Establishing your business in the fast-paced online world can be daunting. While there are many ways to promote your self-storage facility online, pay-per-click advertising is one of the fastest and most measurable ways to generate more tenants for your storage facility. Like with most advertising ventures, however, a smart and methodical approach is the only way to ensure your facility is earning revenue from your expenses.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising begins when your company places a bid on a search term— say, “Dallas self-storage”— on a search engine like Google, Yahoo! or Bing. Your company is bidding a certain amount to be paid “per click” to have its ad placed at the top of the search results page above the regular “organic” results. Your ad will look similar to a normal search result, with a link to your site and a short description of your choosing. PPC ads will appear above or to the side of the organic search results, usually highlighted in a box.
The cost of the click is dependent upon how much your competitors bid, how much the search engine thinks the click is worth to you, and your click-through rate, or CTR, which is a function of how often people click your ad. This combined value is known as the quality score. While you will not know your exact cost per click ahead of time, you will never pay more per click than the amount you bid, though you may pay less.
PPC can often lure an owner into the trap of “more is better.” True, bidding for the first result will garner more traffic, but if you aren’t converting all of your “clicks” into revenue, your ads probably aren’t as effective as they could be. Keep in mind that PPC cost is subject to inflation as you build your traffic. Contrary to SEO, in which your investment decreases your traffic costs over time, Pay-per-click costs will always increase with an ad’s effectiveness.
How can you manage advertising costs that don’t scale? Crunch the numbers. Use Google Analytics to track how often users click your ad, and how efficiently your site converts those clicks into revenue. If the cost per click outweighs your total profit per click, it’s obvious you need to make a change to your ad. In a future blog post, I’ll provide in-depth tips for creating an effective PPC ad.
The best way to get the most out of PPC advertising is through trial and error. Continuously tweaking and refining your ads to find the optimal balance of cost and conversion will take you a long way. While this may sound tedious, finding the best ad for your facility will often show positive results within minutes. Unlike most other forms of advertising, PPC allows you to make customers aware of your facility at the exact second they are searching for your service.
“The real advantage of PPC is immediate results,” said Craig Barrett, Director of Search Marketing at SpareFoot. He recommends finding free PPC courses online or hiring a freelance consultant to make sure you’re getting the most out of your investment.