It’s not a secret that digital marketing has quickly become one of the most popular tools for growing your business. And it doesn’t seem to be fading away anytime soon!
But how does such a niche business like self-storage stand out in an overcrowded marketplace? Creativity isn’t for the faint of heart. In fact, recent studies have shown that 75% of people are not living up to their creative potential!
With 50% of people now spending their time online looking at content, propelling your self-storage business into the world of creativity is now more important than ever.
In this blog, we’ll give you our top 7 tips for boosting creativity for your self-storage business. Digital marketing doesn’t need to be difficult – we’re here to help!
Our Top Seven Tips for Boosting Creativity
Choosing the right platforms
Regardless of what the self-proclaimed marketing gurus tell you, your self-storage business does not need to be active on every single social media platform known to man.
Through our own trial and error, we would recommend doing the complete opposite. Our advice would be to simply go where your audience is. You know who your target audience is, so think about where they spend their time online.
Self-storage users usually fall between the ages of 40 and 70 years old.
‘Understand why customers need self storage and market to this.’
From our latest interview with the CEO of the SSA UK, Rennie Schafer.
According to research, people within this age group are more likely to be spending their time on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, we have seen fantastic success on Instagram. There is absolutely no use in trying to utilise all social media platforms – this is a sure-fire way to dampen your creativity. Instead, try focusing on excelling on 1 – 2 platforms!
Content creation
Telling a simple yet compelling visual story about your self-storage business is absolutely key to capturing your audience’s attention. But how exactly do you do this?
The answer is simple: Content creation!
Gone are the days when we read newspaper advertisements and found businesses via giant billboards. Our new generation has quickly immersed themselves online and chosen businesses based on their online presence and reviews.
The best way to start creating content is to practice!
Source inspiration from various channels such as looking at what your competitors are doing well or simply asking your audience what they would like to see more of. Our top tips would be to:
- Choose the right content for your audience
- Tell a simple visual story
- Don’t overwhelm your audience with overly complicated data
- Keep your points simple, easy to follow, and visually appealing
Your audience isn’t looking for perfection. In fact, it’s the very opposite. People love seeing people and their authenticity. So, with this information, don’t overthink your content. Keep it simple and visually compelling.
This takes us nicely into the next step!
Source: Weidert Group
Utilise online editing tools
With plenty of online tools available for people of all levels, you don’t have to be a professional Graphic Designer to create great content. Let’s explore some of our favourite tools.
Canva: A real lifesaver, Canva is one of the best tools to get you started on your creative journey. Not only does it save you tons of content brainstorming time, but it also gives you ready-to-use templates! Canva will provide you with thousands of different templates to choose from and an enormous number of fonts, colours, and elements to spearhead your business’s content creation process. Oh, and it’s free! Check out this article for a detailed guide on how to use Canva.
Adobe Photoshop: This tool is fantastic for any designers who are at an advanced level of design. With the ability to edit images to enhance various features and manipulate photographs, Photoshop may be ideal for those looking to take their content to the next level.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI chatbots like ChatGPT use a language-based model, meaning it’ll respond to the text you input and then generate outputs based on the data it gathers. For example, AI can generate product descriptions, social media posts, news articles, and even entire books. Additionally, AI can help curate content by identifying relevant content from multiple sources. This can include identifying trending topics, curating social media feeds, and creating newsletters.
The list of online tools could go on forever. Whichever platform you choose to help create content is entirely up to you! We recommend playing around with some platforms and discovering which ones you prefer.
Blogs
Blogs are not a thing of the past – they continue to harbour great results for self-storage businesses looking to stand out amongst their competitors. And the more blogs you have online, the better your chances are of being found by potential customers!
Getting creative with your blogs doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend hours perfecting a blog. In fact, sometimes the simple yet impactful blogs really do perform best.
Do you have some great self-storage industry knowledge? Or some impressive news about your business? Perhaps you’d like customers to hear about recent renovations and some upcoming service changes.
If this is the case, share it with your audience!
Better yet, why not use an AI tool like ChatGPT to generate your blog for you? Simply tell the tool what you’d like to write about, wait around 30 seconds and voila! You have a blog ready to go.
Videos, or better yet, TikTok
What better way to get creative than to take some fun videos? Is there something cool happening behind the scenes at your self-storage business? Great, film it!
Don’t let this one scare you. The majority of TikTok users don’t seek perfection. Like many platforms, authenticity and personality are the most important factors.
An additional bonus is that it is the fastest-growing platform and your videos don’t have to be long to have a positive effect! We recommend sticking between 10 – 30 seconds long per video using trending music and filters.
For businesses, the most effective way to utilise TikTok is to provide short, informative messages about your business and industry news, take light-hearted content behind the scenes, and follow trends i.e. what other users are doing.
Additionally, you can post your TikTok videos to all other social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram – a great way to lessen the efforts of creating multiple content!
Get inspiration
The best way to boost creativity is to get inspired. You shouldn’t have to think too hard about this one either. Who inspires you when you go online? Which content makes you laugh or puts you into deep thought?
Use your inspiration to your advantage and focus on creating content that you love. And if you don’t have any inspiration or are not a regular social media user, you could take a quick look at what your competitors are doing.
Hire a digital agency
Finally, sometimes hiring a professional digital agency is the way forward for your self-storage business.
While you’re running your business, it can often be difficult to keep on top of your marketing efforts. Marketing requires consistency and dedication which isn’t always possible – especially for start-ups!
If you are looking for creative professionals to help you with your digital marketing efforts, the team at Amax Marketing is here to help. We encourage you to get in touch with us for a free consultation.
Final Thoughts
Boosting your creative efforts for your self-storage business doesn’t need to be difficult. With many online tools available to help you create cutting-edge content, you don’t need to spend hours upon hours perfecting your social media posts.
Get in touch with us today and let us help you get up the ranks, get seen, and ultimately get growth.
We have been working with Amax Marketing for the last few weeks and have already been impressed with the results we've seen.
As experts in outreach and digital PR, we knew we'd be in safe hands. We are looking forward to the coming months, and getting some fantastic results!