How to Get Clients for Your New Coworking Space, Fast

Often the hardest part of opening a coworking space is getting your first few members.

Bringing new clients into your space takes hard work, dedication, and a lot of patience.

In fact, it’s something you should be thinking about before even starting your coworking space.

If you wrote a coworking business plan, then you may already have an idea of how you will market your space to acquire new clients.

Haven’t written a business or marketing plan yet? Not to worry. Here’s an easy step-by-step guide on how to get clients for your coworking space, fast.

How do I get clients for my coworking space?

This guide assumes you are a brand new space with zero clients.

If you’re just opening a coworking space, this complete guide to opening a space will be a great resource for you to start with.

Here are the basic steps to get clients for your coworking space:

1. Define your ideal client
2. Get your digital presence in order
3. Create a great promotion
4. Advertise it everywhere you can
5. Network in person

We’ll go through each of these steps one-by-one below.

1. Defining the ideal client profile for your coworking space

The golden rule of marketing is, always start with your customer or client.

If you make providing value to your client your north star, then you will never fail.

The first step to defining your ideal client profile (ICP) is to think about who it is that you want to attract. Then, answer these questions:

• What are their demographics (age, city they live in, income, occupation)
• What communities are they currently in, online or offline
• What do they care about
• Why do they want a coworking space
• What amenities are they interested in

These questions are best answered with a bit of intuition and a healthy dose of market research. Figure out everything you can about your ICP before doing anything else.

Pro tip: use online communities and social media forums like Reddit or Facebook groups to learn more about your ICP. These communities will give you an unfiltered look as to how your clients really think.

2. Building a digital presence for coworking spaces

It is essential for every modern coworking space to have a presence online.

Building an online presence before you open your doors will give you a mega head start with acquiring clients. The cost of being present online is low, and when done right, the payoff is absolutely huge.

There are four main components to organizing yourself online:

• Create a great website
• Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile
• Create your social media accounts
• Set up your email service provider

Create a great website

Your website is the most powerful lead generating and lead capturing tool you have. Your website is your store and people are going to be walking in, you want to make sure they’re engaged and take action.

You need to have a beautiful, compelling, and optimized website. If your space isn’t open yet, this is all people will have to go off of.

Here are our four biggest tips to making your website work better for you:

Take professional photos of your space: professional photos go a long way when your space isn’t open yet. Professional photos will give your space the best chance at capturing the intrigue of potential clients

Invest in a great website designer: you can get a website up and running by yourself using something like Squarespace or Wix. However, investing in a freelancer to create a custom website that is beautifully designed and well-made will always be worth it

Do SEO right from the beginning: SEO is more than just using the right keyword on your page. It’s also how your site is structured, how fast your site is, how easy it is to navigate, how many backlinks it has, and so much more. If you want to rank organically in Google for high-intent keywords, an SEO freelancer will be your best friend Otherwise, this Ahrefs blog is a great place to start learning about SEO

Put a lead generating form on your website: put a form on your website so you can capture emails of people who are interested in your space. Then, send an automated email to them when the space opens, inviting them for a free week. Optix offers this service as a branded web widget, which helps people schedule tours directly from your website or allows people to make drop-in bookings

The best coworking brands have the best websites. Here are some of our clients with thoughtfully designed and highly optimized websites.

• Barnfox
• Goosecup Collective
• Ecom Square
• Highland | City Club

And if you’re looking for some digital marketing tools that can help you optimize your coworking website, this guide is a great place to start.

Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile

Next to your website, your Google Business Profile (formally known as Google My Business Profile) is the most important thing you have as a coworking space.

Google Business Profiles are the profiles that come up in Google when you search for a retail business, company, or restaurant.

With a Google Business Profile, businesses can:

• Show off pictures of their space
• Post their hours of operation
• Leave their contact information
• Link their website
• Collect reviews

A well optimized profile can help you bring hundreds of new clients into your space every year.

Below are a few tips for having a stand-out Google Business Profile:

• Use keywords in your description like “coworking space in [your city], flexible workspace, best coworking space, [your coworking niche], etc.”
• Use professional photos and use alt-text on these photos that include keywords
• Ask friends or family to leave positive reviews of your space – and make sure you reply to all of them as the business owner
• Ensure all of the information is filled out and is accurate (sounds simple, but many do not do this!)
• Update something on your profile at least 1x a week – Google loves dynamic content and frequent updating will send signals to Google to show your listing more often

Create your social media accounts

Social media can be really overwhelming, especially if you’ve never created content before.

The first step is deciding which platforms you want to be active on. We recommend choosing one or two to start and then adding more as you have the resources.

• TikTok: good for younger demographic, high organic reach
• LinkedIn: good for professional audience
• Instagram: good for everyone, lower organic reach unless using IG reels
• Twitter: good for people in tech, journalists, and media, use it to connect directly with others
• YouTube: good for everyone, functions as a video search engine, so don’t neglect YouTube SEO
• Facebook: good for building and managing a community as a Facebook group

Think about which platforms your audience is most likely to be on. Then, think about how you can create really engaging, compelling content that your audience will enjoy.

