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MOVING TARGET
Set Your Sights On Marketing
By Tammy LeRoy
With names such as E-Z Box, Mobile Attic, 1-800-PackRat, Door-To-Door, and other examples of clever branding, it’s obvious mobile self storage companies are intensely focused on marketing to increase their chances of success. And branding is just the first piece of the puzzle. Methods for creating brand exposure, direct marketing to the right consumers, business-to-business marketing, and marketing to potential franchisees make up some of the other pieces, but it all boils down to one thing: bringing in customers to rent mobile containers.
“It’s one the most-asked question we get at meetings,” says Mobile Self Storage Association President Randy Weissman. “What do I do to get business?” Weissman, who is also president of St. Louis, Mo.-based Storage Banc, jokingly calls himself “the biggest marketing failure in this business” because some of his attempts were terrible flops.
“Because I will try anything,” Weissman says. “I have failed at more marketing attempts than you can shake a stick at.” An example? “Funeral homes,” he says. “I thought if you could hook up with a funeral home, then when somebody dies they could refer them to us and we could put their stuff in a container and the family could go through it later. I had salespeople calling on divorce lawyers. (If you wait until you see it in the paper, they’ve already been kicked out of the house.) I’ve given more coffee cups and bought more donuts for real estate agents than just about anybody.”
Being in a fledgling industry, many mobile storage operators have had similar experiences—trying anything to find what works. Michael McAlhany, president of Charleston, S.C.-based UNITS Mobile Storage, says his company also has tried many marketing strategies that haven’t brought good results. That’s okay, he says, as long as you are tracking the results from each effort.
“I’m a firm believer that if you throw enough mud on the wall, something will stick,” McAlhany says, “but then you’ve got to track what stuck. If you don’t monitor this, it’s like throwing a blank check off the bridge.” Fortunately, the industry is growing so quickly that operators are more in the searching and exploring modes when it comes to marketing rather than despairing. “There’s still a lot I haven’t tried,” McAlhany adds, “and I’ve got some new ideas in the works.” When it comes to marketing, “onward and upward” seems to be the industry’s current motto.
What’s In A Name?
“In the beginning, I thought whatever logo you put on your container was really important because people didn’t know what they were,” Weissman says, “but I think, for the most part, people know what they are now. PODS has done such a good job with their name that they’ve almost made it a generic term for containers.” Weissman divides the industry’s brand names into categories. “We have the ‘door’ group, the ‘box’ group, the ‘mobile’ group, and one-word names like PODS and UNITS,” he says. “Names are tough. We called ours Storage Banc, and we call our containers ‘mobile vaults.’ We thought it was clever at the time—you know, vaults going into a bank.”
Most mobile storage operators agree that you must be careful with your logo, your brand name, and the messages they portray. “Whatever you do, it all has to be built around the brand,” says Weissman, who notes that even professional advertising people differ in their approaches. “We hired two different branding folks and got two different answers.”
National branding works at the local level, and that’s one of the reasons PODS has done so well. “People who moved from New Jersey down the East Coast to Florida or South Carolina knew who they were,” says McAlhany. “It’s like McDonalds®.”
A mobile storage company’s logo, including typeface and color, can be as important as the name. “One of the things the last branding guy we brought in said is that self storage is a big, bold, masculine industry in its advertising, and that we should make out logo ‘kinder and gentler.’ The advice, of course, reflects the fact that women often do the calling to find storage. Following this advice, Weissman redesigned his logo and Yellow Pages ads.
“The colors the last branding guy picked are tan and green to more or less camouflage the containers, so they will hopefully blend in with the surroundings,” says Weissman. This, he feels, lessens the likelihood of complaints about containers.
McAlhany acknowledges that a noticeable container can draw negative attention. Nevertheless, UNITS took a different approach. “We went with red because, obviously, it catches the eye,” he says. “I think the good outweighs the bad.”
The Advertising Game
On a local level, operators who have a fixed self storage facility have an easier time renting boxes than those who have a standalone portable business. They can qualify customers and rent mobile containers if it makes more sense. “The people who are standalone mobile have a much more difficult task,” Weissman says. “They have two things they have to do: They have to educate consumers to generate awareness for the product, and then they have to make consumers choose them.”
Whatever the advertising media, the goal is the same: getting your phone to ring. If you’re trying to attract consumer residential business, the customer must either make note of your phone number or remember your name and then look up your company in a phonebook or on the Web. “It’s very hard to advertise on the radio or TV and get people to remember your phone number,” says Weissman. “I can remember 1-800-TRIMSPA, but they probably spent $30 million advertising that on radio and TV.”
