I was talking with a prospective coworking space owner today about picking a target market for their new space. One example that came up was WeWork and Regus.

WeWork primarily targets start-ups and freelancers, aside from their enterprise department. Regus, on the other hand, is more focused on professionals and corporate teams. Both companies have members outside of these groups of course, but loosely speaking, it’s what they do.

Then I mentioned that Spaces, a coworking space owned by Regus, is more of a WeWork competitor that Regus is. Spaces focuses on tech start-ups, creatives, and freelancers, much like WeWork does.

Then it dawned on me. If focusing on target market wasn’t so important, Regus would have folded the Spaces brand into theirs. But they didn’t. They kept the two brands separate.

Spaces looks a LOT more appealing to start-ups and freelancers than Regus does, but Regus looks a lot more appealing to the conservative corporate crowd who want a more traditional office environment.

Compare the Regus and Spaces websites. Look at their designs, the blog content, website copy, and photography.

Then look at their social media accounts. Look at their ads on Google.

They need to be different in order to compete for the two distinct target markets they serve. Even they can’t be all things to all people.

This is a great example of a world-class company understanding this point and demonstrating it with their dollars.

In the next few emails, I’ll dive deeper into the differences between their marketing strategies to help you apply it to your workspace.

Stay tuned!