In a bicycle market with strong growth thanks to the electric segment, companies are facing new challenges to manage inventories while anticipating supply problems and variations in component prices. Another challenge is that many new entrants are entering this attractive and dynamic market, and established brands are having to reinvent themselves. According to Markus Diekman, co-founder of Rose Bikes, there are about 30% of superfluous bike models on the market. The multiplicity of players and models makes the offering unreadable for the uninitiated. To differentiate itself, the brand has the right weapons: its personality and connectivity. Thanks to the smartbike, it is back at the heart of the cycling experience.
Differentiate to attract cyclists and trigger the purchase of an electric bicycle
Work on the personality of your bike brand to create adhesion
To convince consumers, brands must have a perceived added value compared to others. This goes through the product offered, beyond its product, one of the key factors of success of a brand is its branding. The brand platform allows to attract the cyclist with a positioning, a promise that will echo his values and aspirations (e.g.: “Innovate or die”, slogan of the Specialized brand).
To feed the charisma of the brand, storytelling is a very good tool, which tells with emotion a story around a company and a product. A technique purely intended to improve brand attachment and memorization, since a message delivered in the form of a story will be 22 times more memorable (e.g.: “A personal story” by Riese & Müller, retracing the beginnings of the brand and the birth of the Birdy). Once the brand platform and storytelling are defined, this is translated into the product design, which must display strong, distinct and easy-to-remember graphic codes (e.g. Swapfiets’ blue wheels).
Modernize your electric bike offer with the Smartbike
Whether in stores or on e-commerce sites, competition is high. Beyond product specificities and price variations, the brand will differentiate itself through its aura and charisma, its value proposition, its lifestyle aspirations. Cyclists will be won over by a complete experience, combining their electric bike with services for safe, practical and simple journeys.
By creating a smartbike, the brand is innovating and boosting the perception of value on this product but also on its entire range. With the Internet of Things having its place in our modern lifestyles, the connected bike is the continuation of consumer expectations regarding mobility to increase safety and make bike travel more fun.
Thanks to connectivity, the brand is back at the center of the cycling experience. A true interface between the electric bicycle and the cyclist, a mobile application offers connected services to meet the needs of the fight against theft. More than 400,000 bikes are stolen in France every year, so this is a major concern for cyclists, especially in urban areas. The smartbike provides a complete system from deterrence to bike recovery: notifications of suspicious movement, audible alarm, electric assistance cut-off, geolocation, sharing of position and bike record with law enforcement.
Connectivity also enables many other key services such as maintenance assistance, gamification… The brand’s value proposition is to reinvent bicycle travel and thus increase the attractiveness of the EAB as well as its frequency of use.
Optimize rider satisfaction and loyalty
By regularly adding new services to the cycling experience, cyclists consolidate and renew their trust in the brand. Among these services, some facilitate the maintenance of the bike and ensure its longevity, such as connected maintenance. Within the white-label application Velco Rider, the brand offers a personalized maintenance guide to accompany the cyclist, indicating the actions to be carried out and the time to do them (for example, with the help of alert settings: “You’ve ridden 1000 km. Please make an appointment at your point of sale to service your bike.
In the application, the brand can interact directly with the cyclists, to maintain and reinforce the link. With the help of challenges or community building mechanisms, the brand can create and grow a sense of membership. Thus, cyclists identify with the brand’s lifestyle proposition and claim it, becoming brand ambassadors. Their recommendation will be the most powerful communication mechanism, since 92% of Internet users trust content shared by people more than by brands (only 36% trust messages coming directly from brand channels). Your customers will become your best salesmen, by developing your notoriety and credibility around them.
Beyond the viral potential, cyclists will, in the long run, be able to make additional purchases according to their needs and under the brand’s recommendations.
Innovate with a product design adapted to the needs of cyclists
Thanks to the connected bike, the brand has access to anonymized data on usage, journeys, cyclist profiles, etc. This information, once analyzed, is a gold mine of decision support for the design of future products or the implementation of marketing mechanisms adapted to the uses and profiles of cyclists. The brand has a real knowledge of its customers’ needs, so that it is always one step ahead of the competition.