As the owner of a self storage facility, you’re always looking for new ways to bring in tenants.
Maybe you sit around in your office, thinking of new ways to market your storage facility, as on of your tenants drive by in a moving truck.
And then it hits you – maybe we can offer a moving truck to our clients.
Would this work?
Would offering a free moving truck actually bring in new customers?
And what would you have to do in order to make this happen?
Here are some things you need to know about offering a moving truck at your storage facility.
Unless your client only has a few small things to put into their unit, they are likely going to need a truck.
Most storage units are used for things like large furniture items, or for a large number of boxes that they can’t fit at home.
Since they can’t fit these things in their car, they will need to rent a truck to transport it.
Since your client is going to need a truck anyway, you can provide an extra incentive for choosing your storage facility by offering it yourself.
This way your client doesn’t have to work with a separate rental facility and doesn’t have to worry about dropping the truck off when they’re done at the unit.
However, before you decide to start offering a free moving truck to your clients, there are some things you should consider.
To start, let’s list the obvious advantage.
By offering a free moving truck to your clients, you are giving yourself an edge over your competition.
More than likely you are not the only self-storage facility in your area, and you are competing for clients with the other businesses.
When you offer a free moving truck, you are giving potential clients a big reason to choose you over someone else.
And in a world where every customer gained is important, this could make a large difference.
That being said, there are some drawbacks.
For starters, you will need to take care of the trucks that you provide.
This means maintenance, gas, and cleaning the truck out after use.
While it may not sound like much, it’s something to consider when thinking about your bottom line.
Besides that, you are also taking on additional liability.
You are responsible for the truck, and therefore anyone who borrows it.
You’ll have to check your state’s regulations regarding renting out a truck to other people and see what the insurance costs will be.
If you do decide to rent out a free moving truck to your clients, consider placing some limitations on it.
For example, the truck could be free for the first day, and a charge for any use after that.
Or you could require that anyone using the truck fill it with gas before they return it, and that they clean it out.
Another possible limitation is the number of miles.
You may not want your truck driving hundreds of miles, so you could charge extra if your client plans on taking it past a certain mileage count.
These simple limitations will help keep the financial burden in check, while still allowing you to offer a great promotion.
Does it make financial sense to offer your tenants a free truck to use at move in?
Think about all of the additional costs that would come with this promotion, and then decide how many additional customers you would need to bring in for this promotion to make financial sense.
Then think about whether you are likely to gain that number of new clients with this promotion.
Every storage facility is different, if the numbers make sense, you may have just found a new promotion that you can add to your business.
Whether this promotion works for you or not, it’s important that you’re always looking for ways to bring in new clients.
Offering a free moving truck is just one such method.
By looking for new methods, and examining each one carefully, you can continue to grow your business each year.
We hope this guide was able to give you something to think about, and that for some of you offering a moving truck is the new promotion you’ve been looking for.
