3 Ways a Private Office Space Can Help You Build Your Brand
Branding can be challenging for small businesses. When you have limited capacity to deliver essential services to your clients, branding may feel frivolous. But the reality is that your business brand will coalesce in your clients’ minds whether or not you intentionally shape it.
Think about your favorite vs. least favorite neighborhood street for a quiet walk; neither of these places is actively branding itself, but both leave you with a distinct feeling.
For solopreneurs and other small-business owners, that feeling you inspire in clients is a key part of your brand. It’s affected by every big and small decision you make – and it’s something that’s far too risky to leave to chance.
Here are four ways operating from a private office space can help you build a brand that inspires confidence among your clients.
1. Send the Right Non-Verbal Message
You’ve probably heard that a lot of communication happens non-verbally. In fact, the researcher whose work popularized this idea found that 55 percent of communication happens without words or vocal inflection. Put differently, more than half of your message is conveyed before you ever open your mouth.
For small businesses, there are three important types of nonverbal communications that contribute to brand:
Your personal appearance
Your website and digital communications
Your office space
Crucially, these three components work together. An accounting firm that specializes in preparing startups to seek funding, for example, may find that it attracts its target customers by adopting startup-adjacent branding – less formal attire, a website that looks like its customers’, and office space in a buzzy coworking environment designed for startups.
Small businesses and solopreneurs who serve a more established clientele might find more success doing the opposite: wearing more traditional business attire and aiming to convey seriousness both online and in person.
A private office can go a long way toward demonstrating the latter. When your physical space looks like the office spaces of your more established counterparts, it signals that you are their peer.
2. Earn and Build Credibility and Trust
The classic wisdom is that people buy from brands they “know, like, and trust.” But the bar for trust is much higher in some industries (accounting, law, business consulting, etc.) than others.
There are dozens of small ways solopreneurs and small businesses can signal that they’re worthy of clients’ trust. Digitally, it’s essential to maintain a website with HTTPS encryption and provide secure channels for sensitive communications. But even the best digital security can be undermined by a physical presence that doesn’t inspire confidence – or that actually causes security breaches.
Home offices, for example: between Q1 and Q4 of 2020, when millions of knowledge workers transitioned to remote work, there was a 768 percent increase in remote desktop protocol attacks, largely because home networks lacked the security features of those in offices.
But a physical office outside the home isn’t necessarily better. A classic coworking setup, for example, involves busy public spaces and the kind of communal atmosphere that’s at odds with work that requires a high degree of privacy or security. Receiving clients in earshot of a foosball game doesn’t communicate the gravitas professional services solopreneurs and small businesses hope to establish.
A private office in a more professional setting sends the opposite message and can go a long way toward reassuring clients that your services are a sound investment. That becomes particularly important when it comes to an essential part of business growth: referrals.
3. Earn Referrals
Referrals are one of the most cost-effective ways to grow a business – and clients who come via referral tend to be more profitable and more loyal.
To earn referrals from existing clients, small business owners and solopreneurs must first win those clients’ trust. Beyond that, though, they must establish a brand that consistently inspires client confidence.
Why? Because people refer their friends and family. And while any of us might accept certain compromises for ourselves, we aren’t willing to do that on behalf of our loved ones. What's more, recommending great products and services is a matter of personal branding for the person recommending them. Nobody wants to be known as the person who suggests terrible restaurants or who sent their friends to the tax accountant who got hacked.
Maybe the most helpful way to think about referrals, though, is that they combine logic and emotion – but emotion comes first. That is, when a person has a generally good feeling about a service provider, they’re likely to refer them – and back up that willingness with data after the fact.
Where does that “good feeling” come from? The service provider’s brand.
4. Connect with a Network of Like-Minded Professionals
A private office provides a range of benefits to small business owners and solopreneurs. When you secure that private office in a Firmspace location, you get an additional benefit: access to a network of like-minded professionals.
Our properties are designed with the explicit intent of making private office space accessible to small businesses and solopreneurs while also making space for the spontaneous conversations that can spark mutually beneficial relationships.
Whether the outcome is a friendlier experience at the office, someone to share ideas with and learn from, or a more formal referral relationship, it can help small business owners establish themselves and grow their operations.
Build a Brand of Trust with a Private Office
When you walk into a new space, you get a feel for it within seconds: is it fun? Peaceful? Awe-inspiring? Chaotic? Private offices in professional settings convey trustworthiness, inspire confidence, and communicate seriousness.
By choosing to operate from and greet clients in a well-appointed private office, small businesses and solopreneurs take proactive control of their brands, communicating that they have the polish and poise of their larger and more established peers.
To see in person how a Firmspace office can add gravitas to your business, book a tour at one of our locations.
Photo by St James Studio on Unsplash