How Smartbox Cut Their Booking Costs in Half with Stashbee

Smartbox Self Storage started in 2021 and now operates five sites across the East Midlands, with their Leicester location as the blueprint for everything they're building next. Not long after Leicester opened, a customer drove up to the gate, scanned a QR code and booked a unit on their phone. They immediately received their digital access code, opened the unit and it was done in 20 minutes, without speaking to a single person. That story captures exactly what Smartbox is set out to deliver: trusted premium storage built for modern life.

There are no padlocks and no concierge check-in. Even their website was built mobile-first because more than 75% of their customers book on a phone. This is a business that has made technology a core part of its product, not just its back office. Which makes how they thought about marketing all the more interesting.

Relying on one channel for too long

Smartbox's marketing, like most operators', had centred on Google. SEO, paid search across three of their five sites, and occasional leaflet drops in smaller market towns where they were the only option nearby. It was producing results, but the picture was getting harder to read.

Paid search results were plateauing. The cost-per-click kept moving in the wrong direction. And in Leicester, the maths became especially stark:

• Auction pressure: Storage is a crowded auction. Costs go up as more competitors bid, and they always do.
• Unequal competition: From their Leicester site, Smartbox can see a big national player. Competing with that kind of budget on Google is not a realistic strategy for a small, owner-managed business.
• Google's own evolution: AI overviews and changing search behaviour are reshaping what paid visibility actually delivers.
• Diminishing returns from traditional channels: Leaflet drops in market towns cost roughly £1 per household all in. For a lean team without automated production, the effort-to-return ratio was getting harder to justify.

"We're seeing paid search plateau. There's an arms race when it comes to bidding, and we're small players. We can literally see a big national player from our Leicester site. We're not going to compete with their pockets."

Why other aggregators made things worse

The obvious response was to look at third-party platforms and aggregators operating in self-storage. Roger looked at them, and stayed away.

The concern wasn't the cost. It was that these platforms were competing for the same customers Smartbox was already chasing on Google, just channeling them through a slightly different route. Paying a platform to capture demand that would have found you anyway isn't diversification. It's just adding a middleman.

"We didn't want to go across four or five aggregators that are just doing the same thing differently and competing with us in terms of where they rank. We saw that as paying somebody to eat our lunch, really."

What Smartbox needed wasn't another version of the same funnel. It was access to customers who genuinely wouldn't find them otherwise.

A platform that brought new customers to the table

When Roger came across Stashbee, the model was different enough to be worth a closer look.

Stashbee operates across three distinct categories: vehicle storage, garage rental and self-storage. That cross-category presence means customers often arrive on the platform looking for one thing and discover another. Someone searching for somewhere to store a caravan, for example, might never have been self-storage shopping at all. Those are customers Smartbox couldn't reach through their own paid search or SEO, because those customers weren't searching in the same place.

That additionality was the deciding factor.

"We saw that you weren’t cannibalising business that we get elsewhere. We saw your business as genuine leads that we wouldn't normally see. We wouldn't normally get them, and we wouldn't really know how to access them. So that was quite important to us."

Stashbee's pipeline product also addressed an important factor. Each lead arrives with the key detail already filled in: location, size requirement, intended use. That context means Smartbox can respond intelligently and immediately, with accurate site-specific information and a direct link into the booking journey.

"The email comes through with sufficient detail for us to respond properly. And because it goes straight into our system, the customer gets an immediate response. We know in storage that if they don't get a response, they'll look somewhere else.”

Most recently, they introduced Max, an agentic AI that is deeply connected to their CRM and facility management system. Unlike a rule-based chatbot, Max acts like a genuine team member, picking up every inbound lead within minutes, around the clock, sharing deep booking links and walking customers through insurance options. While it is still early days, the expectation is that it will meaningfully improve both conversion rates and the overall customer experience.

Results that changed their acquisition strategy

Since going live with Stashbee, the results have been clear:

• Under £50 cost per booking, against a Google Ads benchmark of over £100
• Fresh leads, with zero overlap against existing channels - customers who wouldn't have found Smartbox any other way
• Stashbee specifically driving leads into their Leicester site, which opened in October 2024 and reached 26.5% occupancy within its first four months

Roger is precise about how he reads those numbers. Cost per lead, he says, is interesting but not important. What matters is cost per booking, with every fee and management cost included.

By that measure, Stashbee is delivering bookings at roughly half what Google costs, and from customers who weren't in the Google pool to begin with.

Platform simplicity and a responsive team

Getting started with Stashbee required minimal effort. Roger's colleague Alex handles their technical setup, and the onboarding process didn't give him cause to complain. When they needed something outside of the standard set up, they expected friction, but instead, a quick phone call sorted it on the spot.

"It couldn't have been easier, really. Alex rang you and it was sorted. With that level of responsiveness, there's really not much not to like."

The working relationship since has been straightforward. Day to day, the involvement is light. Leads come in, the team responds, and the platform doesn't require constant attention to keep working.

Looking ahead: Diversifying for the long term

For Smartbox, the value of Stashbee is less about replacing Google and more about not depending on it. Paid visibility costs more every year. The nature of search itself is changing. The operators who adapt earliest are the ones who will feel it least.

"Stashbee has been a really valuable addition to how we generate bookings. It hasn't just recycled the same customers we'd already reach through Google. It's brought us people we simply wouldn't have found otherwise. In a market where the biggest operators can afford to outspend everyone else, relying on one or two traditional channels just isn't a sensible long-term strategy. If you're building a modern, tech-led storage business, your marketing approach has to evolve as well. Diversifying your lead sources isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's part of building a stable, future-proof operation."

Jill Leckie, Marketing Manager, Smartbox

Smartbox's next site is due to open within the next three to six months, same model, same technology, same philosophy. And as they grow, so does the logic of having a lead source that brings entirely new customers to the table, rather than competing for the same ones at an ever-higher price.

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Smartbox Self Storage operates fully-automated self-storage facilities across the East Midlands, with sites in Corby, Stamford and Leicester. Their commitment to keyless access, agentic AI, mobile-first booking and 24/7 customer service is built around a single idea: that storage should be as frictionless as possible, at any hour, for any customer. Learn more about their approach.