How Progressive Beginner Group Rides Make You More Money: Part 3

Time off the sales floor and away from your customers costs you money, so finding and using tools to streamline and organize beginner group bike rides is key to creating a successful program. PeopleForBikes developed Ride Spot to suit your needs of something efficient and easy to use in order to create, manage and execute great events at your shop. As a one-stop-shop, you can create the event, including the route, photos, description as well as seamlessly share to other social media platforms. Participants can join the event, comment, get updates and engage with your shop leading up to and after the event.

Setting up your Ride Spot account for success Maybe you haven’t quite gotten around to setting up your affiliate account, no judgement. In order to best serve your customers and organize these events, let’s walk through what makes a great Ride Spot profile.

• The header photo — something fun, aspirational, and not too scary. Maybe not someone mid suffer-fest on a 100 mile gravel grinder. Use a photo of someone who looks like your normal customer - heck, maybe even a few of your actual customers.

• Your logo — good quality and square versions preferred!

• Shop info — all of the basics to help people find you, reach you, understand who you are

Setting up Ride Spot Events Now that your affiliate account looks like an inviting place for people to explore, let’s add an event and add some detail to make your event listing stand out.

• To create events or routes utilize the "create" drop down menu in the upper left corner. Make sure you're logged in to do this!

• You can create riding or non-riding events depending on your needs. When creating a riding event that includes a route, utilize our map building video found here to help you put in the best turn-by-turn directions for your customers.

• Beginner group rides, whatever you choose to call yours, should have a catchy name and be something that new riders feel confident is right for them

• Photos tell a huge part of the story — why is this route so great? What does the top of this climb look like? How much fun are all of these people having as they are on the ride? Including these in your event will help people understand what they are going to experience with your shop on your ride.

• Route — a snapshot of what the ride actually is. This can help people overcome the first barrier of safety, they know the route and who they’ll be riding with.

• Description — In easy-to-understand terms, describe the ride. How steep are the hills? How fast will people be going? What do I need to bring? Are all questions you should answer in your description to help your new riders feel like they are walking into something informed.

Promoting your event This one is easy! Using your own social media channels, post the link to the event, share in an email blast, send out via text message, put on your calendar of events in your shop with a quick link, tell a customer while they’re in store buying a bike. We’ve also made this easy for you to do in just a few minutes.

• Using bit.ly or another link shortening service, add the URL of the event to your own tweets

• Using the share icon, share to your social media profiles

• Using the export function, create an iframe and include the code on your website

• Redirect an events page from your website to your Ride Spot affiliate events tab

Brandee Lepak says “Just try it.”

Now that your beginner group ride event is created - let’s talk about the execution of the ride when your new bikers show up at your shop.

#ClassicRoutes #Events #BeginnerGroupRides