32 | DIGITAL TRENDS
STATE OF THE NATION Digital marketing trends in self storage in Australia and New Zealand by Michael Dogger R6 Digital.
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he Digital marketplace is more competitive than ever with an increase in competition and spending in the storage industry. While advertising spend on digital advertising has increased in all industries, spending in the storage industry has increased at a higher rate than the average – there seems to be increased awareness of the need to spend money on digital marketing after a slower start and larger operators in the industry have increased their digital spend to meet the market. Larger storage operators tend to blanket broad areas, meaning smaller sites can get caught in the crossfire. For example, large players might bid a high cost per click for a whole area, so a small site in a relatively small area needs to spend big to get number one ad placement in their area. No different to any other big versus small business approach.
Will a slowdown affect digital marketing? Despite early warning signs of a global economic slowdown, the possibility of a recession is not keeping advertisers up at night too much. Advertising spending has continued to rise across the globe, with digital driving most of the growth. “Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith Media says ‘The advertising market is underperforming the economy, but we don’t think that’s because advertisers have stopped investing. Instead, we think they’re investing in other areas like advertising technology, data and ecommerce.” In 2019, worldwide digital ad spending is projected to rise by 17.6% to $333.25 billion and for the first time, digital spend will account for roughly half of the global ad market.
INSIDER 110 NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2019
Australia is over the average with 57% of all ad spend going to digital, and New Zealand is close behind at 54%. Self storage still works even in a downturn, it did in the GFC and will again when business does slow down and it will someday.
Google ranking There has been some big changes this past year in the way that Google ranks websites. For a long time Google has had a few indexes that it used to rank websites – there was a desktop ranking and a mobile ranking algorithm. For the first time – the mobile ranking algorithm is the main ranking factor for websites. Most websites moved to this index earlier this year, meaning how your website looks on mobile actually determines your desktop ranking. If your website is still not mobile friendly then you will expect to drop in Google rankings. This is because mobile views are continuing to rise. For example, in July 2019 mobile visits doubled, and up to now, over 65% of all visits to storage facility websites are from a mobile phone.
Http vs Https. Websites need a digital certificate to authenticate the website and if your website still starts with http:// then it does not have a digital security certificate. Sites with a certificate
outrank sites that google considers “not secure”. Sort that out with your web developer today. Ads with phone number extensions generate 36% more phone calls than those that have no number on the ad. People might call on the website itself but at a much lower rate. There has been a global increase in ad blocker usage from 142 million to an estimated 615 million devices. Interestingly this doesn’t seem to be impacting ad views, as 65% of people click on Google ads versus organic. AdWords remain as a key lead generator and whilst some may advocate search engine optimisation only, without an effective Adwords campaign funded and running could lead your business to miss up to 65% of traffic. Rentals in self storage from AdWords are still on the increase.
Self storage learnings Google Ads with offers in the main heading achieve a 3-4% increase in Click Through Rate (CTR). If you have an offer like – “50% off first month”, 3-4% more people click on that ad than a more generic Ad listing “Self storage space available” etc. Make sure your Ads have an offer to instantly increase the amount of people that will click though to see your offering. The average increase nation-wide for CPC or cost per click advertising has
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