As a freelancer, I’ve considered the pros and cons of working from home vs. having a physical office location on many occasions. There are many obvious benefits to working at home versus going into work. Come to find, there are also many benefits to having a physical location, even for small businesses. Here are a few key factors that show how having a physical office location is a better marketing strategy:
[Address]. Having a business address can actually play a huge role in the online visibility of your business. Local businesses with a physical location tend to show up more prominently online than businesses without. As we well know, we are in the technological decade where everything is right at the tip of our fingers. If we don’t know an answer to a question, we immediately search online for it. This is exactly what we do when it comes to business services. If an address can improve your online visibility, it’s definitely something worth checking into.
[Innovation]. While people feel innovated at different times and in different ways, it is a fact that sharing ideas can make people even more innovative. If you’re working at home and not regularly communicating with your other employees or partners, it will be difficult to bring in the innovative aspect a physical workplace does. While we have video chat features such as Skype, it isn’t the same as face-to-face collaborative brainstorming.
[Focus]. This one is one of the most obvious ones to me. As a freelancer working from home, I realized how difficult it could be to stay attentive in my workload on certain days. There are so many opportunities for distraction when working from home, that it can be hard to even get focused. The nice thing about having an office is that you’re very attentive on your workload once you’re in the office.
[Consistent Schedule]. I noticed that my schedule was never consistent when I first started freelancing. There would be days that I would sleep in until noon and wouldn’t start work for hours after waking up. I would then stay up late and ruin the opportunity for an early rise the next day. Having an office rental gives you a set schedule, while still giving you the freedom to come into the office the days you choose.
[Psychological Benefits]. Bevmax Office Centers wrote an article that I found very interesting. In the article, they discuss the benefits of freelancers renting an office. One of the reasons listed was psychological benefits. They state that getting out of the office can become a rare occurrence for some freelancers. I know from experience, that this is actually very true. When I started taking on more clients, I noticed that I didn’t set the proper schedule for myself to have much of a social life. I was constantly fighting deadlines and working into the late evenings. Going out to an office gives you the opportunity to get out of the house, have social interacts with passerbys, and also gives you the networking opportunity by being surrounded by other business offices.
While working from home is also important for freelancers. It’s important to consider office rentals for important team meetings and/or conferences. Getting the team together in-person can have phenomenal benefits on the overall organization. If you’re an entrepreneur who isn’t at the stage of team meetings, it’s equally important to consider a virtual office that has a physical address. Office rental agencies, such as Bevmax, offer many perks for their virtual office packages. Having a designated mailing address and a fax service is definitely one of those many reasons.
