I’m guessing that you’re a small business owner, hopefully, the owner of a self-storage business, (if you’re not then thanks for reading, but why are you here?). If you’re reading this then I must be doing something right when it comes to finding ways to reach potential clients and customers, and hosting a blog on your company website is a pretty good way to find new customers. If you’re articles are interesting, useful, and informative, then hopefully you can get people to come back to your site for news and interesting offers.

But that’s getting a little ahead of myself, because if you’re new to business or just new to marketing then the first thing you want to do is identify what it is you’re selling. This may sound a little strange, but give it a shot. What am I selling? I’m selling the best self storage software on the market. It helps to be specific like that, even if your business is service-oriented.

A lot of people think that what they’re selling is some kind of customer service experience, but it doesn’t matter if you have the best customer service in the world if no one wants to buy what you’re selling. (Conversely people are willing to do put up with bad service and long lines if they want what you have, not saying you should do this, just offering perspective)

Once you’ve defined for yourself what you’re selling, preferably in once sentence, think of it as a tagline for your business, you want to define who the customer is. To whom are you selling? I am selling to small business owners and those who operate self-storage sites. Be as specific as possible. Within what age range do my customers fall? What do they look like? Do they have a family? What are their likes and interests?

Once you have in your head a complete picture of what the customer looks like, then you can figure out how you’re going to attract them to your business. An easy way to start is by looking at how similar businesses have marketed successfully (and unsuccessfully) and determine how you fit into the community’s wants. If you don’t offer something that people want, it’s going to be very hard to find a customer base.

People are generally pretty savvy, so it’s important, especially for a small business, to not try to trick anyone or employ snake-oil salesman tactics; you definitely don’t want to come off as a stereotypical used car salesman. The specifics of how you market to customers are going to vary depending on who your customer is, but if I can offer any advice it would be to find ways to appear authentic and honest to your customers. The rest is up to you.