Self Storage- Sparefoot ranking

[Henry Clark]

Spring is in the air.  For you northern climate storage locations, you should be working to get your Sparefoot Rankings to the top now, prior to the April/May busy season.  For example google sparefoot.  Do a search by zip code or town.  Type in either zip code 51501 or 51503; or Omaha as an example.  Look to see how things are ranked.  Using the "Sort by" on the right side and hit the down arrow to see the methods to sort by.

Some of you will not use Sparefoot (against it in principle, stop reading) and some don't need to use Sparefoot (your already full, stop reading).

For those of you that have a New location or low occupancy levels, your losing extra cash, now.  

Background- Sparefoot is an Accumulator of online Self storage searches. Due to their size and their expertise they will always outrank any individual Storage location, owner or even large REIT in online Google searches. Will this remain true, no. As the industry starts to consolidate, at some point the larger REITS will either buyout or Build in house better Self Storage search engine tools. All industries tend to go Vertical at some point, especially around support systems that can be leveraged as they grow, such as Sparefoot search engine. Or as Sparefoot has done, they go Horizontal and provide Insurance or Operating software within the same industry. Mom/Pop in C and D markets can survive without them since in a town of 1,000 to 50,000 the customers can find you. Also most Mom/Pop locations are not new or are near 100% full.

A previous post of mine addresses other marketing approaches such as websites, Billboards, youtubes, bus benches, etc.

Sparefoot requires you to pay 1.5 months or 2 months rent for each new renter.  Whether they stay one day or 10 years.  You can bid more months of payment to get your Recommended ranking higher, but its not worth it.  For example:  instead of 1.5 months, you could bid 4 months to get to the top of the recommendations, but you might as well offer those free months to the renter.

Sparefoot Rankings:

a.  Recommended

b.  Reviews

c.  Price

d.  Distance

The "Recommended" ranking is the first ranking that the screen pops up with.  You can select the others.  Spend time researching each Ranking mechanism and once you understand how each one works start improving it to increase your rankings for peoples searches.

Start small and Make Your Big Mistakes Early.  Get those new units filled up faster.