Coworking Space Marketing: How to Win Local Members
Coworking space marketing as a local service: who needs a desk, which trial offer works, how to reach people working nearby and turn a trial week into a deal.
9 min readFortuners Team
Coworking space marketing is local service marketing. People choose a desk much the way they choose a gym: close to home, or close to somewhere they already spend their day. So instead of broad brand campaigns, three things do the work: reaching people who already work a few hundred metres away, a low-barrier trial offer (a day or a week), and a worked-out path from trial to contract. Below you will find the customer segments, online and offline channels, a campaign scenario around office buildings in Warsaw's Wola district, a follow-up plan and a way to calculate the cost of a new member.
Who looks for a coworking space: freelancers, hybrid teams, international companies
A coworking space serves several groups who want different things and worry about different things. One message for all of them lands with none of them.
| Segment | Motivation | Typical worries | What to show them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancers and sole traders | separating work from home, people around, somewhere to meet clients | a fixed monthly cost, noise, nowhere to take calls | flexible plans, phone booths, meeting rooms by the hour |
| Hybrid employees and distributed teams | an office near home instead of commuting to HQ, team days | employer approval and invoicing | company plans, a room for a team day, invoices to the company |
| Small teams and startups | an office without a long lease, room to grow | privacy, somewhere for equipment | lockable rooms, flexible contract terms |
| International companies and their staff | a fast start in Poland without paperwork | contract language, payments, how billing works | English-language communication, a clear sign-up process |
| People working in nearby offices | somewhere to focus or meet outside their own office | walking time, room availability | meeting rooms by the hour, proximity |
Prepare one version of the message and one offer page per segment. After the campaign you will see which group actually signs.
The entry offer: a trial day or a trial week
Coworking sells an experience: the light at the desk, the noise level, the coffee, the people at the next table. Photos will not convey it, which makes a trial the natural first step.
| Trial day | Trial week | |
|---|---|---|
| What the customer tests | atmosphere, commute, Wi-Fi | the whole working rhythm: meetings, focus, people |
| Cost to you | low | higher: a desk taken for five days |
| Time for a sales conversation | short | enough for two or three conversations |
| When to use it | events, referrals, a quick decision | the main offer in a campaign |
The campaign examples on the Fortuners home page include exactly this case: a coworking space in Wola offers "a week at a desk for PLN 1" — five working days in the open space, with coffee, a printer and a meeting room. It is an illustrative example, but it shows the mechanism well: a token fee, or a sign-up with an email address, means the people who come forward genuinely intend to turn up.
Worth including in a trial week:
- desk access during the hours your members actually work,
- coffee, the printer and an hour or two in a meeting room, so the visitor tests the things that matter,
- a short welcome: Wi-Fi, kitchen, house rules, an introduction to a few people,
- an invitation to whatever event is happening that week,
- clear terms: one trial per person, a date by which it must be used, and the rules of the offer.
Online: Google Business Profile, marketplaces and LinkedIn
Even when the first contact happens offline, the decision gets checked on a phone. Three places deserve attention.
Google Business Profile. The right category, access hours, photos taken at different times of day (including the rooms, the kitchen and the entrance) and replies to reviews. People searching for "coworking" plus a district name will see you next to your competitors, so photos and reviews make a real difference here.
Your site and flexible-workspace marketplaces. Your site needs the trial offer visible immediately, directions, a virtual tour or a gallery, and a sign-up form that takes a minute. If you list on flexible-office marketplaces and directories, keep the details and photos consistent across them, and tag enquiries from each platform separately so you can tell which listing earns its commission.
LinkedIn. This is where your audience is already thinking about work. What tends to land: posts showing the community and events, an active profile for the space manager in local groups, and ads targeted by location and industry. Announce open meetings — freelancer breakfasts, workshops, industry meetups — always with a sign-up, so you know who came and from where.
The neighbourhood: lunch bars, cafés, events and referrals
Your most valuable audience works a few hundred metres away. You will meet them in the places they visit during the working day:
- lunch bars and cafés by office buildings: a break, a phone in hand, work on their mind,
- building receptions and property managers: a tenant benefit, for example meeting rooms by the hour,
- neighbouring companies: a joint event, or an offer for teams looking for a place to run a workshop day,
- your own open events: each with a sign-up, so you know who came and through which channel,
- member referrals: your current members know people like them; give them a personal code and a simple reason to bring someone along.
Restaurants and cafés are particularly valuable here, because choosing a venue means choosing an hour and a guest profile. How to pick venues and what formats they allow is covered in our guide to advertising in restaurants. For drawing the catchment area itself — in walking minutes rather than kilometres — see our local marketing strategy guide.
Campaign scenario: office buildings in Wola
An illustrative scenario, built on the example from the Fortuners home page. The figures and names are made up.
Goal: new members from among the people working within a ten-minute walk of the space.
Venues: lunch bars and cafés by the office buildings nearby, the ones guests visit at lunchtime for a quick meal.
Contact: after the meal, the guest gets a fortune cookie with the bill. The slip carries a line about work and the coworking offer with a QR code:
This week's best idea will come to you away from your desk.
