits:

1. Keyword optimisation

Consider this real-world example: A self-storage facility spent £800 on Google Ads last month, resulting in four units being reserved online. Traditional tracking would show a £200 cost per conversion and the average lifetime revenue per customer is £300, so you’ve achieved a 50% ROI from your digital spend. However, your enhanced tracking revealed that three of those customers were searching for “temporary student storage” and only intend to store for one month, while the fourth conversion was a commercial customer searching for “secure commercial storage” and committed to a year-long contract. 

Ecommerce data allows you to track which search terms bring in your most valuable customers and means you can adjust your bidding strategy to prioritise higher-value customers. Sending ecommerce data like purchase values to Google Ads means it can automatically adjust its bidding limits based on the expected value of their booking. This ensures your self-storage digital marketing budget is focused on keywords that deliver the best return.

 

2. Smart remarketing

Much as we would like them to, users don’t always reserve their storage unit in one session. For those who drop-off your website before completing a booking, you may already have display ads running on Google and Social Media targeting them and looking to lure them back to finish their purchase. You may even be prioritising the section of this audience that got to the last few steps of your booking funnel.

With the enhanced data layers, you can take your targeting a step further. As an example, you could run ads with a heavy discount offer for those who have got as far as selecting a move-in date within the next 7 days. Alternatively, if you can see they’re only planning on storing for a month, maybe your marketing budget would be better spent on targeting potential customers that could be more lucrative.

3. User-journey insights

Through Google Analytics 4’s exploration tool, you’re able to create funnels to see where people are dropping off your website. Again, without ecommerce data, this information means you’re counting all users as equal and potentially missing insights that could be crucial for how and when you message discounts, unique selling points and pricing to your customers.

Being able to segment your website traffic into the size of unit they’re looking for, or how long they’re looking to store for, is going to give you much better insights into where the potential friction points are in your website’s sales funnel and how they can be eased.

Getting started

The best part for self-storage operators when it comes to this enhanced data tracking is it’s automatically implemented for all Kinnovis customers! There’s no technical setup required on your part, and it’s fully compliant with current cookie consent regulations and data protection laws.

Ready to transform your self-storage marketing strategy with enhanced tracking? Contact our team to learn more about how these insights can drive your business forward.

More articles

Keeping your self-storage facility working overtime

08 Aug 2024

Provide 24/7 support at your facility with the best self-storage software and management tools.

Combatting churn rates at self-storage facilities

30 Jul 2024

Learn how to manage and minimise churn rates at your facilities and maintain occupancy levels.

Cost-effective ways to increase brand awareness

17 Jul 2024

Read our top 5, cost-effective tactics to boost brand awareness for your self-storage business.

Book an online demo