Most marketing for bike shops in Connecticut is painfully routine: “catalog ads” that just show a long list of your bikes or accessories that can often be filtered just like an Amazon: “featured,” “best sellers,” and, of course, “price: low to high.” The “Amazoning” of the marketplace is frustrating, but as a local bike shop, you have distinct advantages. The challenge is to make sure your customers know about them.
Marketing for Bike Shop should make you stand out
It all starts with tailoring your marketing to your community’s needs and interests. This isn’t Madison Avenue…it’s grinding it out with Guerilla Marketing Tactics. Start by understanding your customer: most city kids won’t be trail riding, and most country kids aren’t racing on a track. Your own community has its own special needs.
Thinking outside the box can go a long way. And there are lots of ideas that you can use out there, because there’s no reason not to copy what a bike shop in Jersey or in Connecticut does if you’re based in Chicagoland!
Marketing’s job isn’t just showing what a customer can buy. Its job is to develop your “brand,” create awareness, and build relationships. All three of these will help you in the long term, long after a customer browses a list of your inventory and forgets it.
5.5 ideas you can use today. Have you tried any of these?
- A neighborhood bike shop in Raleigh, NC, hosts weekend bike trips. Led by one or two of the shops employees (often a sales person and a tech team up) and spend the morning riding different loops each week. The group leaders share helpful tips, training ideas, and snack bars while swapping stories of past adventures, and those they dream about. Luckily the trips always seem to end up back at the bike shop, where the group can browse new bikes and accessories.
- Community workshops: where techs perform free basic repairs for local kids: showing them how to properly inflate tires, adjust seat height, adjust brakes, and then ride through an obstacle course set up in their parking lot, or at a park (with permission). They often set up a tent, or work out of a van, with basic accessories cyclists usually want.
- You can even do this as a “pop up” in local bike parks or outside school yards during times of day when kids or parents are around.
- A high end bike shop in Greenwich, Connecticut knows that they’re busy, and that they can’t find enough staff when the phone rings. So they take their telephone callers on a “journey,” inviting them to hit to open road with them, at least in their minds, with messages on hold. Each short message touches on a different part of the trip, and how to enhance it, or solve problems, with products or service that the shop can help them with.
- Street Festivals: Attract attention with an old beat up bike that is 50% restored and repainted to show bike owners what they can achieve with their own old rides. Give away a free “tune up” as a “spin the wheel” prize. (these are great because they make some noise that catches more of the audience’s attention)
5.5 Other Guerilla Tactics: Sidewalk Chalk Art outside your shop, Flash mobs, partnering with other local businesses like sandwich shops or cafes. And don’t forget about social media videos.
Today’s Market
The bicycle market has changed a lot in the past 20 years. Though bike sales grew by 40% during the Pandemic, they’ve fallen again, back to pre-pandemic levels. 38.8% of specialty bike shops were closed or consolidated between 2000 and 2015, and the trend continues. Roughly half of bike retailers are either big box stores or online retailers.
Your success
In Connecticut today, more than ever you’re facing global competition, but you’ve got an advantage: you’re there, right in the community. Use that to your advantage and put the hammer down with great marketing for bike shops.
