Marketing Mind Shifts Every Self-Storage Operator Should Make This Year

A new year always brings new goals, but also new ways of thinking!

The “marketing minds” at Adverank created these four short videos, each focused on a simple mindset shift that can materially change how you approach digital marketing now and into the future.

These aren’t tactics or hacks. They’re reframes that help everything else work better.

Mind Shift No. 1: Stop Optimizing for Traffic. Start Optimizing for Occupancy

It’s easy to feel good about marketing reports that show rising clicks, impressions, or falling cost-per-click. Those numbers are visible, familiar, and comforting. Who wouldn’t want more for less?!

The problem? None of them tell you whether marketing is actually doing its job.

Search advertising in self-storage works best when it prioritizes intent, not volume. The goal isn’t to attract as many people as possible—it’s to show up for the right searches at the exact moment someone is ready to rent.

When you shift your focus to outcomes like move-ins and return on ad spend, everything changes. Keyword selection becomes more disciplined. Wasteful traffic gets cut. And performance is measured by what matters to the business, not what looks good in a marketing report.

Mind Shift No. 2: Your Budget Is a Result—Not a Starting Point

Many operators begin the year by asking a familiar question: “What should my marketing budget be?”

A more useful question flips that logic entirely.

Marketing spend should be a function of how many units you need to fill, not a fixed number carried over from last year and applied to all facilities. If your facility is below target, your budget should flex upward. If you’re ahead of plan, it should naturally pull back.

This mindset turns marketing from a static expense into a strategic responsive lever. Instead of guessing what to spend for the year, you’re aligning dollars with outcomes and letting performance guide decisions month to month.

The result is less emotional budgeting and more intentional growth with actual return on ad spend.

Mind Shift No. 3: Complexity Doesn’t Beat Fundamentals in Search

There’s no shortage of new tools, automations, and “smart” campaign types being pushed in digital advertising, especially Google search ads. Many promise to simplify management or unlock better performance through automation.

In self-storage, however, the fundamentals still win.

Clear keyword control, precise geographic targeting, and intentional bidding strategies consistently outperform overly broad, automated approaches. These basics align better with how people actually search for storage—locally, urgently, and with specific intent.

The temptation to chase the newest feature is understandable. But strong performance often comes from doing fewer things better, not more things at once.

(Read why PMAX specifically sucks for self storage)

Mind Shift No. 4: Most Marketing Problems Are Really Visibility Problems

When rentals slow down, it’s natural to look inward. Should we lower prices? Launch new promotions? Update branding? Redo signage? Work on curb appeal?

In many cases, those things aren’t the issue.

The real problem is that potential customers never see you in the first place because you’re not showing up during that critical moment in every self-storage customer journey. A simple Google search.

If your facility isn’t appearing when people search, no promotion or website update can compensate for that absence. Visibility is the prerequisite for everything else to work.

The most successful operators invest in their digital presence with the same seriousness they apply to their physical property. Being easy to find online is just as important as being appealing in person.

BONUS RESOLUTION: Break Up with Your Google Rep

This isn’t as much of a mind shift as it is a new years resolution. It’s time to break up with the toxic relationship that is your “Google Rep”. The nonstop calling, wanting to meet, telling you things are set up wrong. It’s all to get you to turn on features you don’t need that end up causing massive distribution and over spend.

We get a ton of these calls too, and have never seen them pan out well in the long run. No one at Google knows your market, your business, or your customers better than you. Don’t let them dictate how you use their advertising.

None of these shifts require massive change. They require clarity.

By focusing on outcomes over activity, goals over budgets, fundamentals over noise, and visibility over assumptions, self-storage operators can approach the new year with a clearer strategy that leads to ad dollars well spent.

Sometimes the biggest improvements don’t come from doing more. They come from thinking differently!