The main issue for modern coworking spaces is that potential customers are not well aware of their very existence. If you want to become recognizable among the number of flexible workspaces in which your target audience gets used to work, you’d need to take some steps for your own online visibility. And here is the moment where the best ways to promote coworking spaces can be useful for you.
How Can You Make Your Coworking Space Popular Online?
First, you’d need to split your promotion activities into two groups:
- Direct promotion methods: through online advertising, sponsorship, and search engine promotion. This is related to online ads only and requires mainly some SEO / SMO skills and money investment.
- Indirect promotion methods: by promoting your coworking space to online users. This requires time investment — but it can work out as the best way in some cases as word-of-mouth marketing works definitely more effectively than buying Google Ads for all the money you have.
1. Start with Link-Building
When marketing experts talk about link building, they mean the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites pointing to your own resource. Why is this important? Because many links from niche-related websites enhance the authority of your domain and help you rank higher on Google. And the higher you rank on Google, the easier it is for potential customers to find your coworking space. In the meantime, before getting started with SEO, make sure to learn how to buy a domain name and choose one that best fits your business. You can also invest in a task management tool for SEO to get successful results.
For that reason, I advise you to consider link-building as one of the most long-term ways to become a popular brand in the coworking space world. Here are a few link building tips to follow even if you are not a professional marketing manager or not ready to apply for digital marketing services:
- Use strategic resource link building. You don’t need to promote all content you produce. I suggest you promote only those articles and types of content which can be really useful for the audience interested in coworking spaces.
- Implement distribution of visual content. Infographics and visuals you’ve created can be then distributed through blogs and websites writing about coworking spaces. Niche-specific resources are usually highly interested in quality content featuring fresh numbers and facts about coworking industry. You can make your content more visually appealing by including icons or downloadable infographics in it.
- Create and publish white books/handbooks and user guides. Creating comprehensive guides for coworking space residents and managers and then placing them on third-party resources can bring you some backlinks from top websites. Besides, such kind of content can become a source of constant interest and receive a high ranking with search engines.
- Write guest posts and establish online content partnerships. You can promote your amenities, services, and opportunities that your coworking space provides to freelancers, entrepreneurs, and companies via guest posts in the blogs of companies or startups which work for coworking space managers or residents.
- Use popular keywords and earn links as a part of the content strategy of your corporate blog. Just like any other marketing strategy, link building brings great results only when implemented consistently. Make link-building activities a part of your content marketing efforts. Always start with keyword research you want your flexible workspace to rank for. Use a bulk keyword generator to find the best keywords to target. Consider ranking for low-competition industry-specific terms to get in Google’s top 3 faster.
Which Tools Can You Use For Link-Building?
There are plenty of link-building tools out there. They can significantly simplify the process at all stages for you. Here is a list of most popular ones:
- Ahrefs — a data-driven all-in-one marketing toolset powered by a huge index of backlinks, keywords, and content.
- Aeroleads - the tool is among a few prospecting software that works with multiple websites like LinkedIn, CrunchBase, AngelList, etc. to find business emails. It is a user-friendly software that works in real-time and is said to have an accuracy level of more than 98%.
- Guest Post Tracker — a tool for finding guest posting opportunities and dealing with guest posts and backlink campaigns.
- Respona — an all-in-one link building tool to build backlinks and increase your organic traffic from Google.
- BuzzStream — service which helps to scale your link-building campaigns.
- JustReachOut — a platform for finding and pitching online journalists to tell your story via popular media.
- Moz Link Explorer — powerful tool for reverse engineering of backlinks for your competitors.
- NinjaOutreach — another outreach tool for creating and spreading content.
- Link Prospector — a tool to stop manually searching for resource pages via Google.
- Hunter.io — one of the best ways to find exact contact information in seconds (if you need bloggers, reporters, copywriters etc.)
- Monitor Backlinks — a backlink tool for those who don’t have extensive skills in SEO to see all the necessary data in a single dashboard.
- Voila Norbert — reach out to blogs, build links, contact authors, and spread your content with Voila Norbert's email-finding tool.
2. Use Online Ads — But Do It Wisely
If your coworking space brand is already well-known, but you still want to attract new resident groups in certain regions or cities/countries where your flexible workspace or network is located, you can consider online advertising. There are several ways to do it:
- Google Ads or Google Display Network ads. The tactic is efficient but definitely not cheap if you don’t know how to approach it properly. However, a masterly maintained PPC campaign can help your coworking business drastically increase revenue. Because Google charges you for each click on your ads, ensure you take all available steps to optimize the entire experience and drive conversions.
- Facebook Ads. This is good if your target audience consists of Facebook power users. You can start campaigns even with a $10 budget — and Facebook provides a step-by-step guide to promote almost any post on your coworking space page.
- Residential proxies for targeted outreach. Utilizing residential proxies can enhance your online advertising efforts by allowing you to connect with potential residents more effectively. Residential proxies provide a level of anonymity and location-based flexibility, enabling you to tailor your promotions to specific regions or cities seamlessly.
