Case Study Gerard Vroomen

and Cervélo Cycles

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

cofounded, Cervélo Cycles, 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 engineering-driven 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 Cervélo P3C at an average speed of 54.676

kph (33.954 mph)

The winner of the 2008 Tour de France, Carlos

Sastre did it too on Cervelo

And at the

Beijing Olympics, Cervélo bikes

were ridden by more than 40

athletes, resulting in

three gold,

five silver,

and two bronze medals

“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

Vroomen writes all of the content for the Cervélo site himself, Vroomen can update the site himself.

Cervelo website includes number of site map sections such

as Engineering, Experience, Athletes

and very important ..

FORUM

And nice call to action button under the list of FAQ’s

Athletes page description

‘’Our athletes are key ambassadors for our bikes and an important source

of feedback in our design process.

Meet the people who push our bikes to the limit.’’

Clean

Layout

And

real

Stories !!!

Under the Experience section you will find more stories. And that’s what

people want to here. There is user generated section

called ‘’Your Stories’’ too !

Ryan Patch is the sort of customer Cervélo wants to reach. An amateur triathlon competitor on the Vortex Racing team, Patch says, “On the Cervélo

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 Cervélo. That's mind-blowing, that I can get the same

bike that the pros are riding.’’

Search engine marketing is important for Cervélo. Because of the keyword-rich cycling content available on the site, Vroomen says,

Cervélo gets the same amount of search engine traffic as many sites for bike companies

that are 10 times larger

Vroomen says building out the web marketing at Cervélo 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.