Marketing continues to be an area of intense focus in the storage biz, with operators questioning more than ever what they should be doing to promote their businesses online. There's a wealth of information out there, and it can be confusing to understand topics including search-engine optimiztion, search-engine marketing, local search and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

At the ISS Expo in Las Vegas, Craig Barrett (far left), director of search marketing for SpareFoot.com, instructed attendees on ways to use PPC advertising to drive targeted search traffic to a self-storage webite. He talked about which keyword search terms operators should bid on for the most clicks, how to refine ads and find the optimal balance of cost and conversion, why being specific can increase the likelihood of scoring a higher-ranked search result for a lower cost, and how to incorporate PPC campaigns into other Web-marketing efforts. "Experimentation is the soul of PPC success," according to Barrett.

Based in Austin, Texas, SpareFoot is an online marketplace for self-storage. In addition to an online directory, the company offers a menu of Web-marketing tools.