- Alternative promotion tools. If you own a medium or small-sized coworking space and you’re concerned about budgeting and balanced spending, I recommend you try some alternative tools for promoting your services among the online audience.
Let’s consider these alternative PR tools as your next step for the promotion of your coworking space.
3. Create Events on Social Networks
If there's something happening in your coworking space, people should know about it — the more who know, the better. There are several points to keep in mind while creating events on Facebook:
- Start by inviting your colleagues, acquaintances, and friends to take part in these events as WoM (word-of-mouth) provides more coverage than just targeting your ad to reach the “not-very-much-interested” audience.
- You can make these events popular by creating online contests with tickets to the events as giveaway prizes for the winners. The more there are new guests, the more potential residents, and visitors who would want to come back to your space again.
- Ensure the logistics and timing of the events are ideal and your coworking space staff are attentive, friendly, and ready to help new visitors.
- Use event management tools to boost your social media campaigns and organize everything on the highest level while meeting current sanitary norms. Know how many people are coming, distribute beautiful event passes, and more without overwhelming community managers with a heap of tasks.
Positive impressions about your space from the comments of those who visited will be widespread across Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks which sometimes works better than paid ads.
Generate recurring revenue and offer exceptional customer experience at your shared or coworking space
4. Add Your Coworking Space to Online Lists and Catalogs
There are websites that gather information on popular coworking spaces and share them with the online audience. These are usually blogs and websites dedicated to digital nomads, freelancers working remotely as well as online media about tech, startups, and remote work-life. These websites regularly compile and update their lists of popular coworking spaces in certain countries.
I encourage you to contact the admins or representatives of such websites or blogs to tell them about your coworking space and thus, have it added to their list.
However, there’s a simpler option — you can add your coworking space to the list of coworking spaces on Coworker.com which is a large international directory of coworking spaces, and place your info on Google My Business.
5. Influencer Marketing
Customers, and your coworking customers not excluding, are valuing connections between social media influencers and quality brands more than ever. This being said, it's no wonder that making authentic content is imperative for a coworking space to successfully market its services on social media. Based on your budget and marketing strategy, you can choose micro or macro-influencers to help you with promotion, but always remember that only authentic experiences and reviews of your services boost brand credibility.
Striving for your coworking space to become a recognized brand?
6. Work Harder on Search Engine (SEO) and Social Media (SMO) Optimization
If your coworking space has a regularly updated website, make sure that it meets the criteria for search engine optimization (SEO).
Alternate image captions, image descriptions, search phrases and keywords, properly hash-tagged pages, titles, subtitles, texts, and media content helps in giving your site a significant boost among search engines.
After all, when a website is SEO optimized, it ranks higher on Google search page results.
The same is true for Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and LinkedIn as the use of hashtags, high-quality images, and original texts relevant to the target audience gives your content a wider reach on social media.
Which Tools Can You Use for SEO?
- cognitiveSEO — service which helps you identify unnatural links.
- Majestic SEO — the best way to perform link analysis on a certain budget.
- Keywordtool.io — generator of hundreds of keyword suggestions if you only provide one single keyword.
- Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools — powerful combination for website analysis, getting alerts, and receiving error reports.
- Google Trends — a tool for performing relative searches for popular topics about coworking spaces or coworking business.
- SEO Web Page Analyzer — a tool to get a full on-page analysis for your website or blog.
- SERP Simulator — a tool to receive reviews for your web pages so that you can see the exact look of your website in Google’s search results for both desktop and mobile versions.
- SERP Robot — useful service to observe your ranking position for up to 5 different keywords which you use. You can also check the same parameter for your competitors.
- Browseo — another tool to look at how your website is “seen” by search engines.
You can read more about SEO tools and select the best for you on TechRadar Blog.
7. Create Separate Landing Pages for Those Who Have Not Become Your Customers Yet
You can create a landing page with service offerings for individual freelancers or teams looking for coworking spaces in your area.
Landing page promotions and the creation of these popular one-page websites with fast 1-click-to-get buttons and forms for instant seats booking in your coworking space would be a good tool in strengthening your major ad or SEO campaign.
Besides, you can offer users landing on your page download your coworking space app giving them the possibility to book, pay, apply for events and services without signing any contracts or agreements. I am sure such flexibility and accessibility will be highly appreciated by potential customers and help you convert most of them into members.
Build a Perfect Coworking Space Member Experience
No matter how well you promote your coworking space online, if you don't have a workspace people love, members will not stay with you for long. In addition to regular things like interior, events, and filled coffee machines, you must work on a better member experience.
Put your coworking space into members' pockets. Let them discover perks, communicate with peers, book, and pay on the go, without the need to contact the location manager. Show your customers how much you value their time. Let them be more productive. This is really simple with modern technologies such as access control systems, cloud printing, and more.
