Choosing Your Self-Storage’s Target Market

If you have a self-storage investment or are considering purchasing one, a market analysis is important to ensure you’re setting the right rates and that your business is even feasible. Conducting a market analysis lets you build a solid self-storage business plan, too, by helping you get to know your target audience.

When you look at the opportunities in self-storage that Investment Real Estate, LLC offers, you’ll want to conduct target market analysis or use our market research services to help you pick the right opportunity for you.

How to Analyze a Market for Self-Storage

One reason you’ll want to conduct market research and analysis is because targeted marketing is more effective when compared with general marketing. A target audience is a specific group of people who want and need what you offer. With self-storage, your target market will likely be defined by demographics. Are your most likely tenants young college students looking to store items short-term while they travel? Is your target audience suburban homeowners looking for climate-controlled storage for their summer cars?

Understanding who you are marketing to helps you choose the delivery, location and tone of your marketing. If you’re targeting recently divorced couples in your area or college students, you may want to emphasize competitive rates and easy renting processes. If you’re targeting businesses in need of files storage, you may want to focus on climate control and security at your facility.

How to Conduct a Self-Storage Market Analysis

Part of any self-storage feasibility study or market analysis involves deciding on your trade area radius, or how much of the area surrounding your business likely contains your target customers. You can look at current leads and tenants to see how close they live to their storage units. You can also use a general rule of thumb. In cities, self-storage customers may live less than one mile from their units. In rural spaces, your trade area radius may be up to 10 miles.

Once you have a trade area radius, consider the demand for self-storage units. You will want to determine demand by evaluating how many units are vacant and how many renters there are in your area. It can be challenging to determine vacancy rates of competitors, so you may need to evaluate the local population size and income levels as well to determine overall possible demand.

Who Is Your Ideal Tenant?

Once you have a general sense of the demand, supply and trade area radius, you might want to consider tenants who may be under-served in your area. People who are moving are not the only ones who need storage units. Other possible leads include:

• Content creators and digital nomads who travel for extended periods of time.
• Bands and musicians seeking practice space.
• Affluent customers who need climate-controlled spaces for summer cars, RVs and boats.
• Small businesses, such as resellers, antique shop stores and any business needing storage space.
• Offices looking to store files.
• Photographers in need of a darkroom.

Contact Investment Real Estate, LLC for Self-Storage Investment Opportunities

Do you have big plans for your storage unit marketing? If you would like to get into the world of self-storage investing or need help with research and analysis, trust Investment Real Estate, LLC. We work with buyers and sellers to bring you the best opportunities. Give us a call at 717-779-0804 or reach out online to get started.