In today’s technologically advanced world where startups, freelancers, remote worker demographics are seen to experience a great leap, there is no doubt that it’ll bring in a plethora of opportunities for coworking spaces. With the Covid-19 pandemic and work from home adaptation, the popularity of coworking spaces is already on a rise. The remote work culture can be the finest chance for coworking businesses to make the most out of it.
Learn how Coworking Space Business can make money and can turn into a very successful business venture. Before going ahead, first understand what is it and how it works.
What is Coworking Space Business?
It is a dedicated workspace that is less expensive than the traditional office space within an added advantage of the community. Coworking spaces also let businesses a place to get away from distractions at home along with a professional setting for clients.
If you own a coworking business, now is the time to re-strategize your marketing and take it to a notch. In the age of e-commuting, startup and freelancer economy, coworking spaces offer a great escape along with a community of like-minded people that can help them with networking and their personal growth.
All these things seem great but how does a coworking space help in monetization? How do coworking spaces get members to fill up the chairs? Well, the right marketing and advertising strategy can be the best way to achieve the goals of the business.
Here are a few tips that can help you take your coworking business up a notch:
1. A quality website
A website is the virtual representation of your brand. Let us begin with the very basics. A well-designed, professionally built website with clearly stated rates and the mission of the coworking space is all you might need. You must not be the one to ignore the standard when it comes to the website.
Keep all your contact information visible including updates such as newsletters, blog posts related to the niche of your members. Also, ensure that the posts have the potential to get a good ranking on Google SERP. Make use of ad platforms to advertise the coworking space on other websites to bring in traffic including an easy way for the interested members to sign up on the web page.
Your website is the basic requirement and should reflect your message well. Make sure that the first impression of your coworking space is enough for your potential customers to raise a query or sign up with your business. Remember, first impressions are everything!
2. Membership benefits
Your coworking space can receive a better response if there are some additional benefits such as incentives or sign-up perks for them.
Offer discounts during your anniversary, create a member referral program, encourage them to sign up with a yearly membership discount offer etcetera.
According to Benjamin’s Desk, 20% of their inquiries come from referrals.
Under a referral program, you can offer a discounted rent or membership fees when a member brings in a successful referral.
Later on, once or twice a month, let members and also non-members visit your workspace and work there for free. Also, keep the days limited in order to continue to let the profit come in from the new members and the old ones. You can also offer ‘happy hour’, not like free wine or food, but you can offer local coffee. This can be a prevalent coworking marketing strategy as local people will surely visit.
One more way can be to offer a bartering system wherein, waive rent or membership fee in return for using the member’s talents. For instance, if you have a content writer as your member, get him to help you with website content or creatives for your social media to help market your coworking space.
When you have a huge number of freelancers, you can offer 24*7 opening hours to them. They have an odd working schedule, so they will prefer your space if there aren’t restrictions by operating hours.
3. Strong Social Media Strategy
Social media is one of the strongest marketing platforms. Nowadays, it is a very effective way to market your business to the target audience. Use Twitter to follow your members and the potential members. Engage in Twitter chats with different niches to build networks and professionalism.
Make use of Facebook Ads to advertise it on your Facebook and ensure that you have a dedicated page for your coworking space. A large number of businesses get traffic and members from the Facebook newsfeed, so take maximum advantage of it. Focus your ads on local areas, as they will be the target audience.
Utilize Instagram to show off the interiors of your space, your members and the events you host. Instagram is one of the highly advanced platforms, especially to bring in followers, traffic, and business. Take smart advantage of hashtags. Spend a little for creating sponsored Instagram posts that will show up on feeds.
Whether it is member engagement, announcements, or any kind of marketing, social media platforms are a great way to extend your reach. A coworking space can make the most out of social media to reach out to its target community.
4. Partner with local businesses
One more marketing strategy for a coworking business can be to partner with local businesses. Buy coffee from local coffee shops to provide their brand of coffee to your members in the coworking space. Partner with movie theatres and host special screenings of the movies that are related to members’ niches. Create gift cards for local restaurants, pay a restaurant to cater an event.
