I’m a nut for innovation.  I get especially fired up when I hear stories of innovative self-storage owner/operators…

So, it probably comes as no surprise that I’m a Steve Jobs fan (is it wierd that I’m typing this on a PC?).  Steve is a master innovator that has impacted just about every human being on this planet in one way or another.

Here is one of my favorite videos of Steve.  Here, you’ll see him giving the commencement speech at Stanford graduation in 2005.  If you haven’t seen this before, take 14 minutes and watch it. I’ll connect the dots from Steve Jobs to self-storage marketing after you’re finished watching this.  As you’ll see, connecting the dots can only happen after the fact.  Just turn up your speakers and click the big “play” button below to watch the video:

Great message, isn’t it?

I chose to post this video now because graduation is happening all over the country around this time of year.  And, what happens when college seniors graduate?  Well, they typically MOVE somewhere.  And to do that they need boxes and moving supplies.  And possibly storage until they find a new place to live off campus.

And another thing happens.  Freshmen, Sophmores and Juniors do NOT graduate.  A good chunk of them journey back home for the summer to be with their family.  And guess what?  They move out of their apartments for the summer.  While some just take their stuff home with them, a bunch don’t.  And you guessed it…they need self-storage!

I won’t spend too much time on this point.  It should be obvious that college students have a need for storage around this time of year.  If you have a university in town, start marketing to the student body around tax time (4/15/every-friggin-year).

As a loyal reader, and because I’m feeling generous, I’ll send you a copy of a flyer we did for our clients if you’d like to see how we approached marketing to college students.  My printer ran off about 150 extra copies for one client.  So, I’ll put one in the mail to you if you’d like.  I’ll even pay for the postage.  Just send an e-mail to my assistant, Kate, at info@storagemarketingsolutions.com with your complete mailing address to get it.

I hope you enjoyed the video and will start looking at those noisy college students as opportunities rather than partying pests!

To higher occupancy & profits!

Derek Naylor

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Self Storage Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.