Customer Spotlight: Self Storage One
Ten Baltimore-area facilities. Zero paid search a year ago. Today, average occupancy is up 10% across the portfolio.
When Self Storage One came to Adverank in fall 2025, they had never run a Google Ads campaign for self storage. Twelve months later, every one of their 10 Maryland locations has its own occupancy-driven search campaign, and monthly ad conversions have nearly tripled.
Here's how a 40-year-old, locally owned operator turned paid search into a predictable source of move-ins.
About Self Storage One
Self Storage One has been locally owned and operated in the Baltimore area since 1982. Its facilities are known for ground-level units, moving supplies and 24-hour access.
The portfolio spans 10 locations across central Maryland.
The challenge: established facilities, no paid search, needed proof
Self Storage One's leadership wanted faster lead velocity and was willing to invest in ads. But they needed one thing first: the ability to see what that spend was returning.
Going in, they faced three hurdles:
No paid search presence. None of the 10 locations ran Google Ads or paid social, leaving high-intent "storage near me" searches to national brands.
Older facilities in competitive markets. Their sites compete with newer REIT-owned stores across the Baltimore suburbs.
No line from ad spend to move-ins. Their management software (StorEdge) and website (Storable) weren't connected to any ad reporting, so ROAS was a guess.
"We'd never done paid search campaigns for these self storage facilities. Having come from multi-family, I knew we were losing potential customers to the big brands who were running ads. Adverank gives me the control to balance every budget back to reservations and move-ins, and that's what got our leadership on board." — John Heitsenrether, Director of Marketing, Self Storage One.
The approach: one campaign per location, budgets tied to occupancy and seasonality
Adverank Cloud launched in October 2025 with a dedicated Google Search campaign for each location. Instead of one pooled budget, every store is managed against its own occupancy goal.
Connect ads to the move-in data. Adverank synced with StorEdge so reservations and move-ins sit next to ad spend in one dashboard. Leadership finally had the ROAS reporting it asked for.
Let occupancy drive the budget. Adverank's AI mode sets spend recommendations from Google demand data, move-ins and move-outs, and Adverank benchmarks. Stores in the 60–80% occupancy range get pushed harder to reach stabilization; stores near goal run a conservative strategy. Operators keep final say on every dollar.
Keep spending on high-intent searches. The team restored phrase-match "self storage" coverage, removed broad-match terms that were drifting into irrelevant searches, and paused 12 underperforming campaigns. The pause alone produced immediate savings and more unit rentals.
Stop paying for competitors' brand traffic. Competitor names like Public Storage and U-Haul were added as account-wide negatives.
Fine-tune budgets market by market, season by season. Small budget increases in six to seven markets lifted first-page visibility, pulling back during down seasons or once occupancy hit goals allowed for maximum efficiency.
Meet monthly. A standing monthly check-in reviews each store's scoreboard and agrees on the next round of changes.
The results: +10% occupancy across 10 stores
In its first year with Adverank, Self Storage One raised average occupancy by 10% across all 10 locations. The year in numbers, from the Adverank dashboard (Oct 6, 2025 – Oct 5, 2026):
Metric | Result |
Average occupancy | +10% across 10 stores |
Reservations | 1,522 |
Move-ins | 1,740 |
Total ad spend | $83,462 |
Ad spend per move-in | $47.97 |
Ads Continue to Improve and Get Better: Monthly Google Ads conversions nearly tripled in one year
Avg 11/mo in the first 3 months vs 29/mo in the last 3 · cost per conversion $621 → $324
The ads got more efficient as they scaled. Spend rose about 44% from the first three months to the last three, while conversions grew nearly threefold, so each conversion cost roughly half as much.
What's next
With search working, Self Storage One is connecting GA4 and Google Business Profile so each store shows up more often in the local map pack, where many storage renters start. Better call tracking at every location is also on the list.
"Occupancy is up across the portfolio, and I can see exactly which stores the ads are working for. When a location needs a push, we invest more. When it's full, we pull back. It's not a black box anymore and leadership has full confidence that we’re making wise moves with our digital marketing investments." - John Heitsenrether, Director of Marketing, Self Storage One.
