Published Monday, February 13th, 2012, by Mike Sullivan.
So much of business center success in the social media and mobility age is marketing. Gordon Executive Centre in Sydney is leveraging regional trends in its latest marketing campaign. What can you learn from their approach?
Let’s explore the set up. Gordon Executive Centre is letting the office space renting world know that the New South Wales state government plans to speed the growth of the population in the North Shore of Sydney—including 10,000 additional dwellings in Ku-ring-gai alone between 2004 and 2031—and there are currently no plans to expand the road and rail links in the area.
What does that mean? In a word, more traffic for office workers. Gordon Executive Centre then points out how office workers commuting from the Sydney North Shore to the Sydney CBD are already seeing more grind in their commute, with slower street traffic and crowded trains.
This is still the set up—the outline of the problem to which Gordon Executive Centre is about to offer a business center solution. But first, Gordon communicates the benefits of choosing office locations closer to where workers live. Shorter commute times mean more time for family, sport, and relaxation with less stress. Of course, Gordon notes, it’s also good for the environment.
Now the solution: Gordon Executive Centre offers flexible office space close to where your staff lives. That means workers only need to travel to the CBD on certain days of the week and can make the trip to avoid peak hour traffic when they do. So says Grant Mason, director of Gordon Executive Centre.
Mason explains that Gordon Executive Centre does not lock clients in to long-term contracts—agreements are as little as an hour or as long as a year. The business center also provides shared reception, phone answering, boardroom, meeting rooms, and big business infrastructure. And offices have all the required furniture and communications in place. Mason continues to talk about all the typical business center benefits from there, convincingly I might add.
Can you see the pattern? Marketing demand outlining a real problem, a felt need—some pain point that connects with would-be business center users. In this case, it is commute times. But that may be different for your business center. Maybe you offer some other unique value proposition that solves a real issue for current and potential tenants.
The idea is to find out what that unique value proposition is and then find creative ways to communicate it. Don’t rely on the same old, same old generic marketing spin. Figure out what office users really need, find a way to get it to them, and then market your solution. If you can solve a problem for office users—whether those are mobile workers, virtual office users or private office users—you will drive revenues for your business center.








