What is economic occupancy?
Your storage facility’s economic occupancy rate is one of the most important metrics of your business. Economic occupancy shows your current income per month compared to your potential income per month. Unlike unit and square foot occupancy rates, economic occupancy rate tends to fall behind due to discounts.
Any time you offer discounts you may increase your facility occupancy but decrease your economic occupancy. An economic occupancy of close to 100% is great and anything less than 90% is not ideal as it indicates over 10% in lost profits.
Marketing has a direct impact on economic occupancy. The way you market your facility is extremely important when it comes to driving rentals at full price. As a customer, you are much more willing to trust and rent from a facility with excellent reviews, high search rankings and a professional website. It makes you feel like the facility is secure, professional, trustworthy and worth the price.
The following are three easy ways you can improve your overall marketing strategy:
1. Commit to improving your online reviews.
Customer reviews have a strong impact on economic occupancy in a qualitative but hard-to-measure way. The vast majority of renters find facilities online before ever calling, visiting or reserving a unit online. Showcasing strong reviews can result in more conversions. Online leads are more likely to spend more at your facility by customer reviews that tout their experience.
2. Experiment with paid search.
Paid search is one of the most cost-effective ways for facilities to attract new tenants without dropping rates, making it perfect for boosting economic occupancy. Paid search tools allow you to be seen as an ideal solution for exactly what users are searching. For example, if indoor RV storage is your specialty, you could set aside budget to test paid search for terms like “covered RV storage.” You will only show up for leads who are looking for the exact type of units you are hoping to lease.
3. Diligently track your marketing efforts.
It is never too late to properly track your marketing metrics. By expanding and tracking your efforts, you can begin to assess how your marketing is affecting your economic occupancy and make the necessary adjustments. Remember, what gets measured, gets managed.
Whether you are a small facility owner or a titan of industry managing multiple large properties, everyone wants to rent more of their units at premium rates. By making a point to focus on these three tactics and measuring your economic occupancy, you will put your facility in a strong position to be more profitable in 2020!