Self storage owners can make great money by following a successful business model, maintaining the integrity of the property and tailoring the services available to the demographics of the location of the store.
 
It is a safe assumption that self storage owners will create and maintain a profitable business that offers good value and targets the local trade in its marketing to attract an ongoing stream of customers. Tailor the in house marketing of your facility to provide service to the local economic related attributes of your areas economy. Utilize email marketing and telephone follow up calls as much as possible.  Reach out and communicate.  Do not allow your employees to sit around and wait for people to walk through the door.  Do your own market research on line. Accessing information on line these days provides you an affordable, easy, inexpensive tool to put dollars in your pocket. 
 
An obvious example would be if your storage facility was located in a tourist destination hot spot. A costal town that has a thriving segment of the population providing services to a resort oriented clientele, can offer space to store a boat and space for returning vacationers to store all their recreational related items. Time share vacationers who return to an area on an annual basis, don't necessarily want to drag their scuba gear, underwater cameras, jet skies and vacation wardrobe through airports when they can arrive at their destination and find everything just as the left it last vacation.
 
College towns are full of business opportunity.  Students crammed into dorm rooms and small apartments make great tenants as they regularly take advantage of smaller units to store seasonal gear like bikes and summer clothes and in the winter, sweaters, coats and boots. Not to mention the ever increasing number of books and papers accumulated throughout the school years. For the kids that go home over the summer, many parents insist on renting space so their children don't have to pack up and move everything temporarily into their homes. Running specials that target the local academia or sponsoring a few school events bring the type of recognition locally that set you apart from other self storage owners.
 
Most self storage owners will find that tenants comprising of family and friends will refer customers to the facility years after they were actually a tenant. Friends and families can provide you with referral tenants for years. It doesn't take much effort to email a holiday greeting, reminding past tenants of the great experience they had while storing with you and offering a special to any past tenant referring a new customer. 
 
Self storage owners can maintain multiple facilities offering units tailored to the majority of the surrounding area's possible clientele. Those storage facilities offering business services like drop shipments and units that store company inventories, may also want to include fax and internet services for their tenants. The more services you can provide for your target client the more repeat and long term tenants you will develop. If a self employed person can come to the facility, pick up goods from their unit and send a follow up email or fax in one trip. You have provided them a quality service that would be hard for them to replace. 
 
Self storage owners need to take care in making sure they hire a reliable management team to oversee the accounting and operations of the facility and employ knowledgeable staff that can speak well of your services.  Providing a sound property with curb appeal, well maintained grounds, great upkeep and a good security system will attract the supply and demand values that dictates your businesses success. Target marketing will ensure your facility gets a share of that market.

Columbia Storage : http://www.selfstoragesocialnetwork.com/MikeH/classifieds/180/