Brand build
The closer you are to your customers, the closer you are to unlocking your brand's truly transformative potential. That's why Lithia specializes in providing you with solutions to capture "the voice of the customer." By assembling a network of super users, you'll not only have an open line of communication for your brand decision makers to tap into for pressing customer-experience questions around product, marketing, or retail, you'll have a rich and diverse network to engage the consumer, elevate brand awareness, grow sales, measure results, and provide the data you need to deliver user insights to key decision makers.
How 60 women fell in love with a brand, over night.
It started with a problem: "Bike shops are intimidating, especially to women." Seeing the frustration from women being ignored, talked down to, or flat out disrespected when they went to by a bike. Realizing many bike shops were trying to serve this dynamic market, but often failing.
The opportunity was to create a program that broke down these barriers and created a welcoming and friendly bike shop experience. The program would target growing women's cycling, knowing it would likely benefit all customers. Programs like these are often called "Ambassador" programs, but that felt like a worn out word for "free stuff". So, we found women who wanted to "advocate" for other women and get more women on more bikes more often, and called them "Advocates" and invited them to the first Trek Women's Summit in Waterloo, Wi to connect with each other and the people behind the brands.
These three days changed the lives of 60 women and built relationships that will last a life time. It started with new bike day and riding their new bikes with the people who designed the bike on the trails and roads they were designed. We outlined program expectations and shared best practices on how to lead rides, host events and clinics. And we got to know a tribe of incredible women who returned home to grow women's cycling, and Trek's market share, in local markets throughout the US and Canada
This program broke down bike shop intimidation and grew sales in a down market. Retailers report it is the only marketing initiative they’ve seen link directly to immediate sales growth. Advocate stores grew their "percent of sales to women" by 11 points over stores without an advocate. In fact, stores with an advocate outpaced stores without in every category we could measure.
How would your brand benefit from an event that welcomed people using the product into your brand's "home" and introduced them to the people behind the brand? The same people designing the product and wanting to hear straight from the user.