E David Callender Consulting » Bike Shops

Bike Shops – Use a blog to show your passion

Dave Callender — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:14:57 +0000

OK – You have taken the time and you have a great website for your bike shop. It has great information about your products, services, technical information and events. But how do you show your passion or expertise for cycling. The answer is your blog. A bike shop blog can be fun, build your reputation both locally & afar, and most importantly bring more customers to your website and shop.

Here is an example. At El Camino Bike Shop their blog both highlights the shops interest in 29er mountain bikes and the expertise of one of its owners, Will Schillenger (Otherwise know as 29er guy). The blog gets about approximately 40 to 60% of the traffic of the shops main website, and by linking product information from the blog to the store website drives traffic to the store. El Camino Bike Shop has seen customers out of their normal geographic region call and make the trip to El Camino Bike Shop to purchase products because of their blog.

El Camino Bike Shop website
El Camino Bike Shop Blog

Why every bike shop should sell used bikes

Dave Callender — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:01:11 +0000

I know what you are thinking – What a hassle, I do not have space, there is little profit.

But what if I told you that you could double your traffic to your website, bring new customers to your shop, bring old customers back to your shop more quickly to purchase new bikes, make a little extra cash, and is a free service that only takes about an hour a week, then would you be excited?

The key is to use Craigslist to advertise a small number of your present customers consigned bikes and direct the Craigslist Ad to your website.

If you are having a promotion, add information (and a link) to your promotion at the bottom of each Craigslist ad and you see a substantial rise in interest for that promotion from people that would never have become aware of your shop or promotion.

There is a reason that newspapers are going out of business and it is Craigslist. You need to use it in your everyday promotion of your bike shop.

Craigslist menu for bicycles