How to Attract Members in Coworking Spaces — 5 Tactics That Never Fail

Coworking spaces have become a huge global trend. The number of people who work remotely increased by 44% over the last 5 years.

Today flexible workspace is not only an alternative to the traditional office but a separate industry. Like any industry, coworking has its own challenges, and perhaps the biggest of them is attracting new members.

Besides, remote work has many other positive aspects that might improve our life and environment. For example, if a person chooses to work from a coworking space, they use less fuel, consume fewer resources, reduce strain on infrastructure, and lower greenhouse gas emissions overall.

If you ask anyone in the street or a bus stop whether they know any coworking space nearby, they will definitely name one. But will they name your coworking space? If you’re not sure about it, it’s time to find out how to attract customers to coworking spaces — and make these tips a part of your everyday practice.

 

1. Build a Coworking Space Brand to Attract More Members

Before you start, you need to come up with a strong coworking brand positioning. Ask yourself a question:

— What makes my coworking space special?

Having a clear answer what differentiates you from others is crucial. A great example can be found in the automotive industry.

Volvo is obsessed with safety, making it the company’s mission and differentiator. Volvo invented the three-point seat belt and gave away its patent to promote driving safety. If anyone thinks of a safety-first car, Volvo comes up first.

BMW tells you it’s a car for drivers. Originated as an airplane engine company, BMW focuses on being a driving pleasure. The speed, the acceleration, the handling — the company’s very DNA revolves around fancy sportiness

Mercedes’ luxury, Tesla’s high tech, Mitsubishi's off-road — every car brand has a specific differentiator, and every company’s communications, marketing, and even R&D efforts are focused on that.

What about your coworking space? Try to think of one word that radiates your founding values and describes what makes your coworking space unique. Your company’s mission statement, design, marketing, and communications — all should revolve around that one unique selling point. For example, if you select “high tech” as your differentiating point, everyone in your city must know that your coworking space = high tech. How can you achieve that? Pay attention to the following two points.

 

Stir Emotions to Appeal to Residents

People buy emotions. Imagine there are two similar products with the same price — which one would they buy? The one they like and trust more. Let’s consider two slogans for your “high tech” space:

“High tech office for startups” vs. “Where high tech magic happens”

Which one would people remember more? The second slogan will definitely generate more emotions, because it appeals to non-rational magic, making it memorable.

 

Communicate Coworking Brand Consistently

Your brand design and communications should all scream “high tech,” or another word you decided for yourself. Consistent application of your brand across all touchpoints with customers builds trust to your coworking space. Don’t expect potential leads to take you seriously if your meeting room booking system is based on Google Calendar.

Modern coworking space software allows to get a coworking space branded newsfeed and apps with your brand elements across all products. A branded app for both your coworking space members and administrators will virtually put your coworking space in their pockets.

• It goes in line with your brand and the design of your workspace.
• It gives a full range of control for your coworking space administrators wherever they are because it’s mobile, flexible, and fast.
• It shapes a stronger community with member listing and news feed.
• It allows to build a centralized catalog of membership benefits, associated with your space.

White-label coworking software means it’s the same Spacebring app with all the functions, but with your icon, logo, and feature set. Check out some examples of custom branded mobile apps on Apple and Google stores:

• https://members.arizecampus.com
• https://members.blendercollective.no
• https://members.creativestates.net

 

2. Create Membership Benefits

In a world of growing competition between coworking spaces, people have a lot of great options for renting a workspace. Chances are that the price at your coworking space is roughly the same as at the other one nearby. Why should people choose you over the competition?

There are many ways to offer people more for their money. A common way is offering more free hours for meeting room booking with credits. Giving more free stuff, however, could not impact your profitability, because they’re, well, free.

Providing perks, discounts, and special offers for residents is a new way of boosting your membership value. By the way, many coworking systems, such as Spacebring allow building a beautiful coworking space benefit catalog.

Benefits can include different perks from partners of your coworking space or discounts for receiving services, deliveries, and opportunities from the local stores.

Investing your time to build a robust membership benefit catalog will pay off in the long term.

