Self Storage Marketing as a Human Experience
Brands that don’t want to risk alienating their clients are replacing the customer experience with the human experience. The key difference here is the approach. The customer experience identifies people as a “target.” The human experience is more centered on improving people’s lives. Keep reading to learn more about marketing to your self storage customers as a human experience.
Human experience places human beings at the center of marketing strategies. In context, the focus is not on the consumer, the client, the target audience, or the shopper. The human experience places focus on the person with whom your self storage brand connects.
Worldwide Partners teamed with GlobalWebindex, a company that provides audience insight to marketers, media agencies, and publishers worldwide, to examine the human experience marketing model.
HX, the human experience, is replacing CX, the customer experience. Both of these models focus on the customer, but HX goes a little deeper. Here is a look at the contrast between the CX and the HX.
Customer Experience
- Identifies you
- Delivers satisfying transactions
- Intercepts people with reasons to believe and ways to buy
Human Experience
- Understands you
- Enables a more fulfilling life
- Provides a continuum of engagement that improves people’s lives.
The key difference here is the approach. The customer experience sees people as a “target.” The human experience is more centered on improving people’s lives.
The self storage industry has always leaned in the direction of being customer-centric. From the first contact with the user (at this point still a prospect) through the different stages of the buying journey, all the way to the after-sales service, conversion strategies are crafted to help the customer feel connected with your brand.
Reinvent Your Self Storage Marketing as a Human Experience
The Covid 19 pandemic proved that tech can only go so far. People quickly grew weary of lockdowns that forced reliance on technology. An almost universal desire to return to the human experience drives not only our social lives but how we do business. Keep in mind that technology is more powerful when it fosters human over digital experiences.
Treat Your Customers as Unique Individuals
In the current climate of lax personal privacy rules, consumers are questioning how companies use their data. Third-party cookies – personalized codes that are placed in a customer’s browser for tracking purposes and profiling – are considered by many people to be an invasion of their privacy.
To keep messaging relevant while respecting consumers, brands should use first-party data that they gather through their own domains (on-site or in-app). To treat consumers like human beings, use factors like frequency of visits, preferences, purchases, and history to aid in collecting marketing data.
This is easily done by asking each consumer to opt into data collection. For example, if you want a free cup of coffee from Starbucks on your birthday, you share your birthdate. If you want to determine whether a self storage location is convenient for your business storage, you share your address. Customers are more willing to share their information for personalized services and rewards than they are for random ads.
Be Where Your Customers Are
More than ever, customers are demanding omnichannel delivery of personalized content. A 2018 Accenture study showed that 91% of consumers say “they are more likely to shop with brands that ‘recognize, remember, and provide’ them with relevant offers and recommendations.”
Brands should be where the consumer is and engage customers with a relevant product or service in the right context on the right channel. Marketers should design campaigns that recommend products to customers based on conditional data (weather, temperature, or location) and consented to first-party data (email address, phone number, preferences, and website behaviors).
For example, your self storage business can promote climate-controlled units in areas that are subject to extreme temperatures as well as boat storage in locations close to recreational water areas.
Be Agile in Adapting to a Changing Market
Last year exemplified changing market conditions in a way that’s never been seen before. Because of the pandemic, marketers had to search for innovative ways to meet customer needs. As consumers shifted their life and work to the digital realm, e-commerce thrived. Even though most businesses have re-opened their physical locations, many customers continue to prefer digital networking and commerce.
Adapting to market changes means keeping your customers top of mind. To create more meaningful products and services, you have to look beyond the numbers and adjust to their needs.
Each market has a unique demographic that requires customized messaging that has to be offered related to changing market conditions. What stage of life are your customers in? What do they care about? Why do they need self storage? Adjust by offering online rental and account management for those who wish to continue doing business digitally. If you’re located in a college town, offer shared storage for students who are short on cash.
Conclusion
Brands risk alienating customers if they don’t focus on understanding their problems and finding solutions that will improve their lives. Change in the marketplace isn’t going away anytime soon. Focus on strategies that humanize consumers, and you will be rewarded with loyal customers.
