How to make friends and influence people. Because winning new customers depends on it

In part 3 of our ‘CIN guide to Marketing which makes a difference’ series, focused on engaging with and winning new customers, we hear from Henry Hayes at Fully Charged, exploring audience engagement, working with others who share your audience, and defining the value your customers receive from your content.

Fully Charged was founded in 2014 by Ben Jaconelli, an ex-supercar salesman whose passion for automotive technology transitioned into eBikes. Ben immediately felt inspired to spark eBike and active travel interest in his fellow Londoners, and today Fully Charged has 4 sites across the UK; London Bridge, Cornwall, Guildford and Silverstone, a 5th store soon to open in the New Forest, and an ever-growing online business, catering for 3 eBike categories: ME, individuals. WE, families. B2B, businesses.

Joining Fully Charged in 2020, Henry comes from a tech background, having previously co-founded his own SaaS (Software as a Service) business within the hospitality industry. After joining as the Communications lead, he now heads up Marketing, with a team of 4 full-time members of staff.

Setting the scene, Henry outlines, “We operate as a multi-brand retailer, with each of our 10 brands having models that span commuter, hybrid, folding, eMTB, family and business cargo electric bikes. It’s quite a challenge! What’s clear is that consumers want different value-add from different channels. Juggling all of them is tough, but I hope that we’re starting to double-down on what is effective in each area.”

As parts 1 and 2 of this feature have outlined already, we’re at a point of significant change across social media. TiKTok has transformed what valued content is. What it looks like. What the audience wants to see and hear. How that’s delivered. Polished, peak Instagram, filter heavy images are not the future (and maybe not even the present).

That’s a window of real opportunity.

Change is there for the making.

Audiences are actively looking for new sources of insight, from those who share knowledge, and value.

Taking up the ‘CIN guide to Marketing which makes a difference’ conversation Henry comments, “We think it’s really important, first and foremost, to set the identity of what we want our content to come across as, be it short or long form video, still or written. We’ve created 4 memorable mantras that whenever we’re pushing out any content, it has to play by these rules:

1. Thoughtfully – understanding that we’re here to help and to be approachable.
2. Skilfully – We need to show people what we know.
3. Playfully – being us at Fully Charged we like to be a bit cheeky, so we have fun with it!
4. Tastefully – BUT we’re a premium brand. Refined means restraint so don’t take it too far.

This is our core purpose, sometimes we get all 4 just right, and other times we don’t. But it’s good for us to strive towards these values. I think branding and storytelling is vital when dealing with a premium product, it humanises the relationship and in doing so elevates the ‘phygital’ (blended, integrated, online and offline) experience the end-consumer has.’

Short Form

We see short form content as majority top of the funnel material, and will, we hope, create several touch points across the foundations of the purchasing journey that will lead the consumer towards finding us.

As TikTok’s interest-led algorithm continues to marvel the market with its bite-sized, explosive short form content as much as it does its content-creators, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are evidently battling hard to compete with the viral platform.

We’re now producing raw, longer form content for our YouTube channel and re-purposing that content in several different ways to hit our Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. It is just the beginning, but the benefits have been good so far. It is inexpensive, and it increases the chances of virality.

Influencer Marketing

We’ve also ventured into the realms of influencer marketing in 2023 with British chef Thomas Straker.

At the time of writing just one piece of content with Thomas riding the Desiknio Pinion Urban has received 231k views on Instagram Reels and 137k views on TikTok.

Albeit being a slightly daunting prospect, why have we decided to do it? Unlike many FMCG brands that see sales sore from these activations, it is evidently a much harder prospect for FMCD to convert these tribal audiences to our products. However, we hope to achieve the following in due course:

✅ Increase TOTF brand awareness and reach

✅ Win long-term partnerships with our influencers

✅ Build credibility and trust to a wider audience

✅ Enrich our content strategy

✅ Increase sharing potential on social platforms

Longer Form Video

Of course, we don’t want to knock off longer form content. Similar to Propel, it has been our most powerful tool for us. We’re purposefully not out to create huge swarms of views on our YouTube channel. A core KPI for us is watch-time per user on YouTube. I believe some people and content departments can get caught up in too many vanity metrics.

You can view our video on the Riese & Muller Load 60 here, where Ben takes his partner Ebba to labour on the bike!

B2B

In October we launched an #eBikesforBusiness campaign solely on our LinkedIn page, where we spotlighted five Fully Charged partnered businesses from five very separate industries who all use the same cargo bike. Here’s one of the features with construction business FM Conway.

We’ve had >4x growth in 2 years owing to us pushing B2B related content, baked in with core social responsibility posting. Having fantastic partners who share great content about their cargo bikes really helps… we need to leverage them much more.

How

How can we do all this? Well, we have done the following:

• Invested in a full-time content creator. We’re incredibly fortunate to have both a videographer and editor in one, with great marketing know-how and experience.
• Invested in the future. We have a very young team within Marketing, our oldest head is 29 and youngest is straight out of university at 21 and doing a fantastic job in copywriting, digital community management and supporting short form content.
• Invested in our CRM. Whilst Hubspot might be looked upon as a B2B CRM platform, we’ve found it invaluable for our inbound marketing and sales methodologies.

So, in answer, I believe that it’s all about content curation, not just creation. In time AI will most likely able to determine what forms of content should be repurposed, and where it will deliver the best results across organic and paid (just look at what Chat GPT is doing in the copywriting game!). The more authentic and original that raw piece of footage is, and how well that piece performs within the particular platform, the better a campaign will do in the long run. This is my thoughts, but that is next I reckon!

I think lastly it’s about being happy with not succeeding. I really don’t think we’re producing anywhere near the content that we can be, and sometimes feel like we’re spinning too many plates, too often. But I do believe that we’re starting to double down in certain areas of what we know works for our bottom line. The most important end-result is to get people using this cleaner and greener way of getting around… that’s why we’re in this game!”

As Chris, Kineta, and Henry have all outlined, the opportunity to form value-based connections with prospective and existing customers requires a commitment to service and standards, delivered via digital channels, which matches those found in-store. Social media can drive new customers to and through your shop door, or turn them off before you even gain traction. Planning and resourcing are key to sustainably, consistently, winning new customers.

In the 4th and final part of this series, featured in the March print edition of Cycling Industry News, we explores how Paul Vousden of Mapdec Cycle Works began a TikTok and YouTube based journey which already puts money in the till. In this feature we dig into how an edge of the Lake District located workshop-based business now has London based customers, and an American Footballer asking them to build a bike for him (shipped from the USA)!