Have things changed in today’s economy? Many say yes, many say no. I, for one, believe that marketing is one of the most vital aspects that will determine your success or failure in this business, or any business, disregarding what the economical climate can be. Moreover, it never ceases to amaze me that when occupancy is low, and traffic is down, many companies decide to genuinely decrease their marketing efforts; the very thing that brings clients in the door! With that in mind, i encourage you, disregarding what your occupancy, or the current economical climate looks like, to set aside a budget of roughly 6-8% of your gross projected annual rental revenue for marketing and advertisement to construct your marketing plan around.

Creating the marketing plan

“marketing plan, what marketing plan”? All too ofttimes, this is the response i get when i begin working with our clients to advance their marketing efforts. It has been said that those who fail to plan, better plan to fail. I strongly suggest that you begin this entire routine by laying out the foundation for a 12 month marketing plan. No need to worry, it’s not so late to begin on february 1 whether or not you are a procrastinator. Also, your plan doesn’t have to include each little detail, it just needs to be written down so that the constitution has a plan to follow each month to collectively row in the same direction. The plan will have to also be tied to your budget, representing roughly 6-8% of your gross annual rental income. It then needs to be tracked per month for effectiveness and updated hence. I also commend that you adopt a consistent theme such as being the market leader, or lowest cost provider (whether or not you choose). There will have to also be peculiar goals, such as 92% occupancy, for example, and peculiar milestones once you raise occupancy by 3-5% increases. Tracking can be without apparent effort accomplished with your property management software. I would also commend involving your directors in the creative routine and reward them when the common goals are achieved. Also, don’t forget to account for the seasonality of the business when forecasting occupancy on a month by month basis.

Then, it’s time to put the creative wheels in movement and begin viewing ways to keep the clients we have, and to always, and consistently, bring in more. Unluckily, there is no magic bullet or magic wand. We apply the shotgun approach, utilizing approximately 60 different strategies all-round the course of the year all over all our facilities to keep the plan fresh and to hopefully, in the long run, hit the hot button for those clients we were unable to convert the former month. Merely matching what the “big guys” are doing in your market isn’t going to cut it. You must be more nimble, creative, and smarter than they’re. We are using many new tools and techniques of the marketing trade such as videos on our internet sites and changing the content per month to match the current advertisement. We are situating advertisements on craigslist, and cross promoting our ancillary profit centers to drive more door swings. And we are always seeking out more and new avenues for reaching the tremendous pool of clients who are incognizant of us, and educating them on the gains of utilizing self storage for their business. And then we are testing all the time to measure the success of each program in each market we serve to see what converts the most proficient, and whether that program should be employed again, or not.

Let’s remember folks, we are not in the storage business – each person self storage operator or manager is in the marketing business for our own company or the constitution we work for. Our each action all-round the day will have to revolve around the marketing of our facility and in which way to pack it full of clients – and keep it that way!