Gabfocus Spotlight: Which self storage facilities are actually your competitors?

In storage, you can't just look at the map and tell which nearby storage facilities are really your competitors.

And in some cases, you may even have a storage facility that is a competitor on one front but not another. It takes a little bit more work to determine who is and who is not actually a competitor.

Once you know who the competition is, you know HOW to compete.

Melissa and Tommy sat down with James McLean of Radius+ to talk about industry data. During the conversation, they dug into how to tell who your competitors are.

Question: "Which self storage facilities are actually your competitors?"

Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:

In this Gabfocus Session: Stay Competitive Using Industry Data, James McLean of Radius+ joined Tommy and Melissa to discuss data and how to use it. They discussed finer topics ranging from what data matters the most, where to find it, and how to figure out who your competitors are.

Check out the full Session to dive deeper! 

Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what James, Melissa, and Tommy had to say:

I think you should just do apples to apples.

If you're a smaller mom and pop, maybe like a single-story, barracks-style facility. I don't think you need to price-match Extra Space if he's 2 miles away.

Just keep it relevant to your trade area.

So find out who's actually your competitor. And are they offering a similar asset like climate control versus non-climate? Just compare apples to apples and find a strategy that works for you. Like, don't try to just follow the same playbook that a billion-dollar institution is using.

So that's something I advise you guys about all the time. You don't have to follow the same playbook. Just follow your playbook."

—James McLean

"Well, and I think you made a good point too. In relation to who is your competition. You have to first determine who your competition actually is. And it's not going to do you any good to compare yourself to a dump down the street that, you know, rents to anybody that you don't want. You know, that has the broken gate and no lights that work.

But you also might not have true competition with a four-story, you know, interior climate control, you know, CubeSmart, that pops up. That might not be your competition either.

So you really have to determine who are your customers and what facilities are your customers driving past to get to you that you're actually pulling from. And so make sure, yeah, there's ways to determine what those apples are that you need to be comparing yourself to.

And sometimes that means you need to get out and actually drive around your community."

—Melissa Huff

"I was about to ask Melissa. How do you suggest someone uncover those facts?"

—Tommy Nguyen

"Yeah, get in your car... Walk into those facilities, make phone calls, see how they're answering the phone, check out their online rental process, and because sometimes they don't really compete with you on the level that you may think they do, just at face value.

So really you have to put on your tenant eyeballs and look at it from the customer standpoint to find out who your competition is."

—Melissa

"Melissa, I'm gonna take what you just said and run with it, because you said from the customer standpoint.

And one thing that we get all the time is, you have an operator, maybe in a small tertiary market, smaller town, everyone knows everybody, so. 'Hey, James, should we be doing this ECRI model to drive drive occupancy?'

And my pushback to that is when you're in a smaller community and people don't have any idea when their rate increase is going to happen, sometimes they feel like a little offended or hoodwinked.

It could feel predatory to just hit you with an increase consistently, and people talk. And if you're a smaller operator, you can't afford like a bad Google review that you're not doing right by the people renting at your location.

So understand your market.

The playbook for the top ten metros may not work for your area."

—James