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Client Overview

CycleTherapy (CT) is a bicycle sales and service business, located in Waterford, MI and owned by Ernie Dell. CT offers a wide selection of bicycles for different people and uses. They also focus on providing expert service (repairs and tune-ups). Ernie’s staff (between 4-12 seasonally) is professionally trained and certified to work on all bicycle makes and models of bicycles. CycleTherapy online (CT online) (http://ctbicycles.com) offers customers the ability to shop online as well as tips on bicycling, bike advocacy, and biking news.

CT has competition in sales and service from 5 bike-specific stores. CT also competes nationally for sales with big box retail stores (e.g., Target.com), as well with the used bike and bike part market on sites such as eBay.com

Bicycling in Michigan is a seasonal activity. Spring and summer are critical sales months for CT. Ernie wants to capitalize on upcoming warming temperatures in Michigan, by capturing new customers eager to get into biking, as well as existing bikers who need their bicycles serviced before hitting the trails.

According to market analysts, the biggest market for new bike sales will come from keeping the white male market (3.6 million nationally currently). Women, minorities and casual biker are historically an untapped resource in this industry. Although Ernie’s existing customers are mainly mountain bike riders, he specifically wants to target the large baby boomer market (40-50 yrs olds). He also wants to focus on capturing casual women riders.

CT’s revenue is about $900,000 annual gross. Advertising has been limited to print in local papers and Yellowpages. Ernie has experimented with radio with unsatisfactory results. Adwords is a exciting opportunity for 2 reasons.

Proposed Adwords Strategy

Our strategy is to focus on two broad campaigns, sales and service. Sales is a strong campaign focus, because our target audience are not experts and will likely seek out a physical bike shop and salespeople before purchasing a bike. Also, repairs must be done in person, which means people will need to search for local shops in order to service their bicycles.

Our two campaigns will be broken into 6 AdGroups. We decided for most keyword searches we would do variations of bike and bicycle which are the most common phrases for referring to non-motorized bikes. We also, chose to use negative like “-motor” to remove unwanted searches for motorcycles. We decided to leave the term “Waterford” out, which isthe city the bike store is located in because most search terms like “Bike Shop Waterford” already shop his shop as the number one natural result. We used Google Keyword Tool to compare the competition of some keywords against the estimated amount of traffic it would produce. The first set of AdGroups, “Bike Shop” and “Bicycle Shop” focus on people who are looking for a place to purchase bikes overall. The ads focus on location and staff as key selling points of the business. Our final sales AdGroup “29 Bike” is a unique keyword specifically requested by Ernie, the owner who has noticed this as a trend in his industry. 29 refers to the wheel size of the bike, which has become a standard size in bicycling. Although, this particular ad focuses on a more experienced rider who knows bike terminology, there is virtually no competition on the keyword, making it worthwhile to experiment with.

Our service campaign will begin with “Bike Repair” and “Bicycle Repair”. Although these are general terms, the cost/traffic ratio fits within our budget. Our ad includes information about the staff and location, which we believe will be selling points for potential customers. Finally, Ernie also suggested another keyword phrase based on a trend he has seen with his shop, which is “Schwinn Repair”. Ernie has noticed many people calling and asking if they repair Schwinn bicycles. Although his shop repairs all bikes, he believes Schwinn bikes fit into the baby boomer demographic he is interested in capturing. This keyword has no competition and so we decided to experiment with it as well.

One of the potential loops I am interested in is mobile based platforms. Although African is one of the least connected areas, mobile use is sky-rocketing in comparison. This makes sense since physical land lines have traditionally been difficult to deploy, and mobile phones leaped over this already. Mobile internet use seems to be following this trend.

André-Michel Essoungou reports that:

Africa’s Internet users (more than 100 million at the end of 2010) represent just a small percentage of the 2 billion people online around the world. In the US alone, more than 220 million people use the Internet. Within Africa, one person out of every 10 is estimated to be an Internet user (up from one in 5,000 back in 1998), making the continent the region in the world with the lowest penetration rate.

Among the many reasons for this poor showing are the scarcity and prohibitive costs of broadband connections (the fastest means of accessing the Internet), and the limited number of personal computers in use.

But these challenges simultaneously contribute to Africa’s impressive growth rate in the use of mobile Internet, which in recent years has been the highest in the world. “Triple-digit growth rates are routine across the continent,” notes Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera, the world’s most popular Internet browser for mobile phones. “The widespread availability of mobile phones means that the mobile Web can reach tens of millions more than the wired Web.” Mr. Tetzchner believes that like mobile phones, whose use has grown rapidly in Africa in recent years, the “mobile Web is beginning to reshape the economic, political and social development of the continent.”

Specifically one of the interesting mobile platforms that has been proven to be successful in certain contexts has been Ushahidi, which allows users to report on events in their environment using non-smartphones. This is important since many people still are not connected to the internet despite having access to mobile phones.

André-Michel Essoungou writes

Speaking to Africa Renewal, Ms. Okolloh of Ushahidi notes that in the digital arena “the barriers to entry are generally lower and the space more open” than with traditional media. Her colleague Mr. Hersman concurs. “Technology is one of the few ways that young Africans can bypass the inefficiencies in the system that allow the status quo to hold on,” he says. “It lowers the barriers to entry for everyone to get involved and be heard.”

Although Ushahidi was developed for people to report on violence in their community, which was verified and mapped, if you think of the software in a broader context as providing non-technical people a platform for reporting and checking on needs-based issues, then AgShare isn’t that far off. One might imagine the platform being used to report on farming conditions, or contemporary issues related to farming, which different stakeholders might provide different types of information. This information can augment university curriculum by providing contemporary information for discussion.

In a system like this one always needs to consider what the incentive for people to participate. This is not entirely clear, but one might speculate that farmers might want to share information, because it also helps them to know what their neighbors are experiencing. This would need to be explored more fully to better understand, but it is a start.

More Reading

Young Americans Put Technology to New Uses, from Africa Renewal, April 2010, page 3

Africa Renewal Magazine – A social media boom begins in Africa, from Africa Renewal, December 2010, page 3