Marketing and Advertising a Space or Group

[Joseph A Holsten]

I've been pruning the patterns pages, and i feels like the pages on marketing are a bit sparse.  I know that regarding there's more knowledge about it in your heads than on the wiki!

How are new communities (like us jelly folks in tulsa) getting the word out? How are the established spaces keeping the community alive? Have you had luck (or failure) with events, sponsorships or conventional marketing?

I know we're planning on flyering and buying a few ads. Plus I run a regular jelly and have a grillout afterwards.

http:// Joseph Holsten.com

[Dusty]

Hey Joseph,

For Jelly in Austin I got started by announcing our Jelly meetups to
other related local organizations, both in person and via their list
serves / forums. I also started our own Google Group to announce Jelly
meetups on. The next big thing that helped a lot was hosting the
meetups at a consistent public place and time. We have the support of
a local cafe which is a huge help. I post meetups to Twitter,
Upcoming, the Jelly wiki, and several other spots on line.

For traditional marketing, flyers at local cafe's worked pretty well.
The hard core Jelly fans put Jelly stickers on the backs of their
laptops. I've also tried printing some business cards with our web
address and the time and location of our consistent Jelly meetups. All
3 of those things works pretty well and are reasonably affordable.

Another thing that worked great was having other local orgs have their
meeting during Jelly. That's worked beautifully. The few times that's
happened it was the other orgs that approached me with the idea (and I
*heart* them for it). You could try approaching them though.

Get involved in some of you communities other organizations, make a
lot of friends and tell them what you're doing. Viral marketing and
word of mouth does the rest.

We also got some really good press via the Austin Statesman and the
Austin Business Journal, but that came quite a bit later and is
usually out of your control as an organizer. But it sure does help. :)

Marketing our coworking space Conjunctured revolves around word of
mouth and supporting our community as much as humanly possible, and
that's not fluff. Seriously, support your community and they'll
support you.

Make friends, be consistent, help people, tell them what you do.

Dusty

PS. I've got more material in my head on this subject. I'll try and
get all down in writing soon so I can share it. :)

[faithfulgeek (Joe Fiorini)]

I'm not sure what the "Jelly" obsession is, but we've had similar
trouble. Twitter was pretty helpful for getting us started, but now
we too need to resort to some traditional marketing tactics to get the
word out.

-Joe

[Alex Hillman]

The "obsession" with jelly is that it's a *great* starting place for coworking without your own office! It costs nothing to the organizers and next to nothing for the participants (depending on the location at which you hold the event).

Besides that, I always recommend going to as many of the existing local community meetups, whether you think they are relevant or not, to find out what people are up to. You'll quickly learn how coworking fits the topography of your area. Just *ask* people what they need, and then do that.

-Alex, IndyHall

--
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--
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Alex Hillman
im always developing something
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com
visual: www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.indyhall.org

[Julie]

Flyering/postcarding, ads in local papers, craigslist, twitter, events
in the space, me personally attending lots of networking events (have
for a few years now) leads to invaluable relationships, specials,
referrals.. Word of mouth seems to be strongest source. Still
learning how calendar affects rhythm of business and therefore where
and when to put $ into marketing.
-Julie Duryea
souk
Portland, Oregon

On Jul 10, 8:27 am, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> The "obsession" with jelly is that it's a *great* starting place for
> coworking without your own office! It costs nothing to the organizers and
> next to nothing for the participants (depending on the location at which you
> hold the event).
>
> Besides that, I always recommend going to as many of the existing local
> community meetups, whether you think they are relevant or not, to find out
> what people are up to. You'll quickly learn how coworking fits the
> topography of your area. Just *ask* people what they need, and then do that.
>
> -Alex, IndyHall
>
> --
> -----
> --
> -----
> Alex Hillman
> im always developing something

> digital: a...@weknowhtml.com

> visual:www.dangerouslyawesome.com
> local:www.indyhall.org
>
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 9:23 AM, faithfulgeek (Joe Fiorini) <
>

[Ian Graham]

Hey Joseph,

Here are a few things we have tried.

