The best coworking and flex-working spaces will stay vacant unless prospective members know about them. Marketing your coworking space is essential to keeping your offices full of happy, productive professionals. Continue reading to learn how to market your coworking space.
How to Market Your Coworking Space: Best Practices
If you’re a property owner or manager, you may not know where to start in marketing your coworking space property business. If this is you, sit down with your favorite drink and take notes, because following these best practices will help you promote your property effectively.
Start with a Great Website
The website for your coworking space is essentially your front door. Before any prospective members take a tour of your coworking space, they will look at your website.
If you don’t have a website for your coworking property business, you should focus on getting one. Does your coworking property website look like it’s from the days of dial-up? Update it with plenty of photos and videos of your property.
Make sure to include all necessary information such as a list of amenities, rates, terms, and how to get in touch with you. It is crucial you make booking a space as easy as possible for current AND potential customers. This can be easily accomplished with software like CoWello, which allows you to embed a “booking” button on your website.
Also, be sure to include testimonials from happy members and high-resolution photographs from after-hours events to show your vibrant work community. A blog that includes guest posts from members will let prospective members see who they’d be working alongside.
Create a Marketing Plan and Timeline
Essential to the successful promotion of your coworking property is a marketing plan. Begin by setting realistic goals, then set a timeline for marketing activities that will help you reach your goals. Your timeline might include Instagram photos months before the coworking space opens if it is being built or renovated to advertising once the coworking space is open.
When creating your coworking marketing plan, you’ll also want to include information about who your target audience is – likely entrepreneurs and freelancers – and your competition. Details about your brand, strengths, and weaknesses, and SEO content strategies.
As part of your coworking marketing plan, you will need to include an evaluation process to see how well your promotion efforts are working. Armed with this information, you can adjust your goals accordingly.
Make the Most of Social Media
Your target audience is likely to be social-media savvy, so your social media presence is essential to your coworking space’s success. Social media posts are free and boosting them is inexpensive compared to the value provided.
Make sure your social media posts are consistent with your branding and image. You’ll want your posts to convey a professional image, even when you include photos from after-hours events. Your office space should look up-to-date, neat, spacious, and open.
Your social media channels should be ones that your target audience uses and should drive readers back to your website for more information. That will increase your organic web traffic and make your coworking space website rise in search engine ranking.
Use Content Marketing Strategies
Content on your website is just the start of your marketing plan. You’ll want to include a blog on your website. Blog posts from you or your members can be shared on social media through links that will bring readers back to your coworking space website.
One of your coworking content marketing strategies should be to offer a free e-newsletter with professional development information as well as details about your coworking space and what it offers. You’ll be able to get information to prospective members while collecting emails and the names of leads.
Your e-newsletters should include a bit of information from a story, making readers click back to your website for more. Make sure to weave keywords naturally into your content for search engine optimization. This will move your business higher in search engine rankings. When someone searches for coworking space in your city, yours will be among the first website they see.
Advertise Near Transportation Hubs
If your city has a lot of commuters, place advertising in areas where they’ll pass through every day. Some business travelers may need a space to work that isn’t a coffee shop with free WiFi, so keep short-term rentals in mind and advertise at airports and hotels.
Advertise your coworking space on billboards near highways that are heavily traveled to reach drivers and Uber and Lyft riders. Clearly state what your website and/or coworking space name is so people know where to find you.
Host Open Houses and Other Events
Another essential coworking space marketing technique is hosting open houses. You’ll want to hold open houses a few times a year to welcome potential members. Let your leads tour your offices and see how easily accessible your coworking space is. Include refreshments as well as folders of information for your prospective members.
Make sure these events don’t become a nuisance for the members you have. Hold these after-hours so as not to disturb their work or jeopardize their sensitive information. You might want to ask a happy tenant or two to help give tours, rewarding them with a discount on their next month’s rent.
You may want to rent your property for short-term rentals for conferences or your open spaces for after-hours events. Holding an open house will let a new audience see the possibilities of your coworking property.
Give Free Memberships Strategically
Word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising. With that in mind, give free memberships to local leaders who are entrepreneurs– or freelancers who could use your conference rooms for meetings. They’re likely to share the benefits of your space with others.
Another way to use free memberships is to reward new members who sign longer-term leases or make their rental payments upfront. Give these members a few months of free membership to encourage and reward them for making these commitments.
Join the Chamber of Commerce
Your local chambers of commerce or business organizations can offer you opportunities for networking and marketing your coworking space. Through business organizations, you will meet members of your target audience including entrepreneurs and owners of startup companies who might be interested in moving into your coworking space.
As a chamber of commerce member, you might want to volunteer to host an after-hours event at your flex-working property. This would allow you to have the area’s leading business people as guests for the low price of a few bottles of wine, non-alcoholic beverages, and light appetizers. The chamber of commerce will then give your coworking property mentions and photos in its publications and on its website.
It’s a win-win!
Share Customer Success Stories
Another essential part of the marketing plan for your property should be sharing the success stories of your property. Celebrate with your members when their businesses succeed and share their good news in your e-publications and your blog.
Seeing companies that outgrew your coworking space and now have buildings of their own will encourage entrepreneurs to start their companies in your coworking space.
Freelancers and entrepreneurs who are current members seeing business growth while enjoying the benefits of your coworking space also have stories that will connect with prospective coworking members.
Key Takeaways
Coworking space marketing and promotion are essential to keeping your space booked. Develop a marketing plan and timeline along with an attractive, up-to-date, and easy-to-use website, and check out coworking management software like Cowello.
You can then use a combination of content marketing and search engine optimization to drive prospective members back to your website. Advertising in spots where your target audience will see your coworking space benefits and face-to-face marketing through networking and membership in local business organizations will also boost your clientele.
Offering free membership to well-known local influencers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs and providing a free month of rent to clients who sign longer leases will also increase occupancy in your coworking space.
As part of your marketing plan, you’ll need to evaluate these steps periodically to see how well they are working and whether you are meeting your marketing goals. Once you have analyzed the performance of your marketing and promotion efforts, you can adjust them to keep scaling.
Put these promotional plans in place for your property and you’ll see the occupancy of your coworking space rise along with your profits.
