Why Does Location Matter for a Business? [5 Reasons]

Location Is King But Not Expensive, Long-term Office Space

For home buyers, the old adage, “Location is king,” is a controlling tenet. If you’re shopping for a home, you want to look for a home in a location with great schools, low crime rates, and short commutes to work and shopping. In the past, businesses looking for locations followed a parallel principle: You wanted a fixed office in a location that garnered a positive business impression. A location in an area where other successful businesses was typically where you started your search.

But fixed office space in a great location comes with strings attached. You get locked into an expensive, long-term lease that is difficult—and expensive—to break. For businesses that can afford the office space, they often end up paying for workspace that goes unused and those with positive growth trajectories find you quickly run out of workspace. And even if you cannot afford office space in the best location, many of these challenges are also true.

The upside is that securing fixed office space is no longer a requisite for businesses worried about location. Settling for a business address in a subpar location and becoming locked into a long-term lease are no longer something businesses and entrepreneurs need to do. Rather, virtual office addresses, coworking space, day offices, and rented meeting rooms provide entrepreneurs and small businesses with the means to establish a business in great locations without locking themselves into long-term leases. There are literally tens of thousands of virtual office addresses around the world, many of which are in great locations where other successful businesses are operated.

Reasons Why Business Location Matters

Following is some of the main reasons location matters to businesses:

Impressions Matter 

First impressions of people and businesses often are formed in a few seconds, and it is immensely difficult to change those first impressions. For businesses with an address in a location with neutral to negative connotations, those first impressions can be a dealbreaker. Hiding your business address is not an option. You must use it on contracts, your website, and various legal documents. This is where virtual office addresses are a solution. Providers like Davinci Virtual Offices not only provide virtual addresses but accompanying services such as mail receipt and forwarding, a lobby directory listing, and entity formation at a starting rate as low as $49 per month.

Access to Customers

Depending on the nature of your business, the location where you work may impact your ability to reach existing and potential customers. For example, if you are a law firm, you want a business address that demands respect and workspace and meeting rooms that are in close proximity to your clients. Spending valuable time commuting across town for face-to-face meetings drives up operational cost while diminishing productivity. Being able to rent day offices, coworking space, and meeting rooms through services like Davinci Meeting Rooms near your clients by the hour, half day, day, or week is huge—regardless of your industry. 

Access to Employees and Top Talent

The attitudes of workers were already changing before the pandemic; those changes simply accelerated. Work-life balance is much more important, and many professionals evaluate employment options based on the length of commute and the flexibility to work from home or locations close to where they live. 

Yet, settling for a business address in the suburbs or an area that fails to provide the first impression your business requires are not compromises you need to make. On-demand rented workspaces and meeting rooms address the former, while virtual addresses solve the latter. For example, employees can work from a coworking space with rented meeting rooms downtown when they need to meet face-to-face with clients and from a different coworking space in an area closer to where they live the remainder of the week (or from the coworking space part of the week and their home offices the rest of the week).

Expansion Into New Geographical Areas

Geographical expansion comes with numerous complexities and challenges—including costs. Virtual office addresses and on-demand coworking space and rented meeting rooms minimize these by lowering the bar. Businesses can secure virtual office addresses in other locations of town, across the state, across the country, or even around the globe. They can also open satellite offices in these locations without securing fixed office space. If they need physical office space, they can simply find rented coworking space and meeting rooms in the area of town where their clients and employees are located—and pay and use it on demand.

Networking and Collaborating with Like-minded Entrepreneurs and Businesses

For some startups and businesses, the opportunity to network and collaborate with other entrepreneurs is very important. A traditional fixed office space does not provide such. Rather, you need to look for rented coworking and meeting space used by other startups and small businesses. The energy the occupants of rented office space and meeting space get from each other helps fuel innovation and sustain businesses over the long run. Other businesses can provide valuable insights on what you should and shouldn’t do—mistakes to be avoided and lessons to be learned. You might even uncover potential funding for your business or new projects that you want to undertake. 

Finding the Right Locations for Your Business

There are several factors that you need to consider when looking for a provider to help you find the right location(s) for your business. First, you should look at providers with more than a local presence. They should have national or even global reach (depending on the nature of your business). Even if you do not have plans to expand into a new geographical area, you may need workspace and meeting rooms when traveling—personally and professionally. Second, look for a provider that makes it easy for you to find and evaluate the options—both addresses and workspaces and meeting rooms. This includes dimensions of the space, technologies and services available, and the ability to review and book the space using a standard web browser as well as mobile app. Finally, look for a provider that offers you the ability to engage with them via communication channels that are most convenient for you to use—phone, email, and live web chat. 

About Patrick Spencer

Patrick Spencer (Ph.D.) is the President and Founder of TIRO Communications that helps companies develop, build, and manage content, customer, advocacy, and demand-gen programs. Included in its offerings is TIRO Cognition Insights, a data analytics tool that enables B2C and B2B businesses to pinpoint what their customers and competitors’ customers are saying and to identify corresponding actionable product, services, competitive, sales, and marketing intelligence.

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Website: www.tirocommunications.com