If you own a coworking space, it means that you must have invested some reasonable capital into the business. This line of business requires huge start-up capital and operational cost hence any investor who wants to launch a coworking space must employ all the needed tips and strategies that will make the business successful.
A core part of your business strategy should be sales and marketing strategies that will boost the occupancy rate in your coworking space. You are expected to pay attention to the promotion of your coworking facility so as to attract clients right from the get-go.
Having said that, here are 10 practical tips and strategies you can employ if indeed you want to run and grow your coworking space business.
Tips and Strategies to Run and Grow a Coworking Space Efficiently
1. Understudy a Successful Coworking Business of Your Choice
The first step to take if you want to start a coworking space business is to understudy a successful coworking business. The internet is one place that can grant you unlimited access to understudy any coworking space business of your choice.
Understudying a coworking business will enable you to avoid some nasty mistakes when you eventually start your coworking business.
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Join the Right Network
Another important tip that you need when running and growing a coworking space is to join the right network. With the right network, you can get guidance and support. When you launch a coworking space business, people in your network will most likely become your first clients.
Online discussion forums and social media groups are great places to share industry tips and advice, answer questions, and acquire a customer or two. You can also make use of Google or Facebook to find active forums and groups that can give you the support you need for your coworking space business.
Twitter chats and Discord can also be home to niche discussion groups. When you post, ensure you aren’t breaking any rules when you promote your coworking facility. Get to know the limits and restrictions of the forum, and stick to them. Using your forum avatar, signature, and profile page to promote your coworking space is usually well within the rules.
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Offer a Surefire Money-Back Guarantee
In recent times, one of the tips and strategies businesses use to gain customer confidence is to let them know that you offer a surefire money-back guarantee.
The truth is that, the more risk you remove from the prospect’s decision, the more likely they are to patronize your coworking facility, so take away anything that can dissuade prospects from patronizing your business. The fact that they have not seen or used your coworking space makes the strategy highly needed for anyone that is just launching a coworking business.
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Provide as Many Payment Options as Possible
Another very important tip you must leverage if you want to run a coworking business is to make sure you provide as many payment options as possible. With that, it will be easier for you to accommodate different customers with different payment preferences.
Interestingly, people now have more payment choices, and not everyone prefers to pay with cash or check. By offering more payment options, you are making it easier for prospects to pay when they want to use your facility.
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Invest in Quality Product Images
Another strategy you need if you want to start your coworking space is to make sure you invest in quality images – the picture of your coworking facility must be appealing and the story behind it must be compelling. The truth is that a well-presented product in terms of pictures always attracts more buyers.
Given how important appearance is in relation to how we perceive things (including other people), it stands to reason that investing in quality product photography will have a similar effect on visitors to your site especially when they are just checking out your facility online.
Please note that irrespective of what you sell, include high-quality images of your products – no tiny thumbnails or poorly lit shots taken in your stock room. Also, be sure to include a wide range of images. It might seem overkill to include shots of your coworking space facility from every conceivable angle, but try it out.
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Offer Top-Notch Customer Services
Another important tip you need if you want to start and grow your coworking business, is to offer top-notch customer services. Offering top-notch customer service will help you minimize customer friction which is the number one factor in determining if you are going to be successful in the coworking industry.
Please make sure you do everything you can to ensure your customers get the best experience possible beginning with the information customers need to customer testimonials and reviews, to details on taxes, and extra services rendered. If you clearly explain how your coworking space facility serves your customers and make it easy for them to signup to use your coworking facility, you are well on your way to growing your coworking space successfully.
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Find Your Unique Selling Point
To be successful with running and growing your coworking space business, you need to find your unique selling point. Whatever industry you are in, there are already thousands of other businesses doing exactly what you are doing.
Some of these businesses have been in operation for years and have accumulated the kind of customers that you simply do not have as a new business. So, the best way to get a fair share of the available market is to analyze your competitors and discover what they don’t have that you do.
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Be Technology Savvy
Another tip you need if your want to successfully grow your coworking business is to be technology savvy. The world indeed has gone global, and you should move with the trends. You have to be a technology-savvy person if you want to record success with any business including coworking space business. This is particularly important because you may record the greatest number of your client via the internet.
