Bike shop growth in 2025 starts by winning Google search - embrace that Engagement = Growth

Today is the first episode of a series for 2025 focused on helping bicycle shops effectively market and grow their businesses. We’ve always talked about marketing on the show however, we saw in 2024 that merchants who proactively promoted their businesses, the ones who engaged with the tools available to make their stores more visible to shoppers, those stores had impressive wins while business owners who took a passive or underresourced approach lost ground and saw shrinking sales year over year. As the head of our Google Ads Team, Matt Viara says, “Engagement = Growth” and that was certainly true in 2024 and will continue to apply in 2025 and beyond. We iterated Engagement = Growth during this episode and came up with E=G3 (that's G cubed) because there is leverage in engagement and it is significant.

Let’s move on to the first of eleven Around the Workstand episodes this year focusing on a specific action area. For February it’s Win Google Search.

Welcome Around the Workstand!

Blog post for reference 

1. Website, website, website
   1. Maintenance
   2. Localize your content
   3. Page titles/meta descriptions
2. Control how you show up - Google Business Profile (GBP)
3. Leverage free shopping listings 
4. Compete for the best placement with Google ads
   1. Search - great for awareness
   2. Shopping - connect with ready-to-buy customers
      1. Regional or National is possible for a few
         1. Cash flow was the focus
         2. Free shipping - start at $100, can always lower the threshold 
         3. Retailers were special buying and discounting
      2. Local
         1. Where the majority of bike shops see great ROAS
         2. Big plus: shipping, discounts, advanced processes not required
      3. Attribution 
         1. Making shoppers aware is the goal 
         2. We meet people where they are, people buy lots of ways
      4. Budget - the most general level
         1. $20 a day - advertise bikes - the bigger footprint you want the more budget required for success
            1. Geo depends on your area
            2. $500/mo
         2. Local ads - $125/mo + 10% of ad spend 
            1. Monthly call, unlimited email, no contracts 
      5. Specificity - granularity thwarts success

Engaged = growth or E=G3

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Ryan Atkinson, President + Co-Owner
Suzie Livingston, Marketing + Communications
Mark Still, Business Development

We also publish Around the Workstand on our YouTube channel if you'd like to watch while you listen. Here is our Around the Workstand playlist.

If you have any questions about the topics discussed in this episode of Around the Workstand or if you have ideas for new topics we can cover, schedule a time to meet with Mark Still here or email mark.s@works...