As I stated last week, I recently attended a virtual business summit. I have been translating what I have been learning onto the self storage industry.
I think all too often, we hear our industry voices bouncing back and forth, and it is good to get out and see what other industries and business leaders are doing and saying.
And for most industries, the future appears to be different, uncertain, and requiring a new perspective.
COVID-19
I know everyone is waiting for a vaccine, and we think life will go back to normal.
Not to be a real downer, but the vaccine does not mark the end of the pandemic.
Mask and social distancing are not going away as the vaccine starts getting into the population.
Hopefully, it will slow down the spread, and perhaps over time, things can get back to something close to the way it was before the pandemic.
But from what I see, 2021 is going to look like 2020.
As I write this, every state, every part of the country is spreading COVID at alarming rates. It has never been higher.
Hopefully, new leadership can impact the spread, but we will see.
Regardless, businesses are going to have to continue to evolve and adapt.
That requires two real areas to focus on. That means to put energy and resources on.
Again, this is not just self storage, but all businesses in general.
All Businesses Are Requiring:
- Innovation
- Marketing
Innovation
I don’t want to belabor the point in this episode because I have in others, and there are a lot of resources at the ISS (Inside Self Storage) and the SSA (Self Storage Association) that do this much better than I do.
However, I will say that the way I suggest we as storage owners relate to this is it means we do things differently.
Take every aspect of how a customer finds out about you, connects with you, does business with you, and your current operations, and innovate it and improve it.
How many clicks does it take to rent from you?
How easy is it to pay you on-line? At your office? At a kiosk?
As we discussed last week, how can you exceed customer expatiations as you have less human contact?
Building a great facility, putting a good sign up, and placing a manager in the office will no longer rent up your facility.
Those days are gone (if they ever existed).
My coaching is if you are not going to do this type of critical thinking, strategic implementation, and testing to find new ways of innovating within your business, turn it over to a third-party manager and let them do it.
You will not make as much money as you are now, most likely, but your business will be around in the future.
Am I being dramatic?
Maybe. But not too far out of line.
I am confident that if you are doing business the way you did it, let’s say two years ago, you are becoming irrelevant if you are not already there.
As a business owner, “innovation” is a mindset, not a technology.
“How can I better meet customer’s needs?”
“How can I better meet stakeholder’s needs?”
These are the questions on the mind of innovative storage owners today, not what technology I should use.
The tech, if any, will be a function of the answer to better questions.
As Tony Robbins says, “If you want a better life, ask better questions.”
“If you want a better business, ask better questions.”
Marketing
For a business owner, everything always comes back to marketing.
It has never been more so than in self storage today.
Again, I will not get into the details of effective online marketing techniques in this article.
If you have been following me, you know I have lots of thoughts and direction (good or bad) on this subject for us smaller self storage owners.
But for this episode, I want to again relate to “marketing” as a mindset.
I have given up on finding the perfect new strategy for today’s modern world.
There isn’t one, in my opinion.
There is just testing and constant learning.
If there ever is an area to apply the mindset and techniques of effective innovation, it is marketing.
What works well today for one facility will fall flat on its face for another.
Adds, headlines, benefits, all are different from one facility to the next today. The submarket demographics are different. What drives customer decisions are different.
Innovation in marketing today means to me you show up in a way that makes it easy for customers to decide to do business with you.
As we discussed last week, what drives customers to need storage is different from location to location.
I know we used to think people need storage for about the same reason all over the country.
I submit emotion drives every decision a human being makes. Every decision, regardless of whether you think so or not. Every decision a human makes is an emotional one, especially when someone decides to do business with you.
What drives emotional decisions in a family earning $40,000 to use self storage is very different than the emotional drivers in a family earning $120,000 in the same city.
Good, innovative marketers know this and design their marketing to reflect the facility’s market.
Then their message shows up where that particular market happens to be online most of the time. (Hint, it usually is, but not always, Google, or just Google).
Conclusion
I am writing this as much for our company like yours.
As we prepare for the next chapter in our growth and evolution, we have to change our thinking, what questions we ask ourselves, and ultimately, how we run our business.
Many changes have happened and are underway in our corner of the storage world, but nothing is handled.
We are clear that every storage business requires today a new approach to Innovation and Marketing.
Nothing is better than self storage for small investors today, especially in this pandemic. Let’s make sure we are around years from now, and we used this time to grow and become better companies for our customers, our employees and partners, and for our families.
