An off-topic, but important post.

I may not agree with Randy Smith on everything, but I think we should all rally around the movement he is creating to abandon the online lead aggregators.

His arguments against the aggregators are sound.

Here are a few reasons I’m throwing my public support behind the movement to abandon the self storage lead aggregators.

1. They destroy property value in the long run by pushing the industry to compete more heavily on price while at the same time increasing costs.
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   The aggregators are not creating additional value for self storage owners.  Instead, they are taking the self storage owner’s share of the pie and giving some of it to consumers in the form of lower prices and taking some of it for themselves through their fees.  Since they haven’t made the pie any bigger, the more the aggregators become entrenched, the more self storage owners are left with a smaller piece.

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   Aggregators increase your cost of marketing online by giving you another (large) website to compete against. Aggregators also increase your cost of marketing by adding another sales channel that must be managed by someone in your organization.

2. Aggregators create value for themselves by standing between you and your customers and charging you for the privilege. The aggregators are marketing to the same consumers your are and by using them you are creating additional online competitors.
3. Aggregators dilute your brand and homogenize your position in your community. Your company’s message and its personality are lost on aggregator websites. You are forced to look like everyone else. You have very little ability to differentiate yourself from your competition except through the deepness of your discount or the size of your move-in special.
4. You are better off investing in your own web presence. Using an aggregator is like renting your web presence. Owning your own corner of the web is much better. (You are a real estate investor or you work for one… this should be a no-brainer.)
5. In the long run aggregators benefit the biggest self storage operators over the smaller, independent operators.
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   The REITS are more capable of maintaining their high ranking on the search engine results pages regardless of the lead aggregators. The small guy is the one at risk of being pushed off the first page as lead aggregator sites rank higher and higher in local markets. If I were the marketing director at a REIT I would negotiate lower fees than the small guys (because at a REIT I would control a large amount of inventory) and because I was secure in my own search engine ranking I would use the aggregators to push more of my local competitors off of the first page of Google/Yahoo/Bing.

Full disclosure: You can find a testimonial I wrote for Sparefoot on their website here.

I have used several of the lead aggregators and my rational for doing so was simply this:  if they were going to be there, competing with me online, then I may as well be part of the listings that storage consumers find when they go to their sites.

This logic only holds if you believe the aggregators will always be there and cannot be avoided.  I’m not ready to concede that point.

I believe that as an industry we can act to reverse their growth.    Thus, I’m throwing my support behind Randy Smith and his efforts to educate the industry about the long-term dangers they pose to self storage industry profitability.

The examples from the airline, hotel, and and other industries are clear.  Aggregators help themselves, they help consumers get lower prices, and they harm the profitability of the  industry they become entrenched in.

Now is the time walk away from the aggregators and take back our marketing and our relationships with customers.

Reminder:  The opinions expressed here are mine alone, and not necessarily those of my employer.

At some point I’m going to write a post called something like…

“Silence is the Greatest Negotiating Tactic Ever Created”

…and I hope it will be awesome enough that you’ll want to email it to your friends and print it out and look at it lovingly on your desk.

But today is not that day.

Today I just want you to know that I’m going to interrupt my regular publishing schedule for a week or two and go Radio Silent on you guys for a little while.  I’m putting the final touches on some stuff that YOU ARE GOING TO TOTALLY LOVE.

I need a little space.  Worrying about regular blog posts and emails  is cramping my ability to get this “SOMETHING BIGGER” out the door and into the world where it can do some real good.

If you want something to nourish your brain in the mean time, here are some good books I love and recommend.

Video Review of Word of Mouth Marketing

Video Review of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and I’m thankful for you and your willingness to spend a few minutes to be influenced by my point of view.  I hope the stuff I’m coming out with soon rocks your turkey-lovin’ world.

Photo Credit: frankdethier

The more I’ve been publishing online, the more traditional publishers have asked me to write for them.  So… I wrote a kick-butt article about making the most of online reviews and testimonials that was published in the May 2010 issue of the Ministorage Messenger.  Although the Ministorage Messenger charges for their back issues, they let me post a reprint of the Ministorage Messenger article here.   If you like what I’ve written on the blog, you should check this out and feel free to email it to friends or co-workers. (If you are going to read any of the three articles, this is the best one.)

I also wrote an article for Inside Self  Storage  about social media, and Twitter in particular that was published in the June 2010 issue.   The article is a summarized version of my Self Storage Guide to Twitter that I have been giving away for the last 6 or 8 months.  If you want the full-meal-deal then you can download the unabridged version for free here.  If you don’t subscribe to Inside Self Storage,  you can read the ISS article online over on the ISS website.

Last up the Second Quarter Issue of Self Storage Now published an article I wrote about maximizing retail sales.  It’s only a single page, and you can read it here:  Self Storage Now Article. If you are on my email list, you will recognize some of the advice (and thanks for trusting me with your email address and your attention).