Make the Most of Your Home Field Advantage

You have many marketing tools at your disposal, from social media to advertisements and promotions. You may not think of your company’s headquarters in terms of being a marketing tool, but the right building and the right company culture can have a beneficial impact on your business.

Marketing & Promoting Your Business

Marketing and promotional activities are the lifeblood that bolster your business against the challenges of an ever-changing and crowded marketplace. Staying ahead of your closest competitors is critical to business success.

Marketing and promotion must be strategized, carried out and reviewed against a plan. Marketing effectively answers the needs of your customers, as well as creating, maintaining and supporting brand awareness. Social media marketing, your logo, advertisements and more all combine to underpin your brand. However, it is not often that business owners consider how their headquarters or business premises could be helpful to the marketing strategy. But it does, and it’s not just about making sure your name is above the door. Consider the following elements of your headquarters.

1. Location—Choosing the right place to base your company’s center office is essential. It needs to be a decision that suits your business, contributes to its success and attracts talent and customers. The options are endless for business headquarters in various locations, but some are more suitable than others. There are many factors that impinge on your choice, budget being one of them. Out-of-town retail and business parks have become popular. There are some locations that specialize in industrial-type units, and others that welcome business into serviced buildings. In effect, making a move from one location to another is a means by which you can show competitors, partners and customers just how well your business is doing.
2. Premises of distinction—Business prominence is an important, but often undervalued, factor in business. Prominence is about placing your business firmly on the landscape and in the viewpoint of you customers, partners and marketplace rivals. Your business premises are the visual aspect of your brand’s personality. But do they match? For example, you would expect Google to have a business headquarters to match its powerful presence in all our lives, and they do. But imagine the disappointment if you found Google was headquartered in a dilapidated building, hidden from view at the back of a car lot. Like Google, your business has choices when it comes to whether it rents or builds its own place. Companies like Google invest in their own brick-and-mortar locations because a headquarters is yet another asset on their asset sheet. By using the latest building technologies and maintaining a focus on being environmentally friendly, you too can create a business premises that speaks volumes about your business.
3. Impressions—Seven seconds is all the time you have to create a favorable impression. If someone is visiting your office or entering your workshop for the first time, what overwhelming impression do they get? Everything about your headquarters is important, from the smell of the offices to the general feel of the place and the tone of building. First impressions are all about surpassing expectations of customers and visitors.
4. The interior factor—Look around your offices or workspace. Are they cluttered and messy? Is the paint peeling, or is the wallpaper from a different era? Just as the outside of your business premises creates an impression, so does its interior. Even if you don’t invite visitors and customers regularly into your business abode, your top asset, your people, have to work in it. This is about your company’s reputation, and how much you value and nurture it.
5. Investing in your business—As a start up, you will have or had very different needs relating to your first business headquarters. It will be based on what you can afford. It may be at the back of a car park or something similar because, as a fledgling business, the options are limited. But as your business grows and evolves, it takes on an entity all its own. As your profits swell, you invest in your business. This could mean new IT hardware and software or expanding the pool of talent that will go on to grown your business in the coming years. And, it may be investing in your company’s new headquarters. There is no more powerful a sign to customers and rivals that your business is going places than moving to bigger or better premises. If you are moving to a new headquarters, this is a marketing gift that you can dine out on for months to come.

Harness the Power of Your Headquarters

Now that you understand the importance of the physical structure of your headquarters, you need some ideas on how to make it even better. Marketing your headquarters doesn’t have to mean taking on bigger premises or moving. It could mean making small changes that have a visual impact.

• Concentrate on the visual parts that people will see—This could mean giving the outside an update, getting the outdoor area landscaped or investing in new signs can send a positive marketing message.
• Nurture a pleasant environment—Making an environment more pleasant can start with a coat of paint or upgrading your storage system so that areas can be decluttered.

 
On the Move

Moving premises should be done for the right reasons and it should be a planned move from beginning to end. You also need to make sure to leverage this move to gain as much marketing attention as you can. That means creating a marketing plan around your new business headquarters. Investing in business premises and using it as a marketing tool strengthens your reputation, supports your brand and develops a platform from which your business can grow. How hard does your premises work for your business?