You can also partner with local transportation systems and offer discounts to members. Make advertisements for your coworking in local gathering places. Offer to host local events or have a booth at local events. Create a speed networking event.
Maya Delano, senior community manager at Next Space in Santa Cruz, said that “Speed Networking Night was one of our best events yet. It was extremely effective as NextSpace Santa Cruz was able to get many new faces in the door and it was a wonderful networking opportunity for our members to connect and promote their business.”
Hosting events is proven to be a successful marketing strategy for coworking spaces.
5. Support your members in their success
Build a personal connection with your members by knowing the budding entrepreneurs, freelancers, interns working at your coworking space. Get to know about their goals, details about their personalities, their goals, their services etcetera. Find out how you can help them to achieve their goals and help them in their success.
Let the members advertise about their businesses within your space and in the building. They can create posters to showcase their work or activities. Organize workshops, panels, conferences in various niches in which your members might be interested, and can help in the improvement of their businesses and their growth. You can also open up these workshops for non-members and prospect members to help your space get more traffic and attention from the audience.
6. SEO of the Coworking Space
To get your fantastic website up and running is one thing, but to make the same website rank higher on SERP is a whole different scenario. It requires a well-optimized search engine optimization strategy to make a grand presence on the Search Engine Result Pages. You need to ensure that you take precise steps while optimizing the website for search engines.
We can provide a few suggestions that you might need to take care of while building the SEO strategy. It is very pivot in the pointers of how Coworking Space Business can make money and grow your business.
- Ensure SSL Certificate on your coworking space website
- Implementation of correct Title Tags, Metadata, URL and Target keywords on your site
- Upload your website properties to Google Search Console
- Create your .xml sitemap
- Integrate Google Analytics to your website
- Use compressed images and content and ensure they are properly cached on your website
- Make sure your website page speed is optimised for quick page loading
7. Ensure Reputation Management is done right
It’s necessary to have a social proof and well-managed reputation for your coworking space. You must ask for feedback from your members and ensure that their negative feedback is improvised. Along with that, if the feedback is positive, you can ask them to rate your space on Google, social media, and third-party directories such as Yelp.
A smartly built online reputation management is a powerful process to build trust and convert your potential leads into closed deals. Remember, your existing members are your biggest advocates, make sure you take care of them well. These ratings also help rank your store on the local results. Reputation Management is not only a concept that is required to create a showcase online, but it also should be effective and rightly done offline. Your members should feel welcome when they visit your coworking space.
A great way to have a great reputation is to engage with your community. Not only focus on prospects or existing members, sometimes discuss with the ones who aren’t looking for a coworking space. Try and engage in conversations that aren’t focused on bringing the lead to the organization. Having healthy communication with communities often will help you build trust, value and a strong reputation.
8. Outreach
Research about your target audience and reach out to the ones looking for working spaces. Reach out to the local news outlets and look for opportunities to get featured. Get your marketing specialists to create a beautifully drafted pitch template. Reach out to journalists that can help you create visibility around their audience by featuring your coworking space in their articles.
Also remember that you reach out to the journalists of your niche, not the ones that are irrelevant to your business. Journalists won’t like it if they are being spammed with emails that aren’t relevant to their niche.
Wrapping Up…
Hope these 8 tips helps to understand how Coworking Space Business can make money and how can help achieve the goal. Putting marketing aside, always remember, you offer a very valuable service so it’s given that you’ll have footfall. But it is even more beneficial and effective to stay ahead of the competition. Differentiate your space from the others in the market, it will take your business to great heights.
Author Bio
Parth Shah, Co-Founder, COO, DevX accelerator
With 10 years of experience in operations and training, Parth is a go-to person for his team and even a multitude of growing start-ups. His knack lies at spotting and supporting start-ups, helping them streamline their processes and even take their ventures to the next level. After successfully establishing two start-ups and exploring the start-up landscape up-close Parth has learnt the nitty-gritty of the industry, which he now shares with fellow entrepreneurs.