Return on Customer

Welcome to the self storage blog, the on line self storage diary from PhoneSmart.

Today I am at a conference focused on marketing apartments. The apartment industry is starting to see a trend that I think storage people already understand, even if we don’t think about it every day. Self storage insiders look at average rent per customer, average ancillary sales per customer, average stay and other figures. Apartment professionals are realizing that these kinds of numbers are more important than they realized. They call it “Return on Customer” or ROC ( as oppossed to ROI). I have talked about the true value of a move-in and the true value of a new tenant many times. Now I know what to call this concept. It is a pretty neat term it gives you the visualization that each tenant is an investment which brings a return. That makes all the sense in the world.

So try looking at your customers this way. What returns in rent, products, referrals, good will and so on does each of your customers give you in return for the use of your storage space? Now look at ways you can increase those returns and add more new customers.

One of the other trends they discussed was the number of 18-24 year olds who are living at their parents’ homes becasue they cannot carry their student loans and apartment rent at the same time. This is a real opportunity for storage owners. These young people have stuff. Their parents have stuff. If they are all trying to live together, they need a storage unit to make it all work, don’t they?

Someone else said that the number one searched item on EBAY last year was “RV”. This means more peolpe are hoping to stay on the road part of the time. They will need to park their RVs when they are in their homes or apartments. And they will need storage when they are home or on the road.

Some interesting things to think about.

bye for now, Tron

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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