Simple RE

Your Self Storage Site Needs a Blog ASAP

I'm not talking about setting up your self storage website with a spam blog that is stuffed with keywords, but makes you gag when you read it.  I mean a real blog that is useful or entertaining or informative.  Something a real human being would read. 

Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing, makes the case on his blog that Blogs are your best search marketing investment.

Using Google's keyword suggestion tool for building a pay per click campaign, you'll see that the search term "Self Storage Sacramento" is likely going to cost you $3.95 per click and there is "High Advertiser Competition" according to Google.

For as much effort as we put into SEO in the self storage industry, this should be a no-brainer. 

As Andy correctly points out "if it stops when you stop paying, it's advertising. If it keeps going, it's word of mouth marketing."

Customers, Leg Lamps, and a Note From Your Stuff

In a previous post I talked about an idea we hatched to reach out to our current customer base for referrals.  We wanted something that was interesting and would stand out from the regular statements that we send them. The campaign also has to be motivating enough and easy enough to act on that our customers will actually do something.

Maybe I'm over analyzing, but storage isn't the easiest thing to make word of mouth worthy.  How many times has your local storage facility come up in a conversations with friends?  Probably not very often unless you are in the business.  Storage is not new or cool.  My guess is that if you were using storage because you have too much stuff, you may have even been a little embarrassed to admit you were paying for a place to keep your overflow.

So here's what we did to get storage out of the closet (pun intended), and make it fun.

Each customer received the following mailer written as though their stuff that is in storage is sending them a postcard:

Front

Back

Click for Larger Image (Note the web address: www.notefromstuff.com)

These were mailed to each of our existing customers.  The web address will be more prominent on future versions.  The idea behind the micro-website was to allow people to share the referral card/offer with more people more easily, i.e. electronically.  My guess is most people are not noticing the URL.

I like the campaign because we can track our results. I'm not sure if this campaign will be effective, but the only way to know is to test it and measure it and we are now on our way to doing that.  We know if it generates actual new customers because to redeem the offer they will have the card or an email generated from our micro-site.  Traffic to the micro-site is also easily tracked.  We are also using a tracking number on the card so that all of the calls generated by the mailed piece, the micro-site, or the follow-up pieces are automatically logged as being a result of this campaign. 

Here's the piece that will piggy-back in the envelopes that carry our customer's bills for the next several months as a follow up.

Front (these are 1/4 the size of the original mailer, maybe smaller)

Back

Kinda like a ticket - each section is micro-perforated so it can be torn off and shared.
We should have put the www.notefromstuff.com URL on these too! Live and learn.

I'd love it if you leave a comment to tell me what you think. 

Worrying about the Leg Lamp

The ad with the leg lamp has not gone out and I'm second guessing my initial reaction.  I thought it was funny.  Now I'm asking myself questions like...

If the letter is from their stuff in "storage camp" why would they be asking for a slender armoire or a leg lamp?  If you go to camp aren't you too young to be thinking about such things? 

Is someone going to be offended because there's a woman's leg-as-lamp on the page?

As I write this I'm realizing that my problem with the piece isn't that there's a leg lamp on it.  I think it needs to be a little edgy to get noticed.  I think my problem is the inconsistency between the image and the premise that the letter is coming from "camp". 

Any thoughts?  Click on the post header and then leave them as a comment to this post. 

Word of Mouth Experiment at Crescendo (It's Fra-gi-le)

At Crescendo Properties, where I work, we own or manage a portfolio of 13 self storage properties. We've been having a lot of internal discussion about generating word of mouth among our existing customer base to drive more demand to our locations and drive up occupancy. 

Like I mentioned before, I've been reading Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz.  In his book he tells about Jansport (the backpack company) and how if a customer sends their backpack in for repair they will get a postcard back from their backpack telling about the good time they are having while away. 

So, I tell Matt Telles, who we recently hired to help implement some new ideas, about the backpack thing and I suggest that maybe we could do something similar, i.e. send a letter to our customers as if it were coming from their stuff. 

A few hours later Matt sends me this rough draft.  It's supposed to be the front and the back of a mailer.  The copy in the offer needs a little work, but all in all I thought it was hilarious.  Matt's a genius.

Front                                                                                    Back

My analysis: I think its funny and that its worth talking about. The fact that this concept is designed as a mailer to be printed introduces a lot of friction to the word of mouth.  The person would have to do a lot more work to share it than if it were in some sort of email-able format that could be shared with multiple people quickly and easily. 

Using Word of Mouth to Leverage Your Customer or Investor Base

I took my wife to Benihana for her 30th birthday.  If you've been to Benihana you know that it is more than a meal, its an experience.  First,there's the guy who works his magic on the grill in front of you.  Then there is the fun of sitting at the same table with some people you don't know.

When I made the reservation they made a point of asking me if it was a special occasion.  I told them that it was my wife's birthday and I could tell by the slight pause that the woman on the other end was making a note of it.

There were about 10 other grills in our dining room and during the course of our meal/experience we must have heard them do the Benihana birthday song for 3 or 4 different people.  Because I heard the song I knew they were going to sing for my wife.  On queue, at the end of the meal they brought my wife a complementary dessert, set up a ninja statue with a candle next to it, lit the candle and then sang us the birthday jingle.  So far, so good.

But here's the thing that really impressed me from a marketing perspective. Our server then proceeded to take an old fashioned Polaroid picture of us and give it to us in a little Benihana bi-fold photo holder. 

 

Click on the Image to see a Bigger - Higher Res image.

Not only is there the little folder, but should you want to take the Polaroid out of the protective folder and pass it around....

Click on the Image to see a Bigger - Higher Res image. 

the Polaroid film/picture itself is Benihana branded (genius). So now I not only have something to talk about, but Benihana has made it very easy for me to share the message about the good time we had there.

Although Benihana is a restaurant, this has implications for any business that has customers and wishes they had more.  Or has investors, and wishes they had more.  Or has an idea that could save lives, or the world, or whatever, and wishes more people knew it. 

So, here's the nugget: Come up with something worth talking about that is simple and obvious (but subtle if you can manage... no one told me to share the picture with my co-workers), and make it easy for people to share it.

If you want to go more in depth on Word of Mouth read Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz. I recommend it.