In the age of social media, it’s easy to forget that mass email blasts, sponsored Tweets, and LinkedIn campaigns aren’t the only ways to advertise. Believe it or not, taking out physical ads in Yellow Pages isn’t as outdated as it sounds. Old school? Maybe. Does it work? It does for this company.
StorageMart is one of the largest privately-held storage companies in North America, with 168 properties across the US and Canada. 15 years ago, CMO Tron Jordheim joined the team and launched their inbound call center to capture calls that were missed at local stores. The company saw a 30% increase in rentals from the call center alone, and slowly started to explore more opportunities for lead generation. A marketing effort that once looked like a few physical ads has now transformed into over 100 different lead generation sources, most of which are digital and mobile. Still, Jordheim said StorageMart won’t part with its roots.
“I will tell you that print Yellow Pages is still 5% of our business,” Jordheim said. “I’m not giving up 5% of our business!”
Beyond renting clean, safe storage spaces for an affordable price, StorageMart positions itself as a community-oriented presence that remains after the transaction is complete. The company cares about its customers, and makes frequent donations to the Red Cross, women’s shelters, and no-kill animal facilities — organizations that are relevant to the group of people they serve, those who are often in transitional crisis.
“We try to give back when we can and it helps us feel good about doing something fairly boring, renting empty space to people,” Jordheim said. “But it shows people that we’re people too.”
Other highlights from this week’s episode of CMO Radio include:
- Tracking attribution from all sides (6:41)
- Blending traditional and digital marketing (13:10)
- Combatting negative reviews (20:47)
- The importance of content marketing — for everyone (23:55)
