To successfully run a coworking space, you need to be actively involved in marketing your facility, except you have enough money to hire third-party marketers to help you out. It is the norm for co-working space owners to run their marketing themselves because it is not that difficult a task. But you must be willing to learn the ropes and that is what this article is all about.
To keep your business growing strong and your coworking spaces fully booked all through the year, you must make conscious efforts to find new and creative ways to win new clients over. If you are interested, here are some of the ways you can attract clients if you run a coworking space facility.
Tips and Strategies to Get Clients for Coworking Space
1. Create and Promote Special Packages Regularly
One of the ways you can attract clients when you run a coworking facility 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 deep into your profitability.
For example, if aside from providing well-equipped and secured coworking facilities, you can also add free business support services (free fax machine, printers, photocopiers et al) as part of the packages for people who subscribe to your services, or offer the services at a discount if they subscribe to your service within a period.
People are always in search of the best deal or the most economically balanced option. Do some market research in your area and find out what others are doing and then do it better.
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Partner with Key Stakeholders That Will Help You Attract Customers
Another strategy that will help you attract clients to your coworking space facility is to ensure that you partner with key stakeholders in the location where your target market exists.
You can partner with business schools, entrepreneurial colleges, and social media influencers who can send clients your way. You can reach an agreement with them on the percentage they stand to get when any customer comes through their referrals.
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Develop Mailing Lists
This good old marketing strategy can still help you attract clients to your coworking space. The truth is that leveraging the mailing list approach should be one of the first methods you should adopt if you want to announce your business presence to offices, schools, businesses, and residences in your location.
Also, you should endeavor to print out flyers and business cards and strategically drop them in offices, libraries, public facilities, train stations et al.
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Spend More on Advertising and Promotion of your Coworking Facility
If indeed you want to attract clients to make use of your coworking 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 can also use blogs and all available social media platforms. Consider incorporating a blog into your current website. Make use of attractive handbills to create awareness and also to give direction to your coworking facility. Position your signage/Flexi banners at strategic places in and around the city where you intend to attract clients.
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Offer Top Notch Services and Always Make Your First Impression Count
Making your first impression count positively to those patronizing you for the first time will help you attract clients to your coworking space facility. The truth is that a first-time customer will only return to patronize your services if they are impressed with how they were treated the first time.
If they are not satisfied, they may not come back again. On the order hand, if they are impressed, they will renew their contract with you and also recommend your facility to their friends.
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Ensure To Create Referral Reciprocity
In business, the clients you get via referrals are usually loyal hence you must inform your current clients that you would appreciate their referral to others who may be seeking a reliable, safe, and world-class coworking space facility. Your client list will likely include a wide variety of professionals, freelancers, contractors, and entrepreneurs. Refer those professionals to others and build your referral reciprocity.
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Create Loyalty Plan
If you want to attract clients to your coworking facility regularly, then you must be ready to create a loyalty plan. A loyalty plan is a plan that will enable you to reward your consistent clients, especially those that not only use your facility but also refer clients to you.
Please note that testimonials from current and past clients go a long way in elevating your business profile and attracting new clients. Word of mouth—if it is positive—is often the best form of advertising. You can use testimonials on your website or strategically place them in informational material such as brochures, rack cards, or other print media.
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Make Use of Effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
To continue to attract clients to your coworking space facility, you need to track your 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, introduce new products and prices to them without any hitch, felicitate with them on their birthdays and other anniversaries, keep track of their progress, send bulk SMS and customized emails and above all, you can easily receive complaints and feedback from them).
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Diversify your Marketing Methods
Just like how your clients do not match up to one particular profile, your methods of attracting clients to your coworking facility should also be varied.
In order for your advertising to be effective and have the furthest outreach, you need to be as digital-friendly and accessible as possible. Most of your target audience will search the internet as their first resource when looking for a reliable coworking space facility.
If you have a client portal, you can have a custom integration done with the Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and Google Analytics to report on how many leads are coming online. Make sure to use Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMS). UTMs are tags that you can add to your website’s URL that will track where your online traffic is coming from.
When these are combined with your CRM in your management software, you can find out which marketing channels (social media, content, paid, etc.) are bringing you the most prospects. No doubt, you will have members that don’t sign up online, and that’s okay.
Be sure to have your sales representative or front desk staff ask each prospect how they heard about your coworking facility, and attribute the lead manually. Whether they came in manually or online, you will need a CRM to monitor the success of your marketing and sales strategies.
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Be Prompt in Converting Leads to Clients
You must ensure that all the money you put into your marketing campaigns helps in attracting clients to your coworking facility. Make sure that your diverse campaigns all end with the same result: collecting and storing client information.
After collecting a client’s personal and contact information, ensure this information is funneled into your CRM system so that these promising leads do not become missed opportunities. Since a good percentage of your leads will not immediately become your clients, periodic follow-ups with deals and offers are a crucial sales strategy for you.
In Conclusion;
No one strategy fits all when it comes to attracting clients to your coworking facility. You only need to put into practice all the points highlighted above and also ensure that you customize them to fit into your environment. Find ways to not just be present in the city or community, but to be involved on an active level.
Join a non-profit board, the local chamber of commerce, or other business organizations to enhance your marketing efforts. Good Luck!