As the landscape continues to change for independent bicycle dealers with news of brands selling direct to customers; many are scratching their heads, some are concerned, and some are confident that the relationship they’ve built with their customers is solid through any changes.  We’re talking about building a community and for many bike shops they’re already ahead of the game in developing a loyal following with their customers, while some are still not sure where to start. In the interest of sharing ideas and giving some real examples about how one bike shop is having an on-going communication with the biking community, we talked with Karisha Hatridge, assistant manager of Cycle Therapy here in our home town of Twin Falls, Idaho.   I often access the team at Cycle Therapy for information on what’s happening on the other side of the fence.  Karisha has experienced success in growing their cycling community and she had some interesting ideas that might be of help to other bike shops that need a little pep talk.

Relational vs. Transactional Customers

This is one of my favorite topics as businesses analyze their customer, but don’t worry, you won’t get the full lecture today.  I’ll give you a brief overview because I believe it to be something very important to every business.  A transactional customer is one that thinks short term, tends to only be concerned with today’s transaction; they enjoy shopping and negotiating and ultimately hinge their transaction on price.  A relational customer thinks long-term, considers their transaction to one in a series of many, they do not enjoy comparison shopping and are more likely to be a repeat customer.  To make it difficult, a shopper can be a relational shopper in one product category and different in another.  So much of what we are talking about is developing that relational shopper because we want them to trust the bike shop as an expert and become a repeat customer.  Did you know that only ten percent of advertising is spent toward relational shoppers?  Even though transactional shoppers yield lower closing ratios and lower profit margins we still tend to focus the brunt of our advertising so they will grace our front door.

Social Media and Customer Service

Well there it is the silver bullet of success.  Wait, that’s two things and really there’s never a silver bullet, at least I’ve never discovered that one thing that is the ultimate solution, but we’ll focus in on these two areas.  Social media is important to any bike shop, and if handled properly can be the essential component to building your community and creating an on-going conversation.  Customer service, and of course we mean good customer service, is paramount to retaining customers.  Advertising and your voice on social media can portray a utopian bike shop experience and if it doesn’t match up with the personal service at the shop, they may be gone forever and let’s hope they didn’t tell anyone about their bad experience without you ever knowing.  It’s common for businesses to shy away from social media for fear of a bad comment or review, even though it gives you the opportunity to carefully reply and more importantly, the opportunity for happy customers to come to your defense.  We call that advocacy and we’ll talk more about that in a moment.  Karisha stresses that honesty has worked best for everyone that walks through the door, managing each person’s realistic cycling goals, and delivering on promises.  Word of mouth drives business more than traditional advertising and happens in person and now quite often in social media.  Karisha utilizes Facebook predominantly and shared with me some of the most important lessons she has learned in the last couple of years.

Facebook Success

Karisha will tell you first and foremost, you need to know your audience and pay attention to what they like on your page and how they actually respond. Having followers does not mean you have a community.  Building a quality follower is one that is engaged with your content, contributing to the conversation, and hopefully advocating on your behalf.  There’s a lot of talk about encouraging advocacy and having people speak favorably on your behalf.  I asked Karisha about how she encourages advocacy and she admitted that she’s passive about it and allows it to just happen organically.  It’s a safe approach that she is more comfortable with so that she remains genuine with her followers.  Your website is a platform for products, whereas Facebook gives you a personality.  Community interest posts have had the most success while product posts that would seem of interest get very few likes.  Karisha recently shared some images and video of a fat bike, snowball express race that took place in Sun Valley and the likes and shares are racking up.  People love to see exciting events that encompass their interests, and more importantly the chance to see images of them or their friends.  Posts about upcoming events for fun rides or bike clinics experience active conversations.  It’s still pretty cold in the morning around here and when Karisha posted for riders to stop by for a cup of coffee; she was pleasantly surprised how many responded.

Facebook Mistakes

We all want to sell, sell, sell on social media and that can be a mistake.  That is something that can work fine for a global business as opposed to a local shop.  Karisha explains how when she has talked about brands the conversation has become quiet.  She recently posted some information about their kid’s bikes and was surprised to see little or no activity.  Her mantra is Unselfish over Selfish.”  It’s a question she asks herself before each post and has helped maintain the conversation with her community.  The shop has struggled in the past with not having a single voice on Facebook and has worked to remedy that issue.  In an effort to get more posts, many organizations will invite several contributors to all post as one presence and unless they are focused on one unifying voice, the audience can sense the inconsistency.  It also doesn’t look good when a customer drops by and comments about a post that nobody in shop is aware about.  If your community is about cycling, you probably don’t want to use this audience to voice your opinion about issues that are not relevant.  You might think this is a no-brainer but people make this mistake all the time thinking controversy will really get the conversation flying, and it might; however, it may drive people away.  Another mistake can be made in the overall effort to gain ranking and post just to post rather than to put a little more time into a quality post that will be of interest to your community.

A Few More Good Suggestions

Take a look at your banner photo on your Facebook page.  Is it personal and represents who you are as a business?  Where many will just throw up the logo, Karisha likes to have an image with people showing emotion and if possible, having a call to action like. “We wanna ride with you!”  She also uses the smaller photo opportunity to show some serious local riders from their sponsored team.  If you notice, the name of the shop is still present next to this square and the logo is proudly displayed in the background on the cover image.  Are you using some of the features that Facebook offers?  You can boost posts, target specific audiences and more importantly see the impressions you’re making and even keep an eye on competitors.  Take things slowly and in a short while you’ll be surprised at how much you are learning.  It is worth it to allocate a certain amount of time each day to build your community through social media.

As I spoke to Karisha about developing a community, I certainly learned how our global Purely Custom community is different than the local community of Cycle Therapy.  I make this point because so often you’ll run across information on the internet or in a podcast that may not differentiate little details that may or may not apply directly to your situation.  If you know your audience you should be able to filter out what will help them engage.  Anytime we run across ideas or information that will help local bike shops succeed, we’ll continue to pass them along so check back again for future articles on marketing and branding your bike shop.