Background
Storable is the leading technology provider for the $38 billion self-storage industry. They create technology products that empower self-storage facility owners and operators to do more by giving them the tools they need to maximize their business growth and manage their day-to-day tasks seamlessly.
Some of those tools include facility management software, website and marketing tools, search aggregators, tenant insurance tools, and payment processing services — all of which are centered around self-storage. Storable has won more awards than any other self-storage company, and over 25,000 storage facilities across the globe use the Storable technology — from large scale operations to small “mom and pop” shops.
To have a bespoke solution built for us — from a publicly traded company — is nearly unheard of. I am truly grateful. I’m happy to say that Storable is a Marin customer, and I hope we’ll remain one for many years to come.
Challenge
The Storable team was facing two separate but related challenges. First, they were looking for a bidding solution that would kick off daily at a custom time and could handle planned bidding requirements. Second, because of their extended sales funnel and custom, in-house solution for calculating predicted revenue, they required a full funnel bidding solution that could leverage multiple inputs.
Initial Challenge
Storable decided to test out Marin’s bidding solution against a competitor to see which one offered better performance to meet their unique needs. The competitor they selected, QuanticMind, promised to deliver a custom query that would accommodate both of Storable’s most important inputs: net present value (NPV) revenue and monthly move-in rate (MIR) data.
Storable also requested that the Marin Bidding kick-off times better align with the time that their daily revenue finishes processing.
Secondary Challenge
Additionally, Storable has an extended funnel and leverages a custom, in-house solution to calculate projected revenue in various stages of the customer journey. Because of their complex integration, they require a bid optimization solution that can both integrate their custom data as well as bid using multiple inputs, the most important of which include daily NPV revenue and monthly MIR data.
Solution
In response to Storable’s initial challenge, Marin updated bidding times and delivered superior performance over QuanticMind, which allowed Marin the opportunity to move the relationship with Storable forward and test out additional optimization options.
Once these concerns were resolved, Marin was able to custom build a full-funnel solution for Storable that utilized both MIR and NPV revenue to determine bids. Every day, Storable sends Marin a file of expected conversions and expected revenue. Marin then processes the file and uses these predictions to update bids to target full-funnel values.
Marin’s custom solution includes a bid multiplier based on predicted revenue; this way, keywords that drive relatively more revenue, via move-ins, are valued more than keywords that drive an equal amount of upper-funnel conversions.
Results
At the end of Storable’s bidding test, they stated that QuanticMind had not even come close to delivering on the promised full-funnel solution, nor were they able to provide flexibility to accommodate Storable’s unique needs.
Marin, on the other hand, was able to deliver a 5.4% performance lift in Google MIR and a 42.9% lift in Bing MIR compared to QuanticMind, in addition to offering Storable the world-class support, service, and solutions the Marin team is known for.
- 5.4% lift in Google MIR and a 42.9% lift in Bing MIR, compared to QuanticMind
- 21.5% lift in Google margin and a 46.9% lift in Bing margin
- ROAS of 1.21 for Google and 1.47 for Bing, compared to 1.14 and 1.43 with QuanticMind
Additionally, since switching to full-funnel bidding, Storable has seen an 8% increase in NPV ROAS and a 13% increase in revenue/conversion.
