Are you running Google Search Ads for your Self Storage Facilities? You need to be.

This should not even be controversial anymore. It’s no longer optional.

When someone needs storage, they usually do not start by browsing social media or admiring a clever brand campaign or billboard. They go to Google and search for  “storage near me,” “climate controlled storage,” or “RV storage in [city].” Even with the rise of AI Chats, Google is still king, and those AI Chat results just end up feeding more Googling!

This is the most high-intent traffic, qualified traffic you can get. These are people actively looking for a unit right now in your targeted area.

So if your facility is not showing up in those moments, you are not just missing clicks. You are missing potential move-ins.

Too many operators still underinvest in search because they assume SEO, listings, referrals, or their website alone will carry the load. Those things matter, but they are not enough on their own. 

Especially with the changes made by Google to push down organic search visibility, paid listings is what gets you into the game when demand is active. Max out this demand before you do anything else with your marketing dollars! This isn’t something to spend $10 a day on for 1 or 2 clicks. This isn’t something to budget for the year based on what you always spend. This is about capturing as much of the existing demand as possible to come to your website and consider your offerings.

Are you getting more than 5x ROAS? You should be.

The bar has been set too low for self-storage marketing performance, or in some cases, not at all!

If your Google Ads are producing weak returns and everyone is acting like that is just normal, something is off.

This industry has strong customer lifetime value. The average stay is now up to 18.5 months and $119. So why is paying $250 for a move-in considered too much? Why would $500 be too much?!  Your ad strategy should not be judged on clicks alone or what you’re used to getting historically, and it definitely should not be judged on whether the report “feels good.”

It should be judged on whether it is delivering return on ad spend (ROAS). And keep spending until you no longer get 5x return! This doesn’t even include the increase in valuation received with higher occupancy!

If your return is not strong, there are usually reasons: the keyword or geo-targeting is too broad, the budget is being spread into low-intent traffic, your ads are misleading, budgets are too low, your pricing isn’t competitive, your reviews are bad, your website doesn’t make it easy to rent online. 

But for most operators, they just aren’t measuring it. “We’re getting traffic” is not the goal. “We’re getting move-ins” is.

Are you spending more on overhead than on ad spend? You shouldn’t be.

This is one of the biggest red flags in self-storage marketing.

Some operators are paying management fees, agency retainers, and freelancer costs. Then spending hours on internal layered approvals, reporting overhead, weekly meetings and general marketing admin. All this ends up costing as much as running the ads themselves! All this just to wait another 30 days to review a PowerPoint in a meeting with 8 people to see if their ad spend was worth it.

That’s why we like to set the bar at a 5x ROAS, to account for some of this noise. 

Marketing should help you create demand, capture demand, and convert demand. It should not become its own oversized internal expense category full of meetings, mystery line items, and recycled recommendations.

When too much of the budget goes to overhead, less goes to what actually matters: getting in front of potential renters.

That does not mean support, tools, and outside expertise are not valuable. They are. But the model has to make sense.

Operators deserve better than bloated cost structures that eat into performance before a dollar even reaches the market. If you have to spend $2 to decide how to spend $1, it’s time to rethink that! 

Running ads in-house? Use Software to do it better.

More and more self-storage teams are choosing to run marketing internally. This is GREAT! But Internal teams still need good data. They still need tools. They still need reporting. They still need a way to explain performance to owners, leadership teams, and stakeholders. They need something that still runs even when they take a day off.

If you are running ads in-house, Adverank helps you be more efficient with your budgets, more confident in your decisions, and more credible when you communicate results. Especially when you’re managing 10+ locations, it can feel like you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole! 

Instead of pulling numbers from five different places and trying to explain what happened last month, you can focus on what matters: what is working, what needs to change, where to spend more, where to pull back, and how marketing is affecting occupancy. Perhaps this even means less time spend on managing paid ads and more time thinking creatively! Marketing is supposed to have a little fun...right?!