Here’s why:

• Including access to a benefit catalog for residents allows to increase your service value in their eyes, and help them choose your space over competitors.
• Benefit catalog will boost your competitiveness because they’re not easy to replicate. To build Spacebring benefit catalog, you will need to reach out to local businesses and form relationships.
• Connecting your residents to local businesses could help them get more clients, and therefore flourish, resulting in mutual growth for all parties involved. Unlike online ad platforms, your coworking space members are all hand-picked and verified as real users, thus making them a highly desirable target audience for local businesses to advertise their services.
• Benefits are an upselling opportunity. When you negotiate a deal, explore revenue share business models with partners. Let them advertise their services on your platform in exchange for a portion of the revenue they get from customers that came from your benefit catalog.

As you can see, building a benefit catalog could not only help you attract members to the coworking space but also boost competitiveness and create new revenue streams.

 

3. Organize Events

Coworking space event is an incredibly powerful tool to boost word-of-mouth marketing and attract new members. Whether targeted at your full-time members or external guests, coworking space events build awareness and loyalty to your coworking space. Events turn coworking space into more than just an office, but rather a place where friends are, fun happens, and stories are made.

Not only coworking space events are a great opportunity to introduce potential clients to your coworking space, how it looks and feels, but also a chance to hear about it from a third party. What do we mean by that? The more your potential customers hear about your coworking space from independent sources, the higher is their trust to your brand.

At your coworking space event, they will have an opportunity to hear direct feedback and testimonials from your existing members. Your members are your brand ambassadors — let them speak for you!

Here are some ideas for your next coworking space event:

• Welcome party for new members. Open it up for friends of residents and arrange 1+1 event.
• Start Toastmasters club for practicing public speaking.
• Launch StartupGrind event to bring startups together around interesting topics.
• Organize a local TEDx event at your coworking space.

Make sure you promote coworking space event online as well as through your app so that enough people hear about it.

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4. Promote Coworking Space Online

We’ve previously described how to promote your coworking space online, so this time let’s recollect only some important points:

• Be active on social media and create profiles on Facebook and Instagram. There is no need to create lots of ads there, but you should advertise some of your services and opportunities as well as create content to attract more prospective customers.
• Distribute event announcements hosted in your coworking space across Facebook and other social media. Exciting social events that can be shared with friends and colleagues can give an influx of new members.
• Consider guest post contributions to other niche blogs. Content marketing is an underpriced channel that could generate for you new quality leads from all over the world.
• Partner with local businesses and don’t forget to tag and mention them on social media pages. Local restaurants, coffee shops, fitness centers, taxi, or even delivery services can become your partners which provide an additional flow of customers and word-of-mouth marketing for your coworking space.
• Don’t forget about your coworking space Google for Business page. Including the opening hours, phone number, email, and website details on Google venue can give more backlinks and bring people to your page while searching for a coworking space in your area. If your Facebook page is public, Google will aggregate events on your page across their services, giving your coworking space events more discoverability. You should also consider creating an AdWords campaign for drawing the attention of the locally based freelancers who sometimes want to work not from home or a coffee point with Wi-Fi.
• Add your coworking space to every online catalog of coworking spaces to promote your venue globally. Here are some good sites to submit your listing: Coworker, Pickspace, Heydesk, Liquidspace, Nomad List, Copass.

 

5. Tailor Your Offers to Members’ Needs

All the above tips are good enough as long as you can cover current customers’ needs. These needs change from year to year and the pandemic 2020 has clearly demonstrated us that.

For example, if you want to attract companies, take into account that most of them use a hybrid workforce now. So, a flexible office is not the most cost-efficient product anymore. Evolve it to super flex with the help of progressive technology and put the upgraded service in front of the target customers:

• No long-term commitments
• Affordable price (a company of 100 can lease a flex office for 30)
• Utmost flexibility - scale up and down as required

This sounds like a solution to the current companies problem and will definitely draw their attention.

 

Summary

Build a strong coworking space brand, assemble a rich coworking membership benefit catalog, organize regular events for full-time residents and guests, craft your offers according to audience demands, and focus heavily on promoting online — these steps will help you attract members and tenants in coworking spaces and make them stay longer.

Deep inside every person wants to belong to a community of like-minded people, and the real question is what are those values that your coworking space is built upon that are different from anyone else. Start with just one word, and write it into a sentence, a paragraph, a landing page, a blog post, and in the end into a long-term coworking membership contract.