Even if you’re not sure what to post, the important thing is to start. You will figure out what your audience enjoys and what resonates with them over time. The most important thing is to be consistent, as platforms reward consistency.

Pro Tip: Short-form video content is the most popular content right now. Start a TikTok and repost content to Instagram reels for the highest organic reach and the greatest chance of your audience finding you.

Set up your email service provider

An email service provider is a system that allows you to send emails to a list of subscribers. Some of the most popular options are Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Hubspot.

Before you gain any clients, you’ll want to set up your email service provider and consider how you want to send emails.

• Do you want a weekly newsletter?
• Should an email go out every time a person signs up to welcome them and introduce them to your community?
• Do you want to start an email nurture flow for new signs-ups?
• What about if someone churns – do you want an email to go out to them too asking for feedback on how you can improve?

You don’t need to know the answers to all of these questions. However, you do need to consider who will host your emails and if this will integrate with your coworking software.

Optix integrate with email service providers like Mailchimp, so an email can be automatically sent to members when they join your community.

Look for tools with these kinds of capabilities when choosing your email service provider.

Follow Optix on LinkedIn for more daily resources on running a flexible workspace.

3. Creating a great promotion for your new coworking space

You’ve defined your ICP and you’ve gotten your digital house in order.

Next is to create a great promotion to get people in the doors of your new coworking space.

Promotional pricing is one of the best ways to acquire new clients, especially when you’re just starting out.

You may not make money on them. In fact, you’ll probably lose money. However, you should factor this into your marketing budget with the understanding that investing in customer acquisition now will pay dividends in the future.

The pricing you choose will depend on the membership plans you offer. Here are some popular promotions we often see:

• A free trial day
• 50% off your first month
• 15% off every month for your first 3 months
• First 3 months free with an annual private office plan
• $250 off your annual membership plan
• Sign up for an annual membership plan, and get a free year of virtual office services
• First 10 sign ups get a 1 month membership plan for free

Choose something that is going to get people excited. The goal is to bring people into the space, fill it with energy, and begin to prove its value so they are likely to stay.

Once word of mouth spreads and the community builds, you’ll hopefully have more people coming in on their own.

Pro tip: consider including an evergreen promotion for new members, such as a free day of coworking for new members or 10% off your first month with all new membership plans.

4. Advertising your coworking space promotion

Once you’ve landed on a killer promotion, next is advertising it everywhere that you can.

The most effective way to do this, both from a cost standpoint and a reach standpoint, is digitally.

This includes tactics like:

• A banner or pop-up on your website homepage
• Posting about it on social media and reaching out to your city’s top news outlets to help you spread awareness on social
• Sending an email to your list, or including the promotion in the first email that gets sent out to your list
• Using google search ads or paid social ads

Digital advertising is a massive topic. If you’ve never done it before, we highly recommend taking a course or even better, hiring a freelancer to manage your ads for you.

Here are some high-level tips to help get you started:

• Avoid using Google Display ads: they have a very low click-through-rate and very high cost-per-click. Opt for paid social or Google search ads instead
• Go for specific, geographic targeting: when setting up paid social ads, make your demographic targeting as specific as possible. For example, instead of showing ads to everyone in Canada, only show your ads to 25-34 year old Canadians in a specific neighborhood of Vancouver
• Don’t skimp on great creative assets: great creative goes a long way in a digital ad. Instead of a static image of your space, consider using a video of your community manager showing off your space and speaking to the camera candidly. Video content tends to outperform static images and carousels
• Start with a small budget and scale slowly: scaling digital ads is not easy. Start with a small budget and only add 20% of your budget max over 3 days to prevent your ads from breaking

Again, we highly recommend working with a marketing freelancer to manage your ads if possible. This can prevent wasting a lot of money on things that don’t work.

5. Tapping in to your existing and local networks

Tapping into your existing network is a powerful way to grow your membership base and get clients quickly.

Spread the word to your personal network that you’re opening a space and looking for new members. Invite friends, family, and friends of friends to try out your coworking space at a discount to help generate word-of-mouth.

You can also advertise your space in the local community by networking at events where your ideal customer is likely to be at. Here are some tips to get started:

• Look for events in your area for tech start-ups, entrepreneurs, or remote workers. Facebook or MeetUp is a good starting point
• Attend these events with the purpose of connecting with others and learning about their problems and needs. You should focus on building genuine connections in your community, rather than just advertising your space
• Invite people to your space for an open house or offer an exclusive promotion that is only available via word-of-mouth

Get to know the people in your community you are most likely to serve. Use this as a way to build connections with others.

Together, these tips are a great start to getting your first few clients. Want more marketing tips for coworking spaces? Check out these 5 Marketing Tips to Maximize Coworking Membership Sales.

Talk to a member of the Optix team to get started with opening your coworking space.