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Get Business Training
It is okay to acquire all the experience you need as a corporate executive; however, it is a whole lot better to have a business training background if indeed you want to switch from being a corporate executive to the owner of a coworking space business.
This is especially important because you would garner a lot when you learn from experts. Consequently, you have to look for a business school and attend. Trust me, it will pay you in the long run.
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Have an Eye for Details
Another sure-fire tip you need if your want to be successful in running your coworking business is to have an eye for details. Running a co-working facility requires that the facility must be in top-notch shape 24-7 and your services must not fluctuate.
You do not want to come across as a careless business owner as this can cost you a lot of money. If you do not possess this skill now, you may consider building it up.
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Know How to Close Business Deals
Knowing how to close business deals is yet another sure-fire tip you must be equipped with if you want to do well in the industry. Some folks are good at marketing and talking people into patronizing their services. But at the end of the day just when they thought the client would deal, everything falls through.
This to a large extent means that the client lacks the finesse to close a deal. You have to learn how to do this if you do not know it already. One of the ways to pull this off is by following your potential up big time. Be in your prospects’ face as long as they have registered an affinity with your coworking business.
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Stay Transparent
As a coworking space owner who is just starting, staying transparent is one sure-fire tip and strategy you need to adopt. When a client senses that there is some crookedness in the way they are being dealt with, they may begin to seek business elsewhere.
It is for that reason that staying transparent should be your watchword. Only promise what you can deliver. It is important to under-promise and over-deliver. Let your clients be wowed by the services you are offering as against being disappointed.
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Reward Repeated Customers
Another sure-fire tip you need to adopt if you want to successfully run a coworking space business is to look for ways to always reward repeat customers.
The way your loyal clients are treated should be a big deal to your company. Truth is that without these repeat customers, you are likely going to struggle to grow your coworking business. So, make rewarding your loyal customers a practice as a coworking space business owner.
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Create and Promote Special Packages regularly
Another success strategy you can use to grow your coworking space business is to ensure that from time to time you come up with promos that will be too tempting for customers to resist and at the same time will not eat deep into your profitability.
For example, if your coworking space offers additional services like laundry rooms, recreation halls, babysitting services et al., package them together with a subscription for a really great deal that encourages clients to use services they may not have previously thought of.
16. Spend More on Advertising and Promotion of your Facility
If indeed you want to grow a co-working space facility, then you must be ready to spend money to be in the faces of your target audience. You are expected to advertise your coworking facility on national dailies, local TV, and radio stations.
You are also expected to promote your coworking space online via blogs and all available social media platforms. Make use of attractive handbills to create awareness and also to give direction to your facility. Position your signage/Flexi banners at strategic places in and around the city where you have your coworking space facility is located.
17. Make Use of Effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
To successfully run your coworking space business, you need to track progress, results, or outputs to improve on them quickly as the case demands. When it comes to managing your customers, and building a loyal clientele base, you should purchase customized CRM software.
With a customized CRM system, you can easily stay in touch with your clients (you can carry out quick surveys, you can introduce new services, products, and prices to them without any hitch, you can felicitate with them on their birthdays and other anniversaries, you can keep track of their progress, you can send bulk text messages and customized emails and above all, you can easily receive complaints and feedback from them).
18. Invite People to Attend and Post Pictures of Your Opening Party
Lastly, another tip you need if you want to successfully grow your coworking space is to encourage people to attend your opening party and also tell them that they can get a reward (like free internet or tea) if they post an Instagram photo of your facility and mention your brand’s hashtag(s).
The pictures must be taken on the day of the launching of the business or perhaps within the first week of opening the business. Trust me, this will give your coworking business free publicity on the internet and if you are lucky, your coworking facility will trend for a while.
In Conclusion;
In as much as coworking businesses are profitable ventures to start, it is possible to start this type of business and struggle to make profits if due diligence was not carried out before launching the business. So, what you need to do before launching your coworking business is to carry out feasibility studies and market surveys. This would make you research the business properly before committing your finances to it.