TALKING POINTS
Picture courtesy of Ruth Newton and Oli Townsend (@intandemstories)
Workplaces We have worked with many employers over the years, and all sorts of different options exist. Here are some of the things which have worked well: • Sustainability events and green travel days: offer to take bikes and e-bikes for their staff to ride, get a pop-up banner stand printed, and take plenty of promotional literature and flyers. It’s amazing how many customers will continue to tell you over the coming months that this is where they first heard about your brand. • Big employers have Bicycle User Groups: can you get involved by offering a free advice session, or a small discount for their members, or a one-off deal? • Dr Bike sessions: we have attended many workplaces as mobile mechanics, offering tune-ups and basic servicing for staff. The employer pays the bill and it’s a great way of introducing your brand to the perfect audience: existing regular cyclists. • In-house cycle schemes: at the very least, ensure you are listed on the workplace’s scheme as one of the shops available for their staff to use. But some employers aren’t set up yet, and will be happy to use your preferred cycle scheme provider. Better still, The Bicycle Association now has guidance on how to run your own shop cycle scheme in-house. If you can offer this to local employers, you will automatically become the first choice for most of their staff. • Some employers subsidise the servicing of their employees’ bikes, particularly those who cycle for work, such as cycle couriers. We have deals with several employers whereby they send their staff to us for bike maintenance, and we invoice the employer every month.
Brand ambassadors
This is the big one. The right brand ambassadors can make a big difference to your image. Identify your core customer base, and keep a lookout for someone in this group who
42 | February 2022
would make a great brand ambassador for your shop or company. Then simply have a chat and ask if they’d like to get involved, in return for a generous deal or discount. In our Bristol store, cycle tourists are one of our main
customer groups. So we offered several such customers deals in exchange for becoming brand ambassadors. We gave @intandemstories two touring bikes for the price of one, in return for being allowed to use photos from their round-the-world trip in 2019. And they are truly fantastic photographers! Thanks to them, we now have an archive of really eye-catching pictures of our bikes in wonderful locations, and some great stories to accompany them. The following year we did the same with video pro @
kavetrip, and got some pretty awesome drone footage of our bikes in the Scottish Highlands. Depending on your audience, you may prefer to choose
roadies or mountain bikers, but the aim is the same: choose someone who does interesting or eye-catching things on the bike, and who is good at photography, or video work, or blogging, or social media. Are commuters your bread-and-butter customer base?
Then maybe choose someone influential from the local cycling campaign as your ambassador. Do you sell cargo bikes? Your ideal brand ambassador could be someone who uses their bike in an interesting or unusual way for work. In all of these examples, the crucial thing is to create
genuine, authentic, heart-warming stories and images from someone real, in a way that the big brands just can’t compete with. This is the sort of content people share on social media. These are the sorts of ideas that get people talking. This is so much more memorable than just another advert.
Bicycleworks provides everything you need to launch your own bike brand, including bike designs, components at lower than trade prices, website and systems, marketing and advertising.
www.bicycleworks.co.uk ■
www.bikebiz.com
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