It’s municipal election season here in Toronto, and tomorrow I will vote for a mayor and local councilor.

Whenever election season rolls around, I like to think about the factors that are influencing me so I can incorporate those lessons into marketing.

Political campaigns are—after all—marketing campaigns. And politicians have gotten surprisingly good at it over the years.

There are a lot of factors that go into a person’s voting decision. Some of them are rational, some are emotional, and probably all are—to a large degree—psychological.

Here are a few principles you can use to become a better marketer of your coworking space.

1. Awareness

Am I aware of who the candidates are? What promises or claims are they making?

Being aware of who the candidates are is a requirement for getting voted in.

On top of that, knowing what each candidate is promising means I can make the best decision possible.

It’s the same with your coworking space. Building awareness is always your main priority, and there are a million ways to do that.

Once we are aware of the options, we can make a decision to vote (or buy).

It is often said that humans make decisions based on emotion and then justify rationally afterward. I have argued before that we frequently buy (or vote) for one very specific reason that is near and dear to us.

We then sprinkle in other pieces of logic to rationalize our decision.

Coworking is no exception to that. You can learn more about how we often base our decisions on one key feature in the article linked below.

Read: What Makes You Different?

3. Frequency

How often am I exposed to their name or message? Am I able to remember who they are?

The more often you are exposed to a candidate, the more likely you are to vote for them.

As humans, we have a higher tendency to trust things we see more frequently compared to those we rarely encounter.

On a related note, we have a higher tendency to remember things we see most frequently.

There’s a name for this principle, and it’s the Availability Heuristic.

From Wikipedia:

The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.

A big part of making your coworking space memorable is through frequent exposure to your brand in the form of marketing.

Obvious stuff, but frequency matters. A lot.

That’s part of why I talk about being “everywhere” your target members are looking.

I’ll give you one more example.

I was getting coffee last weekend and a candidate was outside my local coffee shop giving away free coffee in exchange for a conversation.

I later noticed that person’s campaign sign on a neighbour’s lawn, and then again on a flyer in my mailbox a few days later.

They are using the “Be Everywhere” strategy I talk about in the article below, and they’re also benefiting from the frequency in which I am seeing their name.

Related: The “Be Everywhere” Strategy for Coworking Spaces

These are just a few examples of how you can take marketing lessons from your local politicians.

You want to build awareness of your coworking space in your market through as many means as possible.

You also want to get your message across clearly and succinctly so that you can differentiate from the other options available.

Lastly, you want your brand to appear as frequently as possible to your target market so they remember you and become more likely to trust you as the right option in the future.

Thank you, politicians, for all you do for us. 🙂