We held a launch event to get some local media attention and this
worked reasonably well. I was fortunate enough to have a local PR firm
(inmedia PR) donate in-kind services for the launch and able to
generate some print and radio coverage. If you are able to compile a
list of local media contacts you could develop and distribute your own
press release. For whatever reason Tuesday and Wednesday are the best
days for a press release.

In terms of true marketing type stuff our budget was limited to
essentially three things; business cards street lamp posters and
website. We have generated some interest through the street lamp
posters that we put on lamp posts within about a five – ten block
radius around the space. Exchanging business cards (I’ll display yours
if you display mine) with other area businesses is also another way to
promote your space. The website is a great source of interest and you
will want to make it as interactive as possible. Our web designer
added google chat and a CMS called website baker which is pretty good.
We use the CMS to develop forms where people can book space, make
inquiries and subscribe to our mailing list. When time and budget
permit we will dedicate more resources to the website which has
generated a number of leads and our mailing list is growing at about 5
– 10 people per week. On that note, having a mailing list is something
you may want to consider. We send a bi-weekly update and tend to get a
number of replies and suggestions every time we send it.

Craigslist and Kijiji ads have also yielded some results.

I donate event and meeting space to various grass roots users groups
and organizations. In return the organizers usually provide an
opportunity to say a few words about the space at the break. I thank
them for letting us host the event and ask the participants to take a
couple of business cards with them to give to their friends. This is
done in a non-intrusive way and since the participants are usually
grateful to have a nice place to meet reciprocate by letting their
friends know about the space. Always have business cards available
and accessible by reception in case anyone wants to take them.

Signage on the building is also important. We will have a brass plaque
in the front of the building and some signage facing the busy side of
the street.

By far the best way to promote the space is through word of mouth and
referrals. Consider adding some sort of a referral or customer loyalty
program.

Still investigating other options.

[Matthew Wettergreen]

Aside from the obvious benefits of Jelly, it also serves as a perfect
precursor to coworking either as a ramp up stage or as an information
gathering system. Holding multiple and regular Jellys will allow you
to gauge whether a coworking solution will work in your geographic
location. If the Jellys are successful enough or have provided enough
direction in terms of the needs of community members then it may be
time to explore a physical coworking space. No one should forge into
the darkness without first having a grasp of the community that is
supporting them along the way.

At its base level, coworking is concerned with community. It's all
about the "c". It is not a business meant to attract any and all types
of people; it's a business meant to provide a community hub and enrich
that community. The promotion and marketing of Caroline has focused on
developing solid relationships like that rather than using a shotgun
approach to get anyone to come and see the space. Full disclosure:
yes, we had a PR person for our party and that was because we wanted
to game Houston for one night (and we did). Yes, we have received high
profile in most Texas regional papers. This coverage has not been
converted to more people visiting the space though. The people that do
visit the space after reading about it in the media come not to
investigate alternative working environments but to see the space as
they perceive it, some sort of curio.

The successful promotion and marketing that has worked for Caroline
has been word of mouth. We have not and will not consider traditional
paid advertising as we see it as a useless expenditure that doesn't
bring in the quality of people that are actually looking for a
solution to a community based work atmosphere. Instead of thinking
"how can we get more people into the space" we've approached every
opportunity to talk to people as "how can we enrich and broaden the
community." As a result, the majority of people who visit Caroline
have been referred by friends and those friends have evangelized
Caroline as a place where work gets done in a positive atmosphere.

Many people have mentioned it before and it has been shown to be
successful; the best way to promote your space initially and always is
to be highly visible in the community talking about it, listening to
what people are saying but mostly listening to what people desire/need
for their work atmosphere. We've personally found that the lasting
relationships that we have with the people who regularly work out of
Caroline are because of a belief in the strength of community, not
because of an advertisement and that is the type of promotion that you
should be attempting to attain.

Matthew