When I was a kid, my mother had a psychic knowledge of which places had clean bathrooms and which didn’t. My brother and I might have been begging for a spicy chicken sandwich, but we weren’t stopping there - the bathrooms were gross.
One stop, one dirty bathroom, one time, and that business lost what would have been three pretty regular, and regularly ravenous, customers.
Curb appeal matters for obvious reasons, but it matters for less-than-obvious reasons too. In this blog, we’ll discuss all the ways your attention to detail, or lack thereof, can impact your storage facility.
Curb appeal is more than just your landscaping, though that is an important part. Curb appeal is the vibe customers get when they see your facility, check out your website, or talk to your staff.
Does this feel like a good place to do business?
Are these people going to take care of my stuff? Are they going to take care of me?
These thoughts are hard to quantify but are hugely important for the success of your business. Just like my mom isn’t eating anywhere the bathrooms aren’t clean, she’s not leaving her grandmother’s dining table in a storage unit if… well, if the bathrooms aren’t clean.
Here are six more reasons to focus on your curb appeal.
I hate dressing up nicely, but I always put on my fanciest Pug socks when I go to church.
Not because they’d stop me at the door if I didn’t, but because I’d feel uncomfortable in that environment in my t-shirt!
The same goes for storage facilities. The feel of your facility will have a big impact on how people treat it. If there’s trash strewn around the facility, tenants are going to feel like they can just leave their trash on the lot.
If there are holes in your fence, people might feel like they can sneak in and no one will care enough to call the cops.
Or, if your facility is nice, clean, and well-kept, everyone who steps foot on the lot sees that someone is paying attention.
Experienced operators have seen this in practice, too. We talked to Jane Sauls of Sauls Storage Group on our most recent GabFocus, and she told us this exact point. Run-down, weed-eaten, facilities are going to have more trouble with theft and vandalism.
Security features play a big part in this, of course. Premium facilities can afford better cameras, taller fences, etc. But curb appeal plays a big part too.
Graphics: Does your facility look like someone is paying attention?
There’s a market for cheap storage units. There’s a market for premium storage units. Price point doesn’t determine who is a good tenant and who isn’t.
What you’re looking for are tenants who actually intend to store.
No matter the price point you’re renting at, every operator has encountered tenants who disappear. Maybe they pay for a few months, then suddenly vanish with all their stuff. Maybe they pay for the first month then do a chargeback and leave you with a storage unit full of old tires.
Maybe they’re breeding mice to sell to snake owners (this really happened).
Curb appeal can help you sort these people out.
Anyone looking to break the rules is going to be looking for a facility that doesn’t care what happens on the property. After all, if the manager is attentive and helpful, they might notice a truck full of old mattresses being unloaded. Or a mouse farm.
This might seem disconnected from curb appeal, but it’s not. Customers won’t go through your facility with a checklist - no weeds, trash emptied, doors freshly painted - but they will notice, and they will change their opinion of your facility because of it.
Your curb appeal tells customers that your business is a safe place to leave their stuff - which is vital if your customer cares about what they’re storing. If the customer doesn’t care about their stuff, they won’t mind a dirty facility.
Curb appeal helps you sort out customers who really want to do business from those who are more likely to abandon their unit.
A clean, well-lit facility makes people feel safer. All the reasons we’ve listed before contribute to this. If your facility focuses on tenants who are there for the right reasons, if your security features are up-to-date, and if you have powerful lighting, your facility will feel secure.
A slight majority of self-storage renters are women. If your facility doesn’t feel safe to visit, especially at night, do you think they’re going to rent with you?
What makes customers feel safe?
There are other things you can do to make your facility feel safe, but these five will go a long way.
With decreased theft and vandalism, more serious tenants, and prominent safety features (all part of your curb appeal), your facility will feel safe. Without this, what type of tenant is going to want to rent with you?
Self storage customers don’t know much about the industry.
They may not know how much space they need, whether or not they need climate control, and they most likely have no idea what a Smart Unit is!
This ignorance makes it hard to market to our audience sometimes. How can you convince someone to pay more for a very valuable feature if they don’t know what that feature even does?
But every potential customer understands curb appeal.
If you’re competing with one of the big players down the street, your facility needs to look at least as professional as the REIT.
Your facility appearance can give you a leg up on all the old-style, low-maintenance facilities in your neighborhood, especially if your prices aren’t significantly above theirs.
More than that, an attractive facility gives people something to talk about when they’re reviewing you! 5-star Google reviews are always good, but if you can get customers covering different parts of your facility, that’s even better.
Google will show a variety of review topics if you have them. So you might get a handful talking about how great your service is, but if you have a clean, attractive facility, you’ll get reviews talking about that too.
Plus, when people post photos of your facility on their reviews, it’s a better marketing asset for your business!
What does your current marketing look like? You probably spend a good chunk of money trying to get your name out there and convince people to come rent with you.
Maybe you use Google ads, maybe you use flyers, maybe you use a billboard - however you do it, you probably have some photos of your facility on your marketing.
If those photos don’t show a really nice-looking facility, if folks see your ads and go hmmm, probably not, you’re wasting your money.
Marketing can succeed even if your facility is a bit run down. Marketing can succeed even if you offer the bare minimum. But marketing is going to have a hard time overcoming a facility with bad curb appeal.
Instead of lumping more money into marketing that doesn’t pay for itself, consider using some of your marketing money to improve your curb appeal.
That could mean hiring a landscaping company to take care of your yard, repaving the parking lot, or painting your doors. These can be expensive, but so are your other options - and these help with everyone who finds your facility, renters and potential customers.
If your facility isn’t up to par, fix that before you spend more money on marketing it.
Graphics: If you handle the small stuff, they’ll trust you with the big stuff.
You can’t quantify curb appeal - but folks know it when they see it.
Each community is going to have slightly different expectations. Some might be happy with a very simple, clean facility, while other communities will want something much more impressive.
Check out your competition and see what they’re offering (and whether they seem to be renting units or not!). Ask a friendly manager or operator to come by and give their honest opinion.
As Jane Sauls said, find someone who will hurt your feelings about the property! Once you’ve worked there for so long, finding the flaws can be tricky.
Without good curb appeal, though, none of your other efforts are going to make much difference. All the SEO, marketing, ads, aggregators, and referrals in the world won’t matter if people don’t want to store at your facility.
When you get stuck improving your curb appeal, ask yourself if your mother would be happy renting here – someone’s mother will be making that decision tomorrow.
Here are some of my other favorite posts to check out!
At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