Less costly way to advertise are through your Web site, coupons, door hangers, referrals, and placing containers or booths at local events and shows. This, again, suggests having a name that people can remember, or more accurately, one they can recognize when they see it again in the Yellow Pages or on the Internet. Creating brand awareness is the goal.
McAlhany says the Yellow Pages still brings in the most customers to his business, and the next most effective advertising is containers seen on the streets. “A billboard in Charleston costs $4,500, but we’ve got 34 trucks moving around the area,” he says. “It’s not free, but in some ways it is, and it’s a huge way of creating revenue. We track this on a daily basis with every phone call that comes in.”
Weissman also agrees that delivery trucks are a good marketing venue. “I’ve noticed if we go to an area once, such as an apartment complex, we usually end up going back from other calls,” he says. “On the other hand, this can turn into negative advertising when zoning and parking issues get some attention. It gets your name out but sometimes gives a bad image to the industry.” Some franchises suggest renting vacant lots to put empty containers on for brand exposure, but Weissman says these should never be placed on lots that are not zoned for containers.
McAlhany says he has tried advertising on radio and television. “TV is okay, but it’s four times the cost of Yellow Pages advertising,” he says. Full-page Yellow Pages ads are UNITS’ biggest local advertising cost. “It doesn’t work for some industries, but in the storage industry, you have to be in the Yellow Pages,” he says. The company also mails out flyers and invests in Internet advertising.
In Weissman’s opinion, the Web will soon become the primary resource for consumers looking for services such as self storage. “I think that in 10 years, the Yellow Pages as we know it will not exist,” he says. Thus, he feels it is essential to build a good Web site that is optimized within search engines. “That’s one of the reasons we created the association,” he says. “Mobile storage operators can’t afford by themselves to optimize a Web site ranked with a search engine the way you need to be. You could spend $9,000 a month doing that.” The MSSA offers this type of optimization as a member service.
A “How did you hear about us?” survey is part of the move-in process for most mobile storage operators, but Weissman isn’t sure the results are accurate. He believes managers generally choose the Yellow Pages box if they forget to ask or don’t know what category the customer’s response falls in. McAlhany, on the other hand, says he believes his staff is being careful to fill out the surveys accurately.
Face-To-Face
Mobile self storage operators often advertise in local real estate magazines and through the Better Business Bureau and homebuilders associations. In addition to calling on real estate agents, Storage Banc has tried to set up alliances with nursing homes. “These methods are difficult,” he says, “because you are trying to get somebody else to sell your product. I’ve had outside salespeople but it doesn’t really work.”
McAlhany believes outside salespeople can be effective, and through these efforts the company has created relationships with major corporations who have a regular need for mobile storage containers.
At the local level, UNITS has found success placing booths at home and garden shows, boat shows, and real estate shows. Another marketing venture the company engages in is donating containers to local festivals and events, including college football games that can draw as many as 80,000 people. Marketing, says McAlhany, is a never-ending task at both the local and national levels.
UNITS’ current business strategy is to build a cross-country network of franchisors. “If you are in the Northeast and you’re moving to Texas or Oklahoma, we want to have a franchise there that can support you,” he explains. Marketing for franchisees is undertaken primarily at a national level through exhibits at national trade shows, which generally costs the company a minimum of $10,000.
“That’s a totally different level and a totally different market,” McAlhany says. “But the more we get the name and the branding out at that level, the more we are getting out at the local level as well. At the end of the day, we have to help the [franchisees] with branding and marketing and let them know why we’re franchising in their area.” In addition to the trade shows, UNITS advertises in self storage industry publications, although he’s not yet sure of the results of either method. “It might bring in something down the road,” he says. “We don’t know yet.”
In fact, trial and error seems to be the most widely-used marketing approach in this young industry. “We’ll throw something on the wall, and if it works, that’s great,” Weissman says. “And it may work for me and not work for you. There are all kinds of things I haven’t tried yet,” he adds. Weissman offers two suggestions: “Pick a name and stick to it, and advertise what you do to create as much awareness as you can to drive people to your business.”
For now, marketing will continue to be a hot topic among mobile storage operators. And they will continue to try new approaches. “I think we’re getting somewhere,” McAlhany says, “but it’s a constant game.”
Tammy LeRoy is Editor of Self Storage Now! magazine and Associate Editor of Mobile Self Storage Magazine and the Mini Storage Messenger.
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