How to Grow Your Coworking Space Revenue with a Virtual Office
A virtual office offering can add unlimited capacity and a significant revenue stream to your coworking business. You can increase your revenue with a virtual office program because it doesn’t rely on the limits of physical space.
While COVID-19 created challenges around filling physical space, it sparked demand for virtual mail and virtual offices. Some operators who have built up their businesses over time now use their virtual office revenue to pay their rent.
To see steady growth in your virtual office offering, start marketing your offer today. Be consistent with your marketing efforts, and be patient while your business builds.
To build your virtual office business you need to know how to:
Grow your virtual office and virtual mail businesses,
Find sources for building your virtual offices,
Market and service virtual office memberships and virtual mail memberships.
WHAT IS A VIRTUAL OFFICE
A virtual office is a combination of services offered to someone who needs a professional presence and isn’t going to use your physical space.
Comprehensive virtual office services can include virtual mail, but virtual mail is usually only an address. A virtual office package includes a bundle of services that you can offer as part of your offboarding process when a client no longer continues with physical space.
A comprehensive bundle can include:
Virtual mail
Meeting room hours
Coworking day passes
Day office hours
Coworking memberships
1. VIRTUAL MAIL
Should you let virtual mail members use your address for a Google My Business listing?
Google My Business is a critical marketing tool for you as well as for other local businesses. A local business without a physical office may want to use your address for Google. Give a Google My Business listing address only to businesses with a local presence. Businesses will value that marketing tool and will pay for it. Therefore, charge more for using your address for a local Google My Business listing.
However, be careful that you don’t duplicate addresses. Provide a unique address for Google My Business that is not an exact duplicate of your address. Use a unique suite number such as “suite 100-200” or “suite 100-201” that’s similar to the PMB in your digital mail system.
Verify the address card when it comes in. Don’t give it directly to your member. Review it first and make sure they've provided Google with a unique address.
2. COWORKING MEMBERSHIP
Marketing and servicing virtual office memberships can add margin to your business. You can serve members who need minimal or no access to physical space.
Many of my flight group members are charging for a coworking membership. For example, you can require local businesses to have a coworking membership to use the Google My Business listing. When you bundle your services, make the membership requirement an add-on, an incremental price point. Make sure you're charging more for it. A local Google My Business listing is more valuable than a postal service listing.
When somebody in your space needs to downsize, offer to continue virtual mail. Forward the mail in order to continue using meeting rooms. Make sure you're offering that option to your members when they off-board.
The recurring revenue will be less than what you get from physical space, yet that revenue adds up as you build your virtual office business.
SEO VS ADS
Run ads to capture traffic, get people through a sales funnel, and send the right message at the right time.
You’ll need help running ads because it's difficult to teach yourself how to profit from ads.
Facebook ads are complex and Google ads can get expensive if you're not doing them well. You may be able to build your virtual office business through ads, but running ads is an investment. Be careful in markets where there are national brands. They may be paying for keywords which makes it more expensive for you to run ads.
Most who invest in their virtual office competency use a combination of ads and organic SEO.
You can take the long game and use search engine optimization to get organic traffic. Write blog posts, advertise your offerings on your website, and educate your audience.
Highlight your virtual office offers in blog posts. Educate your audience about what they can do with a virtual office, what problem it solves, and why they need it. Write one of those posts about once a quarter. Put it into your content plan and start building up your organic traffic for that offering.
Make it a visible offering on your website. Put it on your homepage as one of the nav buttons in the upper right. Folks are generally looking for either physical space or a virtual presence. So it’s not confusing if you display a virtual office option. Make it easy for them to sign up.
3. LEAD GEN PARTNERS
Because ads might be cost-prohibitive and difficult to do on your own, I recommend lead gen partners. Even though organic search engine optimization is a great path, it will take some time to see results.
Lead gen partners can immediately start bringing you wins for your virtual office. You'll pay them a marketing fee, but it's worth it. They'll bring you leads that you would never access on your own.
Although you might find leads on your own by sending website traffic directly to your offer, it's faster to partner with folks who spend a lot of marketing dollars getting those leads for you.
Register with more than one lead gen provider and get a system in place. They each have their own apps or systems for processing mail and tracking virtual office use. Make sure that your team knows how to track and process mail that comes in for each lead gen partner.
Get started with one partner. Get your system in place. Then expand and build your leads with more providers.
Lead Gen Partners:
4. VIRTUAL OFFICE IS A GROWING NEED
The need for virtual office solutions is growing due to downsizing and more people working from home. It's easy to see why there’s a need for virtual meeting room spaces and day offices with a business address. There are insurance, business, license, and legal reasons.
If a business sends a newsletter, for example, they need a business address that’s not their home address. People who operate a business from home don’t want their home address on a client invoice, so they’ll want to use your virtual mail address.
There’s a growing understanding of the value of virtual office coworking spaces. They provide ancillary services like meeting rooms, mail, and phone answering. A virtual office offers solutions to those who aren’t ready to return to a physical space.
To learn more about getting started with virtual mail, check out my blog post: Tips for Getting Started with Virtual Mail
Have you listened to my podcast about the digital mail revolution? Here it is. Don’t get left behind!