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TRANSCRIPTION: #4 CUSTOMER VIDEO TESTIMONIALS.wav DURATION: 00:15:38
Jim: I�m Jim Ross. He�s Matt Vanhorn, and this is the Three Mile Domination Podcast.
Hey Matt. How is everything going? Matt: Great.
Jim: You keeping busy? Matt: I am. It�s always a busy week.
Jim: I�m prepping for a trip to Colorado here, so I�ll be gone for a couple days.
Matt: Yeah, I�ve got to go do a few site visits myself around Florida.
Jim: You know, I was totally surprised when this topic came up for this week I�m prepping
for, and I�m kicking over a new site in Colorado. I always sit down and do a little
research on them and see what the internet presence is, and that kind of thing, and I
came across something I never have seen before from a Manager. He kind of took it upon himself
to make his own videos. His own promo videos for his site�
Matt: Wow. Jim: Yeah, it was pretty cool. I was just�
I typed in the name of his site and all that, and of course you have to have a website and
its okay. But, more interesting was these promo videos popped up and there were four
of them, and I said, �That�s pretty cool,� and watched them and it�s actually the Manager
himself and he introduces himself and does his site tour and goes through like a top
five questions the customer may have before he rents. And I was like, �That shows a
lot of initiative. I never had a Manager do that before.� I�m excited to go there
this week and meet him and basically congratulate him on taking the initiative to market his
facility. It�s pretty awesome. Matt: Yeah, I mean it�s so often that we
have to *** the drum on this kind of stuff and it doesn�t get done without some arm
twisting, so it�s good to hear that someone out there is actually doing this on their
own. And I�m sure a lot of people are, but there�s a number of facilities that we work
with out there that we see or we review. Competitors, things like that aren�t doing anything,
and right now I just don�t see how you can�t� Jim: No, and it�s pretty easy so I want
to talk about� I�ve been thinking about videos and what�s an easy way to start collecting
videos and getting the name out there and especially for the existing sites that are
up and running. A great way, and I really promote it all the time for all of our stores,
is creating a testimonial videos from your current customers. They�re already sold
on your facility. They�ve already called around. They�ve already moved in. They like
you. So, why not get it on video and have them talk about how great you are. And, what
we�ve done, I�ll break it down how we do it at our sites here� We actually have
a little display on a counter. It just says free� We have little dollar signs, free
money off your rent for a quick video testimonial. [inaudible] to Managers if they want to do
it as a special level way to make an admin fee or wave a ten dollar storage fee, late
fee, we�ll do that for you but here, got to do something for us and say cheese at the
camera and tell us how awesome we are. And we had that little display on the counter�
You remember the little flip cameras? They were really popular a few years ago?
Matt: Oh absolutely. Jim: Nowadays everyone has a smart phone.
But I still like having those flip cameras because we put them on the little stand and
have that mounted on that stand right next to that little display, about getting us a
little video testimonial and more often that not, people are just like, �What�s up
with this?� They initiate it and it�s me. We don�t script it. They can tell us
we suck, we don�t care. Of course they don�t do that. We let them say whatever they want
to say and we record that, and of course, each of our sites has their own YouTube channel.
And what we�ll do after we get that� We�ll upload it to our YouTube channel, and you
want to optimize it. And, when I say that it�s making sure like in your title it�s
storage in the city you�re in and of course the name of your facility. But, ideally what
you want to do is think of when someone�s searching for storage, they�re going to
look for storage and then the name of your city, and of course you�d like to have all
the videos pop up and most storage facilities, they don�t do that. There�s hardly any
videos at all and what�s great is the more testimonials you gather, the more videos you�re
going to put up there, they�re going to start showing up. I mean, perfect case in
point, I have a site in Logan, Utah, and it�s especially true when you have kind of smaller
markets. It is easier to get visibility so any of the smaller Mom and Pop places listening
to this, easiest thing to do, implement, and you�ll start seeing results immediately,
because again, there�s a little less competition and a lot of times on Google the videos will
show up under the search results and right now it�s pretty crazy because also for the
site we have a large student population and they�re not camera shy. It doesn�t take
much prodding for the students to give us a quick testimonial and we�ve got nuts.
We probably have� I mean my last count I think was four pages of video results and
every one of them was the same, how awesome Logan Self Storage is. It�s an easy thing
to implement. Matt: Yeah, it�s extremely cost effective.
The cost of the YouTube account is what, free? The flip camera, even though they�re going
to stop making them shortly, even just a stand alone video camera with a hard drive and you
can probably find for under $150.00. So, it�s extremely cost effective. It take two minutes
to do with any of your customers, and the statistics for people reviewing online that
influence their buying decision is actually the same. I�ve got a few of them right here
that I�d like to share on the Podcast right now, and for example, one of them is 97% of
people who made a purchase based on an online review, found that review to be accurate.
So people that are looking at your website that are going to see these reviews, they
actually believe these people. And you would think so� No one wants to put up fake reviews
and that�s done a lot, and people don�t like that and people don�t like fake Amazon
reviews or fake iTunes reviews. So, again, especially when it�s people that are local
and they�re broadcasting how much they love a facility that does have a big influence.
Another statistic is 92% of people have more confidence in info found online than they
do in anything from a Sales Clerk or any other source. And that was from the Wall Street
Journal back in 2009. Another one is 90% of online customers or consumers trust recommendations
from people they know. So, especially if you�re using something local, like a referral program
or people that they may see that are friends of theirs, they really, really trust those
recommendations and even above and beyond that, 70% of people will trust unknown users
and then it just goes down on a real big sliding scale, where it says 27% trust Experts, 14%
trust advertising, and then only 8% trust Celebrities. So, obviously that one on one
local connection makes a huge, huge difference. And in the last statistic I�d like to share,
which I think is really, really big in any industry, not just self storage, is reviews
on a site can boost conversion 20%, which is huge in any market, because we all know
what the value of our tenants are, and if you start looking at that number and boost
it 20%, that�s a big deal. Jim: Oh, exactly� I�ll think of the terminology
for it, but you�re just getting at that peer support in your buying decisions.
