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Running a self-storage business is no walk in the park.

So many people enter this industry thinking that all they have to do is build their facility and collect passive income. What successful self-storage operators know is that it’s nowhere near that simple.

Owners and operators need to be able to focus their energy on actually operating their facilities. However, just like any business owner, it can be easy to get in the weeds with day-to-day operations and lose sight of the bigger picture. How are you setting yourself up for future success? Are you getting the insights and advice you need? Do you have an expert in your corner?

Self-storage consulting is one of the most important services to support operations, improve business, and drive profit. If you’re in the earliest stages of your business, self-storage facility consulting can help you hire architects and builders, manage construction, and advise on the design of the facility. They can also help:

  • Support the brand and marketing development process, hire staff, and determine how and when your facility needs to be maintained. 
  • Explain the best building materials and architectural decisions that can maximize your long-term potential and make it easier to reconfigure units as needed. 
  • Advise on value-adds like retail and shipping operations that don't require much overhead.

What Can Self-Storage Business Consultants Do?

Operations. Staffing. Marketing. Funding.

Self-storage business consulting is primarily focused on supporting day-to-day operations to keep things running smoothly. Many consultants can also help attract investors and funding partners so you can grow your business with additional facilities, more land, additional staff, or improvements to your existing facilities. They can help optimize your operations, reduce bloat in your expenses, assist with staffing decisions, and advise about necessary improvements to your facility. 

Self-storage marketing consultants are most useful if you’ve already got a good handle on your daily operations but aren’t hitting your goals for revenue and occupancy. These consultants specialize in attracting and retaining new customers for your business through advertising, marketing, and advising on improvements that your prospective customers might find attractive. 

Marketing consultants will advise on the best channels for messaging, the types of content that are likely to perform well on advertising outlets, and deliver data that can help you optimize your marketing efforts. A truly great self-storage marketing consultant will adjust those tactical recommendations frequently, based on real-time data about your occupancy and availability. 

Self-Storage Facility Marketing

Remaining competitive in a highly saturated market can be difficult. Starting from storage facility construction, you have to decide the mix of unit sizes, begin planning your operations, and keep your self-storage construction cost as low as possible without compromising the quality and longevity of your facility.

When all of those things are on your mind, marketing can feel like a lower priority. In reality, marketing should be one of your top priorities as you go through the storage facility design process.

Understanding your target audience can help inform decisions about your business. You'll understand unit sizes you may need, features that can attract customers, and brand elements that can be used in your design process. You even gain insights to start advertising ahead of your grand opening, attracting potential customers to your facility who are ready to start working with you on day one.

Once you’re up and running, self-storage development is an ongoing need. Attracting new customers and keeping your occupancy at the desired levels is the only way to keep your revenue flowing and your business growing.

A self-storage marketing consultant will help you understand the current market and make tactical recommendations. They can provide essential data analysis based on insights from your property management system, website traffic, and advertising performance. These insights can help inform self-storage project management decisions and timelines, keep your prospect pipeline full, and help you adjust sales and right-size projections.

Improving Self-Storage Operations

Self-storage operations are about more than signing leases and maintenance. Storage facility operations are all about playing a delicate balance with maximizing occupancy, maximizing retention, and attracting new prospects.

In order to make the most of your storage facility operations, you need data. Not just any data, but intelligent, insightful data paired with tactical recommendations.

Storage unit management software can give you insights into your business operations.

  • Occupancy
  • Billing information
  • Expenses vs. revenue

For marketing purposes, you’ll need to use your website traffic data, social media statistics, and advertising performance.

Knowing what to do with those data points is equally critical.

A self-storage consultant can look at this data to help you better understand your revenue and expenses, your customer lifecycle, and actions you can take to further your growth. They can even make suggestions about staffing, operating hours, and advertising to help you minimize your costs while maximizing your revenue.

What if you can’t afford a consultant’s hourly rate? Or what if you’ve tried a consultant, but have not gotten the insights you need?

Storage unit management software and intelligent technology might hold the answers for you. 

Adverank’s tools can bring all of this data seamlessly into one central dashboard. Based on this data, the tool can make advertising budget recommendations for PPC and social media advertising.

By enhancing your digital advertising operations, you can further improve your storage facility operations, including increased occupancy, accelerated lease-up, stabilization, and greater customer lifetime value.

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Storage Facility Management Consulting.

When it comes to day-to-day tasks, you might feel like you’ve got things under control.

But if you’re an owner, operator, or both, there are probably gaps and potential opportunities that you just aren’t seeing. Self-storage facility management consulting can be extremely useful to make sure you’re making the most of your operations on a daily basis.

For example, let's say you get the most foot traffic on weekend afternoons and weekdays after work. However, your staffing forces you to close daily at 6:00 PM. A self-storage facility management consultant will be able to help you understand how to improve your staffing so you can extend your hours later, how to create additional access hours for your customers, and other revenue-generating ideas and retail opportunities that can further boost your profits in these peak times. 

An option that many self-storage facility owners leverage is a management company.

These types of companies take total control of the daily operations of your facilities and report back on any major issues and operational needs. This can be very appealing to operators who don’t want to be lost in the weeds. 

Unlike a consultant, a management company is primarily concerned with keeping things running. Growth and expansion aren’t really on their mind, and they won’t necessarily have the insight and expertise to help you develop your business. With a consultant, you’ll still retain control over operational decisions, and you can take or leave the advice they suggest. With a management company, you won’t have that level of control, and may not know there’s a problem until it has spiraled out of control.

Self-Storage Industry Trends

Evolving into the future, even with the help of a consultant, requires a keen understanding of trends.

You need to know which things are just fads, which things are here to stay, and which can make a genuine improvement.

A few of these self-storage industry trends can seriously help improve your operations, reduce costs, and attract new customers to maximize your occupancy. 

Sustainability

One major trend that isn’t isolated to the self-storage industry is sustainability. As many as 78% of consumers state that a sustainable lifestyle is important to them,¹ and that fact drives their purchasing decisions.

Adding features to your storage facility like solar power, LED lighting, paperless leasing and billing, and clearly marked recycling in consumer areas are all simple ways to make your facility more sustainable. As an added benefit, these items can all help reduce your overhead while attracting a younger, more environmentally conscious customer. 

 

Technology

Few things are more important to self-storage customers than security and convenience, and that is what technology can provide. Remote monitoring and biometric or Bluetooth locks can help customers feel like their belongings are completely secure at all hours.

Self-serve kiosks, online portals, and online leasing help improve convenience for busy young customers who would rather handle their business on their own schedule rather than trying to get to your office at a specific time. 

Advertising

Last but not least, advertising trends can help you make sure that the word about all these improvements and conveniences is getting in front of your desired audience.

With the right self-storage market research, tactics like pay per click (PPC) advertising can help your self-storage business rank at the top of search engine results when prospective customers are looking. PPC advertising that’s hyper-targeted based on geography, online behavior, and past search history can be even more effective at bringing customers to your door. 

You'll start benefits immediately with a technology-powered PPC management tool like Adverank.

Data is pulled from multiple sources to have a full picture of your occupancy, ad budget, and overall pipeline.

In addition to that data, you’ll be able to instantly make changes to your PPC advertising and supplement with tactics like boosting content on social media and digital radio. Adverank’s experts have already conducted the storage facility market analysis, testing, and tactical analysis that you need to maximize your advertising ROI so that you don’t have to.

Interested to see how Adverank can help your business? 

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