How do you go about putting together an effective cross-channel marketing campaign for a flexible workspace? Read an expert insight here.

Zoe Ellis-Moore, Founder & CEO of Spaces to Places explores why cross-channel is the right choice in this sector, and how you can make a success of your campaign.

Brands are everywhere – both in the real world and across digital spaces. We’re all saturated every day by businesses vying for our attention, and by extension our money, so it’s natural that we start to become a little desensitised to their efforts. That ‘muting’ of advertisement is one of the reasons making a success out of your marketing campaign can seem so difficult – statistics show that it takes up to seven individual and distinct impressions before someone will remember your brand amongst the competition.

But, luckily, there are plenty of platforms and channels available for you to use to get in front of your target audience and generate those impressions. That’s particularly the case in the realm of digital marketing, and it just so happens that marketing a flexible workspace is a predominantly digital endeavour. People looking for a new workspace are more than likely doing it online – whether through Google searches, browsing listing sites, or something else entirely.

There are countless channels to consider when it comes to digital marketing, but the most important thing is that you consider using several of them together. Running an integrated cross-channel marketing campaign is the best way to achieve results. Here’s everything you need to know about how to do it well.

What is cross-channel marketing?

Cross-channel marketing is exactly what it sounds like – marketing that spans across multiple channels. It’s generally seen as one of the most customer-focused approaches to marketing as it aims to deliver a consistent experience to users across each touchpoint. In other words, users build an understanding of the brand at each exposure, also developing trust along the way.

However, aside from being beneficial for customers, it’s also a highly effective approach for businesses. That’s because it allows for the gradual nurturing of leads through the traditional sales funnel of awareness, consideration, and conversion. And with a cross-channel campaign covering broad forms, from short ads to whole articles, it gives you the opportunity to present the relevant information to the user at the right time.

For example, the first time you’re in front of a user might be via a paid advert on a Google search result page for a keyword like ‘coworking space near me’, where you’ll have a limited number of characters to present a strong impression in your ad. Your next encounter with that same user might be through a paid social media advert, on Facebook perhaps, where you’ll have much more room to make an impression with imagery and more copy. From there, your cross-channel campaign might next meet the same user as they browse nearby workspaces on a listing site like instantoffices.com, where they’ll be able to learn more about what’s on offer themselves through your listing details.

It goes on like this until, eventually, they click to visit your website or give you a call, at which point the marketing campaign has done its job and it’s time for you to make a conversion.

Why is cross-channel important in the flexible workspace sector?

This type of integrated digital marketing campaign spanning a broad range of channels and platforms is common in all sectors, but it’s particularly important in the flexible workspace market. That’s primarily because people don’t make a decision on a new workspace on the spur of the moment – it’s a considered buying decision.

Generally, someone will check out several different potential workspaces before settling on one, weighing up their pros and cons and deciding which best suits their needs. A cross-channel marketing campaign that presents your brand consistently and pervasively helps to improve your reputation in the target user’s mind before they make their decision, improving the odds that they’ll choose you.

The nature of cross-channel marketing – involving information being drip-fed to users over the course of 3+ different advertising encounters – also suits the flexible workspace sector. There’s a lot to say about a workspace, and what sells a space to one person might not be another’s biggest draw. By diversifying your messaging, focusing on your flexible pricing structure in one ad, your broad range of amenities in another, your brand new private phone booths in a blog post, and so on, you can demonstrate your value to potential customers with diverse needs.

Digital marketing channels to consider

So how do you actually start to build a cross-channel digital marketing campaign for a flexible workspace? The first step is to understand what channels are up for consideration. The following are some of the most important to think about:

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.

SEA

SEA, 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.

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.

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.

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 and building mailing lists.

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. These are third-party sites that aggregate and list workspaces based on location, just like a traditional directory. 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.

Building a cross-channel marketing campaign for a flexspace

Which of the above channels you choose to build into your cross-channel campaign depends on what your goals are. If you’re trying to secure leads in the short term, a combination of fast-moving approaches like paid search ads, paid social ads, and direct outreach might be your best bet. If you’re thinking longer term, focusing on SEO, organic social, and local marketing might make more sense.

In theory, though, the more channels you pursue at once, the better each of them will work individually. Digital marketing benefits from the network effect – the more channels you have running, the better the chances of users having repeat interactions that help to cement your brand in their mind.