How to Pre-Sell your Coworking Space
Mindset and Marketing – 2 Different Approaches to Pre-Selling a Coworking Space. Mindset is everything.
You can know the numbers, have your marketing plan in a spreadsheet, and have read all the right books, but if your mindset as you market your space isn’t right, you’re likely to be disappointed by the results of your campaigns.
That’s why it’s important to take a step back and reevaluate the perspective from which you approach marketing. Your mindset is what really lights the fire to get you focused.
There are two basic mindsets out there on opening a coworking space. First, there are the folks that will start selling the story to anyone who will listen before they’ve even signed a lease — the “Story Seller.” Then, there are the “Bow Boys” that want to get the space built, furnished, and wrapped up on a bow before they start touring potential members. There are shades of these types, so you might see elements of your approach reflected in both. However, to keep things simple, we’ll discuss the two opposite ends of the spectrum.
The Bow Boy
First, let’s look at the “Bow Boy.” This mindset believes that people won’t buy what they can’t clearly see, touch, and feel. They wait until they have a shiny new space with an “open” sign on the door to start attracting members. This method tends to involve less pre-selling or engagement with local businesses and potential clients before the opening of your space.
The Bow Boy has a vision for this space with great energy and vibe that attracts potential members that tour the space, but he knows that many members will require the shiny space with the bow before they’ll buy.
While “they can’t buy it until they can put their hands on it” approach may initially seem intuitive, and it’s true that some members will need to see the space before they buy, taking this approach exclusively can really hurt in the long run.
That’s why our second type of seller is so important.
The Story Seller
Next, there’s the “Story Seller.” She’s campaigning on behalf of this space on day one both through word of mouth and through social media and a strong online presence. She is both strategic and scrappy.
The Story Seller will have a faster return on her investment.
The Story Seller believes that she’s building something that goes beyond space. She’s delivering community, flexibility, and the ability for small businesses to level-up their office space through shared amenities that they couldn’t afford on their own— like great design, a staffed entrance, and fiber internet.
Unlike the Bow Boy, however, the Story Seller also knows that she can pre-sell some of her members (the innovators) and that having people in the space when she opens will help to seal the deal for the early adopters.
Because she believes she can pre-sell and has a clear vision for the benefits of her marketing efforts, she finds it easy to come up with pre-sales tactics. And because she believes these things, she’s an action-taker — and that action starts long before her space opens.
Actions of a Story Seller
So what do you need to do to shift toward being a Story Seller and position your space to see that faster return on your investment?
Here are just a few ideas:
Join your local chamber of commerce and start telling your story there.
Meet with your local economic development group — again, always looking for opportunities to show others why they should be excited about your space and its story.
Pursue strategic partnerships with local groups that serve your target members and need your space to host their events.
Find local sign boards that seem active and viable for advertising (hint: coffee shops are a great place to start).
Host hard-hat tours.
Set up a booth at a local arts festival.
Seek out local bloggers, podcaster, and other media influencers and pursue mutually beneficial relationships that will get the word out about their platforms as well as yours.
Use social media posts as well as features like Facebook Live to post updates about construction progress.
Schedule and promote a grand opening party (and invite the mayor, your friends in the chamber, and other key influencers in your community). Market this event in a way that will both get people excited and capture email addresses that you can nurture into leads down the line.
Hosts pop-up coworking days at local coffee shops to get your community excited about coworking — offer coffee and cookies to your attendees and capitalize on the chance to share your story.
Host happy hours for business owners and explain how your space can fill their business needs.
Share the story of every member you pre-sell via your social media accounts.
Strategic Marketing for Story Sellers
In addition to building relationships she can use to pre-sell before she opens, a Story Seller also has work to do on the strategic marketing side, which she allows herself to prioritize because she believes that she can get people into the space before she’s open.
She has a pre-launch plan, a pre-launch timeline and a pre-launch budget, because she knows pre-launch matters just as much as post-launch. In the day-to-day grind, this belief means she launches her website as soon as she signs her lease and has an address, and she puts her address in the footer of her website (and maybe even uses that footer to drive potential members toward a hard-hat tour).
She puts member logos on her website, even if they’re friends and family, to showcase the growing story of her space and its members. Also in the interest of furthering her space’s story, she might offer strategic free flex/coworking memberships to local influencers who will actually use the space.
She also has a launch budget, and she uses it to create postcards, hosts both casual and formal pre-launch parties and grand opening events (with a speaker and free food). She also uses this budget for marketing items like Google Ad-words or Facebook event campaigns and paid traffic to drive people to her site while she builds organic SEO.
She also gets the word out about her space — posting on Costars, developing relationships with local commercial brokers, and collecting email addresses from anyone who walks through the doors of her space. She uses family and friends as models or testimonials for Craiglist and Facebook ads, Yelp reviews, and Google reviews and pages.
When you finally open your space, nothing will be perfect, but if you believe your members want to be a part of creating something and you act like it starting from before your space opens its doors, they’re much more likely to forgive the minor inconveniences of the first few weeks of working out the kinks.
If you’ve always been more of a Bow Boy, consider switching to more of a Story Seller mindset as you approach marketing. All your post-launch marketing plan components can stay, but adding in pre-launch tactics and then following through on selling your story before, during, and after launch can add a lot to your bottom line.