How to Market Bikes Online with AI
Stålhästen is a Swedish bicycle manufacturer building a classic, stylish, and sustainable bike for every cyclist. Since its launch in 2010, it has built and sold over 20,000 bicycles.
Having been on Google Shopping for a while, Stålhästen approached BrightBid’s AI solution for Google Shopping. They wanted to stand out in a competitive e-commerce environment and increase their numbers. As a result, we increases Stålhästen’s ROAS from 473% in January 2021 to 1232%.
About the project
How To Promote a Bike Shop on Google Shopping Using AI
The bike shop business is a tough game. At some point, Stålhästen realized that they did not want to be just another bike seller. Their online marketing solution—Google Smart Shopping—was not delivering the desired results.
Stålhästen’s main problem was a lack of brand awareness and product visibility leading to lower sales. Without a strong presence in the market, potential customers were not aware of the brand or its products.
Stålhästen asked us to help them increase their ad spend return, conversion value, and brand visibility.
After an in-depth analysis of the client’s Google accounts and their stock, we recommended a new strategy. The Google Shopping strategy we advised was a combination of:
- Feed optimization tweaks
- Ad formats
- Targeting options, and bid adjustments
This was aimed at increasing their chances to reach a broader target audience and achieve marketing and sales goals.
What we did
To address this, Stålhästen started a collaboration with BrightBid’s AI engine for Google Shopping Bidbrain to develop a targeted marketing strategy by focusing on:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Increasing product visibility
- Improving ROAS
- Creating targeted campaigns focused on Stålhästens key products and target audience to drive sales and feed optimisation
The strategy proved to be working right at the start. Stålhästen started seeing a gradual growth in numbers right away:
- The conversion value increased from 70,211 SEK in October 2020 to 130,546 SEK in November 2020
- After 12 months, Stålhästen saw an increase in ROAS by 605%
Then, in mid-2022, Stålhästen started selling cycling spare parts. The company launched a whole new set of product offerings, while already having an established stock. This was big, and so the marketing strategy needed to be tweaked to be able to deliver further.
For Stålhästen, getting their existing and new offerings noticed by the customers on Google Shopping and Google Ads—not to mention getting stable conversions—demanded a tailored approach. We recommended that Stålhästen should use Bidbrain Campaign Manager to create custom segments based on a combination of product type and historical data.
Review
“We are very happy with the Bidbrain solution; both the technology and the expertise of our BrightBid team which gives us the control and the results in one of our most important marketing channels”
Martin Sjögren, Stålhästen CEO
Product Feed Optimisation
Before launching campaigns, Stålhästen’s product feed needed to go through an overhaul. Stålhästen used Bidbrain’s Feed Checker to find out what was missing and what needed improvement. The product feed was revised and updated with all the essential and extra data and information about the existing and new products to ensure the feed was fully campaign-ready.
Then, for each campaign, a stand-alone product feed in an XML format was created. Structure-wise, the feeds were simple, yet effective. For example, the following attributes were included in the bikes and accessories (Cyklar) feed:
- Id
- Title
- Description
- Link
- Image_link
- Price
- Condition
- Availability
- Gtin
- Mpin
- Adult
- Identifier_exists
- Sale_price
An example of bikes and accessories Google Shopping product feed for Stålhästen.
A lot of attention was paid to the contents in the description field—the texts were compact but, at the same time, they provided the most essential information about the products to be able to capture the attention of a potential customer.
Campaign Optimisation
Stålhästen Google Shopping campaigns grouped by product types in Bidbrain Campaign Manager.
Having optimised the product feeds, Stålhästen used Bidbrain Feed Checker to find out what was missing and how to improve the three separate campaigns, with their own ROAS targets and budgets for each. The campaigns were based on three product segments:
- Elcyklar—electric bikes
- Fyndhörnan—items on sales
- Cyklar—bikes and accessories
The result
Results
Through this approach, Bidbrain was able to:
- Increase Stålhästen’s ROAS from 473% in January 2021 to 1232% after one year
- Increase conversion value by 33% over the same time period
Stålhästen were delighted with the results of how the new strategy was delivering the desired results. They have since continued to work with Bidbrain to further optimize their campaigns and have seen continued success in their e-commerce business.
