Adjusting Your Marketing Plan for When Occupancy Is High

As we’ve spoken about various times, marketing should always be a major priority in your business spending. It helps you get leads, new tenants, and ultimately to do good business. However, a less spoken about aspect of marketing is how to pivot it in a certain direction when you have a high occupancy. In this situation, you’re not as urgently trying to find new occupants for your units, and so the marketing strategy should be adjusted accordingly. With self-storage operators reporting high occupancy across various markets, we thought we’d discuss how your marketing can change but still benefit your business overall.

Don’t Stop Marketing

The biggest mistake self-storage operators will have when their business is doing well is to focus less on marketing, and let your marketing strategy go stale. If you take away anything from this post, it should be this. While it might be tempting to redirect your business spending away from an area which might not seem as necessary anymore, it would be a mistake not to keep updating your marketing materials and strategy. Marketing should be about more than just getting new customers and new tenants, and keeping a constant presence is arguably more valuable than a great singular marketing campaign. A good consistent strategy can let you reshape your brand to your customers and even potential employees.

Strengthen Your Brand

When occupancy is high, your marketing strategy will be much less about getting new customers. One of the alternatives your marketing can focus on is building and strengthening a consistent brand identity. As a result of high occupancy, you now have the luxury to worry less about chasing leads and finding new tenants, which is definitely a result of a strong brand. This means that a complete rebrand is often off the table, but you can still retool your brand image in ways that will keep people coming. As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race, and a consistent retooling and rethinking of your brand and marketing strategy will help you in the long run.

One way to do this is to adjust your brand to cater to a specific demographic. If you’ve been tracking your marketing and occupancy well, you’ll know which methods are working and which specific people are renting units with you. Retooling your brand can help you patch up the demographics you haven’t been reaching, and help you achieve a more complete and diverse set of customers. For example, we know that millennials and Gen Z’ers are much more aware and demanding of a company’s social responsibility and how they respond to specific social issues such as environmental justice or social equality. You can appeal to them by showing them you care about these issues, and creating a brand that they feel more comfortable doing business with. Social media posts, specific advertising campaigns, and charitable work will all help you reach the younger demographic better. Advertise the ways your facility is trying to help reduce carbon emissions and other waste, or promote the different events that you hold for the community. Obviously action is more important, but it shouldn’t undercut the benefits it can bring to your brand.

Keep Everything Updated

Given the comfortable position you’re in if your occupancy rates are high, you can use the time to make sure all relevant marketing materials and information is up to date. Most importantly, ensure all the information online about your business is correct, including contact information, address, and relevant websites. Not having the correct information easily accessible is a simple reason for a potential future customer to look elsewhere for their self-storage needs. Another thing to keep on top of is to make sure your actual marketing material isn’t old and stale. While it might cost a little extra, having marketing material that is up to date and looks new will pay off in the long run, and it reflects poorly on your business if your posters and flyers all look like they were made a few years back. A final note links back to strengthening your brand. With less money needed in direct ads, you might consider retooling your website, again making sure it looks fresh and that it can appeal to the right people.

Overall, marketing will forever remain a key aspect of your business. While self-storage occupancy is high at the moment, we all know that there can always be a chance something can change. Staying on your toes, and keeping up with a consistent but altered marketing plan will ensure you’re prepared for anything that might come your way.

Related Article: Marketing strategy for the spring surge – No storage left behind