Matt: Oh, absolutely� Jim: You put these on your website, for instance�
What other storage site is really doing that? And, so they bounce your website and they
see those testimonials on there. Case is closed; they�re going to call you. So, it�s a
great thing to use and implement on your website, and again, put it on there, put it of course
on YouTube, hopefully by now you have a Google Plus Local account, do it up on there� Again,
once you use the video once, there�s a multitude of ways to get it out there on the internet
and get seen. And I just failed to mention, anyone listening to this, if you�d like
to get a sample of that flyer that we have on our counter, feel free to e-mail us and
I�ll send you the file and you can just print it on your own and start using that.
It�s pretty slick. So just go ahead and e-mail us at info@3miledomination.com, so
info@3miledomination.com, and just let me know in the subject line you�d like to have
me send you that video testimonial counter display and I�ll send it off to you.
Matt: That�s excellent. Jim: Yeah, just trying to give you a little
tool here that�s easy to implement and hopefully you�ll start seeing results and getting
those conversions, getting the phone to ring. We�re doing what we can. But anyway, I also
had an experience this week. Do you have anything more to add on the testimonials before we
move on? Matt: No, I think that�s good. I think it
gives a pretty good overview on why we want to do this.
Jim: Cool. I also have a little bit of fun here too. Matt and I talk all the time with
Managers and we have other people calling us for advice and consultations, and I had
a call this week, today� This is one you�ve just got to shake your head at because sometimes
people at storage� They make the job a little harder on themselves than it needs to be.
There are a lot of easy checks and balances you can put into place that will just alleviate
any future liability and make your job easier. So, we talked about it long and hard and I
think Matt and I were going to do it every week but if something pops up like this I
think everybody can utilize at their site, and hopefully make their life easier, we�ll
talk about it real quick. So, this week we�re going to talk about� This weekend I had
a Manager call me saying that his site is getting sued and that�s the last thing we
all want to hear about, is a Lawyer calling, �Your site is getting sued.� I had him
break down what was going on. The jest of it is, this site was not putting vacant locks
on their vacant units. They were just leaving them wide open. Now what happened was, he
rented the unit to this guy. The guy can move his stuff in and, not really the guy�s fault,
but he mistakenly moved into the wrong unit. Moved his stuff in, put his lock on� Well
then this Manager was doing his walk through and who knows how long it was since he last
did a walk through, but regardless, he does a walk through next time, something didn�t
match up, it was vacant on his walk through sheet, but there was a customer lock on there.
So, he cut the lock off, rolled it up, and its jam packed full of goods. Well, rather
than lock it back up and sit on it and wait for someone to come back and say, �Something
is not jiving as far as a payment goes,� they sold it in the next auction, and then
of course it would happen, the guy came in the next month to make his payment, they couldn�t
figure out where he was in the computer. They put two and three together and realized they
had sold his stuff. Well, you can know what�s coming next. Here comes a lawsuit for $250,000.00
and this makes you sick thinking about it. But again, what you can gain from this is
put locks on all your vacant units. You don�t do it right now; you listen to this Podcast,
order. I don�t care if it�s even those little cheap little plastics [inaudible].
We�ve all seen them red and yellow, green locks you can get for what, thirty, forty
cents a piece? It�s something� Get those. Put them on your vacant units, just so there�s
not a mix-up. It�s just something that�s very simple to do and if it saves you a lawsuit,
do it. Matt: And the scary thing is, this isn�t
the first time I�ve heard this story. I have another story that�s very similar to
this and I�ll talk about it on another Podcast in the future, but the repercussions were
not only monetarily, which where we are right now in this society, I mean, you guys can�t
make these mistakes. You�re going to get sued. There are Lawyers and people just waiting
out there for everybody, for us, for everyone to make mistakes so they can sue us. But the
other downfall on this kind of thing, maybe we don�t think about this, is the back crash
we can get on social media. It used to be if there was a mistake made, a couple people
knew. Maybe the person knew their family� Maybe they did a letter writing campaign to
the paper and half the people saw it, half the people didn�t, or didn�t put two and
two together� That�s all changed now. With Facebook, with Google Plus, with Twitter,
with YouTube, with you name it� Everyone�s e-mail address is out there. These things
can have major, major repercussions and again, I have a couple stories, one in particular
that I�ll share on a future Podcast� But these things do have a huge detriment to your
business if we make these kinds of mistakes, so really it�s just common sense stuff.
Just think about it. If it makes sense it�s probably right.
Jim: Exactly. So yeah, we�ll have topics like this every once in a while that will
pop up that we�ll talk about and I hope as long as you�ll implement that it will
save you a lot of headache in the future. Matt: Sounds great.
Jim: Okay. Alright� Well, I think we�re good for this episode. We�ll talk soon.
Matt: Alright� You have a great week. Jim: Alright, you too� Take care, man�
Bye. Matt: Bye.
Jim; Thanks for listening to the Three Mile Domination Podcast. Please check us out at
our website, www.threemiledomination.com, where you can download our free e-book, connect
with us on all the social media platforms, and to subscribe to this Podcast. Please spread
the word to those you think would benefit from this show. Just don�t tell your competitors.
Thanks again.