SEO

Google is the first place many people turn for information, including when they’re trying to find a new workspace. SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the practice of optimising your website to appear in search results for the keywords that customers search when they’re looking for your product or service. In this case, when they’re looking for a flexible workspace.

SEO underpins the digital side of your location’s marketing strategy. It’s a long-term channel that can pay massive dividends if consistently invested in through content creation and optimisation, gradually growing to be the ultimate passive lead-generation tool.

PPC

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is another way to gain visibility on the world’s biggest information sources – search engines. Unlike SEO, however, PPC is a paid channel, meaning you pay for each click you acquire through it. Google Ads is by far the most popular PPC ad platform, and can expose you to the same users that you’d target through SEO, but with a fraction of the effort and in much quicker turnaround times.

PPC runs best in tandem with an SEO campaign, as the keywords targeted by each will have significant overlap. It’s a channel that’s perfect for short-term acquisition, whether you’re trying to fill desks quickly after opening or looking to smooth over a temporary shortfall in revenue.

Ads can be run independently for each location, targeting both geographic and generic keywords and with a highly flexible budget. An effective PPC campaign aims to provide tangible ROI in the form of capturing searchers and bringing them to the website, where they can then convert through contact forms or telephone details.

Social Media

Social media lead generation opportunities can be split into two categories – organic and paid. The differences between these mirror the differences between SEO and PPC – organic social is excellent for long-term sustained growth, and paid social is great for capturing leads in the short term.

There are many social media platforms to consider using, but your target market is generally concentrated on LinkedIn. Instagram is also worth pursuing, albeit with slightly less of a focus.

Organic social media activities focus on building an audience, gradually increasing engagement, driving traffic to the website, and pushing users to convert on-platform. Paid social media activities are more direct – usually leading directly to the website without the requirement to first grow the account.

PR

PR is an often-overlooked element of a comprehensive marketing strategy, but when utilised effectively, the PR channel can itself drive meaningful engagements while also complementing other channels.

The focus in any PR campaign should be to gain coverage in publications that have a high chance of attracting your target audience. Coverage can be gained in many different ways, from providing comments to tangentially-related articles to securing full self-written features or guest post opportunities. Consistently making use of press releases to publicise important announcements, such as the opening of your space, is also a great way to receive incidental coverage in industry publications.

But it’s important to remember that coverage in itself is not the aim – each PR opportunity pursued should provide a tangible benefit, whether that’s an influx of traffic from a mention in a news piece or a valuable backlink from a reputable industry source.

Local

Workspaces are, by their very nature, a local-focused service. That makes local marketing a critical element of the overall strategy. You can reasonably assume that a high percentage of your ideal users are either local themselves or searching for a workspace in your particular area. Local marketing seeks to target those users specifically.

Local marketing takes many forms, but the most important elements are effective setup and use of a Google My Business listing, presence on all major local directories, and pursuit of press coverage or backlinks from important local publications or authorities. There are also other local opportunities that can be leveraged for exposure, including building partnerships in your local business community and distributing promotional flyers.

The aim of local-focused marketing is to become a part of the local conversation and build your presence on all local-centric digital platforms. Investment in achieving this aim can have long-lasting positive effects, both online and off.

Direct

While the ideal long-term position to be in is to have 100% of your leads be inbound, and therefore largely passively acquired, that stage requires patience. Direct marketing, similarly to PPC advertising, is a highly effective short term solution, allowing you to generate interest and acquire leads through direct input.

Essentially, any form of direct interaction with your target market can be considered direct marketing. This includes reaching out on social platforms like LinkedIn, building mailing lists to nurture, hosting networking events at your location, and even organising a launch event.

Direct marketing is a manual way of filling the top of your sales funnel. Theoretically, the amount of time and effort put into this channel will be directly represented in the number of leads acquired.

Brokers

Although all of the above marketing efforts can and should be made to build a sustainable long-term lead generation machine and therefore avoid the need for utilising brokers, brokers can sometimes come in useful.

The most effective time to utilise brokers is in the early stages of running your workspace, when long term channels like SEO and social media are still building momentum. By directing brokers to pursue leads for office space pre-lets, before you’ve even launched, you can smooth the transition into operation and hit the ground running with offices already filled.