- Jordan Trout, Ride Spot Event Guru
Return on Investment on Women’s Beginner Group Rides
Updated: Dec 16, 2019
As the summer season is winding down, lots of shops are starting to think about how they can take advantage of the slow season to help improve their business once the weather warms up in a few months. It’s a perfect time to make sure your Ride Spot presence is robust: adding routes of all kinds from short 10-milers for families, all the way up to 100-mile suffer-fests for your enthusiast riders. Send your staff out on a slow Monday to capture photos and the experience, tell the story of your favorite routes.
Once your Ride Spot Affiliate Profile is dialed in - think about ways you can engage new customers through group rides. By adding just one ride focused on women, your opportunities can be endless.
One of the rewards of doing this group ride with Laura Neighbors from Bicycle Sport shop has been seeing how she’s thought through the next evolution of the women-focused events. She reached out to me a few weeks ago to tell me that she’d thought about her volunteers who support the rides in addition to employees — she made her first call out to the Bicycle Sport Shop club and asked for the Women’s Ride Days they have only women volunteers. She filled her volunteer needs quickly and was able to do an entirely women supported women’s ride.
"My amazing volunteers feel a sense of pride knowing they are helping me provide a 100% women's lead and supported ride," Laura said.
It may seem like a minor win, but to have a robust enough club that all the volunteers for a women’s ride day be women means that Bicycle Sport Shop has done a ton of work to engage and retain women riders, many of whom found the club through being customers of BSS.
Customers like Zee Jiminez and Melissa Henao-Robledo came to Ride Day as customers — with regular engagement, Ride Spot to help them find fun safe rides in their areas, volunteers who know their concerns and needs, these two women may one day be volunteers of their own for Bicycle Sport Shop. Ambassadors and customers who will be your best representatives to other women interested in starting riding, who need all the gear to go along with it.
Laura Neighbors reflects on Zee Jimenez from the June 21 ride in Bee Cave "...I ran into her not too long ago out on a bike path that I ride often. Guess what, she bought a new bike from Bicycle Sport Shop! For those that think these rides don't equal sales, here's the proof!"
The proof is in the pudding. So where's the pudding? Track your sales! It can be as simple as a spreadsheet where you color code sales that happen before and after group rides. If your point of sale system supports it — add a unique $0.00 SKU for each group ride you hold and track how your women's specific rides compare. Keep track of attendance of group rides and sales associated with it to get an idea of the conversion rate. Use these metrics to help you make buying decisions, merchandise product in your store, and market your events successfully.
Beginner rides are worth it to connect with the 99% of riders that are out there. They're worth it from a feel-good community building sense, and they are worth it as a means to grow your business. You can find more ideas about tracking sales associated with group rides from our series on Progressive Beginner Group rides. If you have questions or want to brag about your shop's beginner group rides to have PeopleForBikes feature you on our blog, email Jordan Trout!