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Velofix Direct Response Marketing

Introduction

Today, the business environment has become very competitive. The future of a company is doctored and monitored into a strategic plan. A strategic plan involves the actions that the company intends to take to remain relevant, sustainable, and competitive in the industry (Hoffmann, 2016). In this report, “Velofix Direct Response Marketing Plan” will be explained. In the report, Velofix’s competitive landscape, situational analysis, strategies and objectives, and marketing tactics will be analyzed.

Background Research and Analysis

Velofix was founded in 2013 and is headquartered at Vancouver, British Columbia. Founded by Boris, Chris, and Davide, Velofix is the biggest fleet of bike shop that takes bicycle service and repair to the customer (Sutton, 2017). As a franchise, Velofix exists to offer a wide range of consumer bike services, through which customers save time while riding more. The business opportunities for Velofix include market expansion to the U.K, Norway, and UAE who have untouched markets, online sales for bike, Ski hills and Western Canada can convert into bikes revenues, exponential growth rate for online retail, the year’s growth in cycling is increasing by 10 percent while bike shops decline by 10 percent (Abraham, 2013).

However, Velofix is experienced by various problems. These problems include little or no promotional or marketing campaigns, unfocused marketing to final consumers, a few visits are generated in their Facebook page, and there is no standard brand message in their promotional efforts (Sutton, 2017). Also, Velofix’s Dragon Den publicity continues to decline while its cycling business experiences stiff competition.

Competitive Overview

The main business threat to Velofix is competition from other industry players, including Loki Cycles, Beeline Connect, Brilliant, On Bike Share, QSP and others. According to (Sutton, 2017), Velofix has a low barrier to entry since mobile franchising has low start-up costs. This means that other players continue to invest into the industry, and thus increasing competition. However, the direct industry competitors for Velofix are low. As per the case, mobile franchising of bike repair lacks many direct competitors. Nonetheless, price points are relatively aligned with competitors, meaning that Velofix enjoys the added advantage of convenience.

To gain greater market share, Velofix needs to leverage and address various issues. First, Velofix needs to focus on creating brand loyalty with the current customers to acquire competitive edge (Tripodi & Persia, 2015). Second, Velofix has to focus on expanding its cycling business into new markets to gain larger control of the market. Third, Velofix needs to create pilot campaign in the already its top markets while emphasizing on convenience. Besides, establishing pilot campaign across new market places would help Velofix obtain competitive advantage and maintain competitiveness in the cycling sector.

Objectives and Strategies

SMART Objectives

• Awareness: Focus on promoting and marketing its brand on social media to gain brand loyalty and brand awareness to acquire a competitive edge over competitors.
• Acquisition: Acquire and create a brand pool to raise the value of a franchise as projected in January 2013 during product launch.
• Trial: To maintain the 1-week initial training on all products from what the customers value, to strategic discounting so as to promote services trial.
• Retention: To focus on brand image recreation and creation of new tag lines on other key brand value aspects to expand further in North America and other existing markets within the projected period.

Primary Target Audience

Velofix’s key target markets are North America, Norway, the U.K., and the UAE. Other primary target audience for Velofix are customers across Canada and the United States of America (Sutton, 2017). In terms of gender, Velofix’s main target audience is male cyclists.

In the campaign, Velofix is running a single test market. Since the company intends to use social media marketing, kids and young children are more associated with this campaign (Zhang, Zhang, Duan, & Bryde, 2015). These include both male and female target audiences.

As per the case, Velofix is diversifying its operations into different countries. In this campaign, Velofix should employ more focus on Canada. This is because Canada has the largest number of bike stores, customers, and that most people visit Canada during holidays and always want to cycle (Hutzler, 2017).

As highlighted in the case, Velofix also has a perfect market opportunity in the U.S., since it expects to operate 400+ vans in the American market (Sutton, 2017). The American market is composed of children, men, and women market segments. Psychologically, men believe in cycling for body fitness. Women are also having this mindset. The psychological impact of cycling on kids is influenced by their parents.

Velofix Communication Program

In using social media platforms, Velofix should focus more on using its Facebook page to ensure that the number of visits leading to sales increases. To have maximum impact on the target audience, Velofix should combine Facebook marketing with email marketing and the use of referral programs which are believed to reduce the promotional and marketing costs into the market (Schweizer et al., 2012).

Message to Convey

To achieve the set marketing and promotional goals, Velofix will focus on increasing FB presence (Sutton, 2017). To convey this message, the company will create “like and share posts to win” more customers and lead to more online sales. For purposes of convenience, Velofix would focus on the standard tag line. This would help “save time, ride more” while ensuring maximum convenience to the consumers.

Execution & Tactics

Velofix’s budget for the marketing and promotional campaign would be $20. The execution of this budget will be aligned to unique tactics as detailed in the table:

In the execution of tactics, the marketing plan is proposed to last for three months. The proposed dates are based on the urgency and the need to meet the ongoing market demand as well as the company’s desire to increase sales leads to raise profitability and competitiveness (Jorna & Zoer, 2012). The success of the campaign will be measured by having worked within the $20 proposed budget and achieving all the set marketing objectives.

Other Considerations

As presented above, the budget for the proposed promotional campaign is $20. The goal for this campaign is to raise the number of the generated leads in order to keep adding franchise into the primary target markets (Sutton, 2017). Nonetheless, Velofix will play safe tactics in order to build brand and customer loyalty while establishing unique brand awareness especially via the creation of social media presence.

References

Abraham, S. (2013). Will business model innovation replace strategic analysis?. Strategy & Leadership.

Hoffmann, M. L. (2016). Bike lanes are white lanes: Bicycle advocacy and urban planning. U of Nebraska Press.

Hutzler, Y. (2017). SWOT analysis of adapted physical activity: A rehabilitation perspective. Sobama Journal, 12(1), 48-57.

Jorna, R., & Zoer, H. J. (2012). SAFECYCLE: E-safety applications for safe cycling in Europe. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 48, 589-596.

Schweizer, J., Meggs, J. N., Dehkordi, N. R., Rupi, F., & Pashkevich, A. (2012). Unified, Low-Cost Analysis Framework for the Cycling Situation in Cities. International Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 6.

Sutton, M. (2017, May 30). Velofix: “Goal to become world’s largest bike shop network is on course”. Retrieved from Cycling Industry News: https://cyclingindustry.news/velofix-goal-to-become-worlds-largest-bike-shop-network-is-on-course/

Tripodi, A., & Persia, L. (2015). Impact of e-safety applications on cyclists’ safety. International journal of injury control and safety promotion, 22(4), 377-386.

Zhang, L., Zhang, J., Duan, Z. Y., & Bryde, D. (2015). Sustainable bike-sharing systems:  characteristics and commonalities across cases in urban China. Journal of Cleaner Production, 97, 124-133.