10 Metrics Every Self Storage Business Owner Should Be Tracking

No matter the size of your business, keeping a careful eye on your metrics is vital. The more you can measure your performance over time, the more you will be able to spot trends, troubleshoot issues, and allow your business to grow. In this post, we go over the metrics you should be tracking to ensure your self storage business remains a success. 

10 Key Self Storage Metrics You Should Measure Every Month

1. Occupancy

Track your occupancy rates to check whether you are meeting your goals for the financial year. There are three different metrics for occupancy, and you will ideally want to track all of them:

• By unit: what percentage of your available units are currently rented?

• By square footage: of your available square footage, how much is rented out?

• By income: what is your actual income per month compared with your potential income if every unit was rented at full price?

2. New Move-Ins / Move-Outs

Tracking your new move-ins and move-outs is vital for understanding the effectiveness of your customer recruitment and retention. You also want to make sure your overall move-in rate is equal to or higher than your move-out rate to protect your business’ income.

3. Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate is a great indicator of staff performance, so track this as an overall figure and also drill down into the metrics for individual staff members. Compare how many show-rounds each staff member conducts with how many of those prospective clients they sign up as new tenants. If one of your staff members has a particularly good conversion rate, this could be a great opportunity for them to train other employees. 

4. Auto-Payers

Every storage business owner loves auto-payers – they reduce admin time and are unlikely to fall into arrears. Track what percentage of your tenants auto-pay and how many new auto-payers sign up each month. As with conversion rate, tracking new auto-pay sign-ups by individual employee allows you to see who is doing a good job of upselling this payment method, and gives you an opportunity to provide incentives for your employees to increase performance. Use a self storage software that enables you to manage online payments.

5. Discounts and Deals

Many self-storage businesses offer introductory deals and discounts to new tenants. As well as monitoring how many new tenants sign up under your introductory rate, track how many continue with you once the deal has expired. If you are losing a lot of tenants at the end of the discount period, you may need to restructure your deal or look at customer communications to encourage them to stay on.

6. Non-Payers

Your bottom line depends on your tenants paying the monthly rate for their self storage unit, so keep an eye on how many don’t pay up. As well as the overall number of non-payers, you will want a report that brings up the details of non-paying customers so that you can take appropriate action. 

7. Upselling of Insurance and Merchandise

Track how successful individual staff members are at upselling renters’ insurance and merchandise. You can then create incentives for staff to upsell and identify where further training is needed. Consider different Self Storage revenue streams to boost up your overall profit.

8. Website Visits and Enquiries

In this digital age, your website is a key part of your digital marketing strategy. To track whether your website is at successfully converting visitors into leads, it is useful to track visitor numbers as well as how many enquiries come through your website. If conversion rates are low, this can indicate that your website may need a revamp. 

9. Social Media Impact

Social media platforms offer analytics to track your followers and engagement. As with website visits, followers alone aren’t doing anything for your bottom line, so measure whether your social media activity is bringing in enquiries too. You can then determine where to concentrate your time and ad spend  – if you get lots of enquiries when you post on Facebook, but none from Instagram, you know which platform to focus on.

10. Other Marketing Initiatives

Most marketing costs money so you want to be sure that your efforts are securing a good return on investment (ROI). Track how many leads come from your different marketing initiatives so that you can determine which to put money behind and which to let go.

How to Track Your Metrics

How you keep track of your metrics depends on the software you have available. You can simply set up a spreadsheet and update your figures manually each month, but this can be very time-consuming. Most storage businesses use dedicated management software that allows you to run weekly or monthly reports on a wide variety of different metrics. This saves a lot of time and lets you concentrate on applying the insights from your data to make your self storage business a success.

Related Article: The Importance of a Self Storage Feasibility Study

Managing Your Self Storage With Storeganise

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