The New Rules of Marketing and PR


Gerard Vroomen will tell you that he is an engineer, not a marketer. He will tell you that the company he co-founded, Cervelo Cycles,1 does not have any marketing experts. But Vroomen is wrong. Why? Because he is obsessed with the buyers of his competition bikes and with the engineeringdriven product he offers them. He’s focused his company to help his customers win races—and they do. In the 2005 Tour de France, David Zabriskie rode the fastest time trial in the race’s history on a Cervelo P3C at an average speed of 54.676 kph (33.954 mph). As I write this, the Cervelo Pro Cycling TestTeam is ranked the top team in the world. Vroomen also excels at using the Web to tell cycling enthusiasts compelling stories, to educate them, to engage them in conversation, and to entertain them. Because he uses Web content in interesting ways and sells a bunch of bikes in the process, Vroomen is a terrific marketer. The Cervelo site works extremely well because it includes perfect content for visitors who are ready to buy a bike and also for people who are just browsing. The content is valuable and authentic compared to the marketing messages that appear on so many other sites. On the Cervelo site, enthusiasts find detailed information about each model, bikes that can cost $3,000– $5,000 or more. An online museum showcases production models dating from the early days of the company and some interesting past prototypes. Competitive cycling enthusiasts can sign up for an email newsletter, download audio such as interviews with professional riders from the Cervelo ProCycling TestTeam, or check out the company blog. Cervelo Pro Cycling TestTeam wins races, and you can follow the action on Cervelo’s Team pages, which include news and bike race photos. Most recently, Cervelo launched Cervelo.tv, an online channel with product features, race reports, and cycling celebrity interviews. ‘‘Our goal is education,’’ Vroomen says. ‘‘We have a technical product, and we’re the most engineering-driven company in the industry. Most bike companies don’t employ a single engineer, and we have eight. So we want to have that engineering focus stand out with the content on the site. We don’t sell on the newest paint job. So on the site, we’re not spending our time creating fluff. Instead, we have a good set of content.’’ Ryan Patch is the sort of customer Cervelo wants to reach. An amateur triathlon competitor on the Vortex Racing team, Patch says, ‘‘On the Cervelo site I learned that Bobby Julich rides the same bike that is available to me. And it’s not just that they are riding, but they are doing really well. I can see how someone won the Giro de Italia on a Cervelo. That’s mind-blowing, that I can get the same bike that the pros are riding. I can ride the same gear. Cervelo has as much street cred as you can have with shaved legs.’’ Patch says that if you’re looking to buy a new bike, if you are a hard-core consumer, then there is a great deal of detailed information on the Cervelo site about the bikes’ technology, construction, and specs. ‘‘What I really like about this web site is how it gives off the aura of legitimacy, being based in fact, not fluff,’’ he says. Vroomen writes all of the content for the Cervelo site himself, and the design work has been done by a moonlighting chiropractor. There’s a content management tool built in, so Vroomen can update the site himself. You wouldn’t call it a fancy site, but it works. ‘‘We get negative feedback from Web designers about our site,’’ Vroomen says. ‘‘But we have great comments from customers.’’ Search Engine Marketing is important for Cervelo. Because of the keyword-rich cycling content available on the site, Vroomen says, Cervelo gets the same amount of search engine traffic as many sites for bike companies that are 10 times larger. Cervelo is growing very rapidly, but Vroomen is quick to note that growth is not the result of any one thing. ‘‘We take as gospel that people have to see the product five different ways [for us] to really get the credibility.’’ Vroomen makes certain that his bikes are in front of people many different ways, starting with search engines, so that they get those five exposures. ‘‘For example, they may see the bike on the site, on TV in a pro race, at the dealer, and on a blog,’’ He says. Vroomen says building out the Web marketing at Cervelo takes a lot of time, but it is simple and cost effective. ‘‘This is the future for companies like us,’’ he says. ‘‘You can be very small and occupy a niche and still sell your products all over the world. It’s amazing when we go into a new country the amount of name recognition we have. The Internet gives you opportunities you never had before. And its not rocket science. It’s pretty easy to figure out.’’ (Taken form the Book of David Meerman Scott)


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