The page after the scan: a short description (a desk for five working days, coffee, a meeting room, the walking distance from the venue), a field for an email address, a choice of start week and a language switch.
| Week | What happens |
|---|---|
| −2 | choose venues, write the fortune and the offer, build the sign-up page, create a separate code per venue |
| −1 | test the sign-up on several phones, agree the welcome and conversation plan with the team |
| 1–4 | campaign runs in the venues, weekly review of scans, sign-ups and trial weeks started |
| 5–8 | trial weeks finish, plan conversations, follow up with the undecided |
Message variants by segment
If your campaign covers venues with different guest profiles, prepare several versions of the fortune and the offer. Examples to build on:
| Segment and place | Sample fortune | Sample offer |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancers in a laptop-friendly café | "This week, someone at the next table will hand you a good idea." | a trial day with coffee on arrival |
| Hybrid teams in a lunch bar | "Your team will agree faster around one table than in another video call." | a meeting room for a team day, free to try |
| Office workers at lunchtime | "This week's best idea will come to you away from your desk." | a trial week at a desk |
| International guests | "Your next big idea is waiting at a new desk." | a trial week, sign-up in English |
Each variant gets its own code, so that after the campaign you can compare not only scans but contracts signed.
In this model, Fortuners handles venue selection, the fortune copy, cookie production, deliveries and measurement. The coworking space handles what happens after the sign-up, which is the part that decides everything: turning a guest into a member. Scenarios for other industries are in our marketing campaign examples for local brands.
English-speaking members: what to have ready
If there are offices of international companies nearby, some of the people you reach will not speak Polish. Prepare at least the following in English:
- the offer page and the sign-up form (the page behind the QR code can open in the phone's language),
- the trial offer terms and a copy of the membership agreement, even as a supporting translation,
- the welcome, the house rules and the Wi-Fi instructions,
- information on payments and invoicing for companies based outside Poland (agree the billing rules with your accountant),
- someone on the team who can run the sales conversation in English.
Bear in mind that in Poland, consumer-facing offers generally need to be available in Polish under the Polish Language Act, so treat English as an addition rather than a replacement, and check the details for contracts with a lawyer.
From trial week to signed contract
The campaign ends at the sign-up; the sale starts there. A trial week with no plan for the conversation usually ends in a polite "thanks, I'll think about it".
Trial week follow-up plan
- Day 0: an automatic confirmation with directions, hours and the name of the person who will greet them
- Day 1: a tour, an introduction to two or three members, an invitation to the next event
- Day 2 or 3: a short conversation about what they need — how many days a week, meeting rooms, a room for a team, invoicing to a company
- Day 4: a plan matched to their working rhythm, with an expiry date on the offer
- Day 5: a wrap-up of the week and a question about the decision
- A week later: a message to the undecided that answers the specific doubt they raised
- A month later: an invitation to an open event
Keep a simple status log in a spreadsheet or CRM: signed up, trial started, conversation held, offer made, contract signed, declined with a reason. Those reasons are the raw material for improving the offer in your next campaign.
Measurement and cost per member
Measure every stage separately, and per venue or channel:
- code scans or visits to the offer page,
- trial week sign-ups,
- trials actually started (how many people really came),
- contracts signed,
- members still with you after three months.
Laying the stages out venue by venue often changes the conclusion. The venue with the most scans need not produce the most contracts: if its guests mostly work for large companies with their own offices, they will happily look at the offer but rarely change where they work. So base the next campaign on contracts and members retained, not on scans. In a Fortuners campaign, scans and redeemed codes appear per venue in the partner dashboard, and you add sign-ups and contracts from your own system.
Cost per member (CAC) is calculated from contracts, not sign-ups.
Illustrative example (made-up figures):
- campaign in venues plus materials: PLN 6,000,
- cost of the trial weeks: 30 weeks × PLN 60 (coffee, rooms, wear and tear) = PLN 1,800,
- team time on welcomes and conversations: 20 hours × PLN 50 = PLN 1,000,
- total: PLN 8,800,
- contracts signed: 11,
- CAC: PLN 8,800 ÷ 11 = PLN 800.
If a member stays about 10 months and the margin on their plan is PLN 350 a month, their value is PLN 3,500 — comfortably more than the cost of winning them. If another channel comes out at PLN 2,500 per member for the same value, move the budget. What to count as a cost and how to compare channels is explained in our guide on how to calculate customer acquisition cost.
If you would like to see what a campaign in the venues around your space might look like, get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
How do I market a coworking space on a small budget?
Start with what costs mostly time: a complete Google Business Profile with photos taken at different hours, a page where people can book a trial day or week, and open events for people working nearby. Then pick one channel in your immediate surroundings, such as the lunch bars by the office buildings next door, and give it its own code so you can see how many contracts it produced.
Trial day or trial week: which works better for a coworking space?
A day is enough to sense the atmosphere, but rarely enough to settle into a working rhythm. A week gives people time to book a meeting room, meet other members and have a conversation about what they need, which makes it far easier to propose a plan afterwards. Use the day as an offer at events, and the week as the main offer in a campaign.
Should a coworking space in Poland communicate in English?
In bigger cities, yes, at least for the essentials: the offer page, the sign-up form, the house rules, the terms and the welcome. People looking for flexible desks include employees of international companies and foreign residents, for whom a missing English version is a reason to pick somewhere else.
How do I calculate the cost of acquiring a coworking member?
Add up everything the campaign cost: media, materials, the value of the space given away during trial weeks and the team's time spent on tours and conversations. Divide that by the number of contracts signed from the campaign, not by the number of people who signed up for a trial.
