Stop Overthinking Your Self-Storage Marketing
- Mitch Briggs
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
How to Make Confident Digital Marketing Decisions without Chasing Every Metric
Perfect marketing attribution in self-storage is hard.
A single customer might discover your facility through a Google search on their phone, return a few days later on a desktop, click an ad, call your office, drive by the property, and then finally rent in person a week later. Along the way, cookies get blocked, devices switch, calls aren’t always logged cleanly, and walk-ins leave no digital trail at all. If you think your Google analytics can solve this problem, think again.
By the time that customer moves in, all of those touchpoints start to blur together. And yet, operators are still left trying to answer a deceptively simple question:
“How do I know if my ads are working?”
That question sits at the heart of nearly every digital marketing conversation in self-storage. It’s also where frustration tends to begin!
The reality is this: not every operator needs full, end-to-end, exact attribution on day one, and in most cases the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Making good and informed marketing decisions doesn't require perfect data!
That’s why Adverank has built three distinct solutions and tools designed to support self-storage operators at different stages of their marketing journey based on their level of need, experience, technical setup and budget.
Each answers a different version of the same core question with increasing levels of confidence and complexity.
Trying to jump straight to precision attribution without first establishing expectations or validating performance often leads to confusion, mistrust in the data, and stalled decision-making. But when operators move through these stages in order—Planning, Proof, then Precision—it’s easier to digest and improve slowly instead of taking it on all at once.
Working the attribution problem in stages intentionally doesn’t just lead to better reporting, it leads to better decisions, smarter investments, and a clearer understanding of what data is truly necessary for effective and efficient digital marketing. Don’t overthink it!
Planning Starts with Benchmarks: Set the Stage Before You Spend
Before ads ever launch, operators need something surprisingly simple—but often missing: expectations.
Most marketing anxiety starts here. An operator commits a budget without knowing:
How much similar facilities typically spend in their market
What “good” performance actually looks like for their location and how it should be measured
Whether they’re under-investing—or expecting outsized results from a modest budget
Our benchmark calculator comes first because it answers those foundational questions using real, historical market data. It helps operators understand whether they should reasonably expect a dramatic lift in move-ins—or whether four or five additional rentals per month is a more realistic outcome.
That context matters. Without it, every result feels disappointing and every report raises suspicion.
Benchmarks don’t promise outcomes. They set guardrails. They prevent unrealistic expectations, inform smarter budget decisions, and establish a baseline for everything that follows. Instead of guessing what “should” happen, operators begin with a grounded understanding of what typically happens in markets like theirs using tactics like search marketing.
This step turns budgeting from a leap of faith into informed planning.
Want Proof? Use Real Data to Estimate Return
Once ads are live and generating real impressions, clicks, and conversions, the operator’s mindset shifts.
The question is no longer:
“What should I spend?”
It becomes:
“Is the money I’m spending on Google Ads actually paying off?”
This is why we built the ROAS estimator in Adverank.
Unlike many tools that claim perfect attribution, this one is intentionally honest. It uses actual spend and performance data, but acknowledges a hard truth in self-storage marketing: not every move-in can be cleanly traced back to a click.
Instead of pretending otherwise, the ROAS calculator asks operators to make an assumption. What percentages of the move-ins during this period were likely influenced by advertising? That assumption can be adjusted on the fly, allowing operators to see how different scenarios affect return.
Once that attribution estimate is set, the calculator estimates return on ad spend by calculating the customer lifetime value of those attributed move-ins (assuming new renters behave similarly to historical customers in terms of length of stay and average monthly rent).
Is it perfect? No. Is it useful? Absolutely.
It’s directionally correct, which is often all that’s needed to make confident decisions about digital marketing budgets. If the estimated return supports it, operators can increase spend knowing they’re likely getting a positive return on ad spending.
This is where teams move from planning to validation, using real inputs even when the picture isn’t perfectly clear. No need to worry about complicated Google Analytics set ups or Google Ad conversion dashboards where the numbers don’t match up.
The goal isn’t precision. The goal is confidence.
Need Precision? Get Serious About True Attribution
For operators who want to go deeper, true attribution is not a setting you turn on. Sometimes it means you need to replace key elements of your technology stack. It's not just about setting up some key events in GA4 or conversions in Google Ads. This might tell you when something happens (and is never 100% accurate) but these tools should not be seen as sources of truth when to comes to attribution down to the rental/move in level. For that, you need to use your facility management system (FMS) as the source of truth.
The attribution webinar we did last year makes one thing clear: meaningful attribution requires alignment across the entire customer journey. That includes ad tracking, website analytics with clearly defined forms, proper call tracking and lead handling, and a facility management system capable of receiving and attaching ad source data to real customer accounts.
When any one of those pieces is missing or misaligned, attribution breaks down. Reports become confusing. Channels get blamed unfairly. Confidence erodes. And let's not even get started with picking an attribution model.
That’s why attribution isn’t about better dashboards—it’s about better systems working together to remove as many of those "breaking points" as possible.
Operators who reach this stage stop asking which single click caused a move-in and start evaluating whether their entire marketing and leasing ecosystem is functioning as intended.
If you’re ready for something like this…let’s talk. (Or check out this webinar)
If not, make sure you go through this progression:
Use benchmarks to tell you what’s reasonable to expect
Calculate ROAS estimates to tell you what’s likely making an impact
Set up attribution systems to tell you what’s actually happening
Each step builds on the last. Skipping ahead doesn’t create clarity, it usually creates frustration.
When self storage operators move through this in the right order, digital marketing stops feeling like a black box and starts feeling like a system they actually understand.
