Fred Horn, owner of Shelbyville Self Storage in Shelbyville, Tenn., has requested the city assist in repairing a culvert and water/sewer line he believes have contributed to flooding along Fairground Heights, which borders his property at 321 Bethany Lane. The issue caused a potential sale of the facility to fall through earlier this year, Horn told the city council on Tuesday during a work-study session.

During the meeting, Horn met privately with City Manager Jay Johnson and verbally agreed to make a one-time payment of $12,000 toward fixing the water issues, the source reported. Johnson blamed the problem on drainage not flooding.

Horn, who is 77 and lives in a retirement community in Florida, told the council he needed to sell the property and has already spent $100,000 on renovations. The former city engineer said material estimates for the repair work totaled $7,800 in addition to labor and equipment, according to the source.

Though Horn offered to supervise the proposed improvements, city officials voiced concerns about liability issues and a potential conflict of interest. Councilmembers discussed having city engineer Will Owen and Eric Pierce, director of the public works department, manage the project.

Pierce warned the project could impact properties upstream and downstream from the self-storage facility. He also urged the council to consider addressing drainage issues along nearby Rockwood Drive if it moved forward with Horn’s proposal.

The council could discuss the item formally during its Dec. 8 meeting, the source reported.

Self-storage developer LSC Development LLC is in the process of acquiring a former commercial laundry facility in Oceanside, N.Y., with the intent to convert it into a Life Storage Inc. facility. The two-story, 76,000-square-foot Oceanside Institutional Industries (OII) plant at 2525 Long Beach Road will comprise 42,252 square feet of storage space in 716 storage units, according to a source. The Town of Hempstead last month granted a special-use permit for the project.

The plant once cleaned 60 million pounds of laundry annually but closed in June for economic reasons, a source reported. Commercial laundry company Unitex acquired the OII business in July.

Neighboring residents had previously complained about chemical smells and traffic noise caused by laundry delivery trucks, according to Christian Browne, an attorney with Sahn Ward Coschignano PLLC, which represented LSC Development in obtaining the special-use permit. The developer will remediate the property for any environmental contamination as part of the project, Browne said in a press release.

“This new project is a home run for the developers and the community,” Browne said in the release. “It will reduce the amount of traffic in front of the facility along Long Beach Road and the impacts on the neighbors. The building will be repurposed, so it won’t be torn down, and it won’t place any further encumbrances on the residents.”

Based in Barrington, Ill., LSC Development specializes in industrial parks, office complexes and self-storage facilities. It also owns and leases nearly 700,000 square feet of industrial and office space in Aurora, Barrington, Chicago, Elgin, Harwood Heights and Libertyville, Ill., according to the company website.

Life Storage Inc. is the real estate investment trust formerly known as Sovran Self Storage Inc. Based in Buffalo, N.Y., it operates more than 650 self-storage facilities in 29 states under the Life Storage and Uncle Bob’s brands. Its portfolio of owned and managed facilities comprises more than 45 million square feet.

Self-storage operator Storage World LLC and affiliate company Greenwing Associated Properties LP have received final approval to develop a 118,625-square-foot facility in Exeter, Pa. Construction on the $7 million project at 4990 Perkiomen Ave. is expected to begin during the first quarter, with completion scheduled for 2018, according to the source.

“We are excited to embark on our 11th project under the Storage World brand and are eager to begin construction,” Kyle J. Greth, vice president of Storage World, said in a press release. “This facility will feature some amazing benefits that storage customers in this area currently do not have available.”

The property will feature a two-story building and three single-story structures, according to renderings. The facility will have automated access, climate- and humidity-controlled units, and large units designed for business use or RV storage. It will be equipped with a sprinkler system and video surveillance, the release stated.

“We pride ourselves on providing quality, clean and convenient self-storage,” said David A. Greth, founder of Storage World. “We have attempted to bring our business to Exeter Township in the past, and we are looking forward to serving customers in that community for years to come.”

Greenwing acquired the property earlier this year from 4990 Perkiomen LP for $930,000, according to the source.

Based in Sinking Spring, Pa., Storage World operates 10 self-storage properties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It has been developing storage facilities since 1998.

By Christine Munther

In self-storage marketing, the goal is to position your business to be where the audience is when people are making a purchasing decision. Promotional materials—such as brochures, print ads and calendars—help drive brand awareness and recognition. These elements add a tactile feel in an age of digital takeover, giving those you’re trying to reach a more well-rounded understanding of your brand while providing trust and authority.

When creating promotional materials as part of your marketing strategy, it’s important to consider your style, how tangible materials unite with digital, and how to track your efforts. Here’s more information about each.

Your Style Guide

Developing a well-planned brand style helps provide consistency and value to your business marketing. A style guide will standardize the creative approach that supports the brand identity, maintains control over your brand and voice, and ensures a cohesive approach across all materials—from collateral to signage.

A style guide can range in density. Some operators will use the bare minimum while others will build it out, providing example uses and how to execute them. Any style guide should include these key components:

• Logo with size and placement rules
• Color palette
• Fonts and how they’re used in different circumstances
• Image style with photography examples
• Voice and tone with specific words and phrases

Uniting Tangible With Digital

As the digital space evolves, consumers will continue to maneuver through the myriad brands and their offerings. Having both online and offline promotional materials adds value to your business by providing more instances in which your brand is visible. The more your audience sees your brand, the more likely they are to engage with it, whether on social media or an interactive piece of collateral they came across.

Fifteen years ago, marketing plans were centered on offline strategies and tactics, while online extensions were a secondary focus. Now, it’s the opposite. Your digital experiences should be supported by touchable brand elements that teach your audience something about your business offerings. To unite your online and offline efforts, map the customer journey and find where those key touchpoints are. You’ll then be more informed to make decisions on when to blast an e-mail and when to make a poster.

Tracking Your Efforts

By making your online and offline materials work together, you can start to get an idea of what’s resonating with your audience and what isn’t. For instance, if you hand out a brochure or flier that includes a trackable phone number or the URL for a promotional landing page, you can determine which materials spurred your audience to action. If your promotional piece drove them to your website, you can continue to track their journey and gain insight through Google Analytics or other tools to evaluate what they find valuable and what they bypass.

Mapping your customers’ journey will provide you with insight to where they’re going for information, how they’re researching, and how you can jump in and provide solutions right at the moment they’re asking questions. Once you’ve developed these personas, you can find out when decisions are being made and position promotional materials to support that decision-making process.

Christine Munther is director of client success at G5, a digital-marketing provider in the real estate sector and a premier Google partner. She has four years of digital-marketing experience in the self-storage industry. For more information, call 800.554.1965; visit www.getg5.com.