Rscycle.com goes from zero to 9,000 in six months
Rscycle.com., launched in December, has a narrowly-targeted niche online: it sells and ships fully assembled high-end road and mountain bikes. A paid search program over its first six months has expanded keywords from a few to some 200, increased visits to the site to about 9,000 per day, and produced sales that cover its search investment by “twofold to fourfold,” says founder Randall Scott.
Scott says search management company MoreVisibility.com identifies potential keywords based on his input, provides data on the number of clicks they receive and their cost per click on paid search engines as well as their recommendations, and gets his approval for any terms it puts under bid management on his behalf. “They’re concentrating on search engine optimization, which lets me concentrate on marketing, buying and selling,” he says. “It would have taken too much time for me to find all the keywords, and they were able to implement the program almost immediately. We saw sales off of it right away.”
Scott says the search program takes advantage of the fact that relatively few independent retailers sell road and mountain bikes online due to channel conflict issues with bike manufacturer dealers. Because his company is unusual as an independent selling the bikes online, under agreements negotiated with some top-end bicycle makers, most of Scott’s search budget goes directly toward road- and mountain bike-focused keywords versus related gear he also sells.
The program is also geared to maximize search spending while bike sales peak during the spring and summer months. “Other sites sell more parts and accessories than we do, so it’s more of a year round business,” he notes. “We primarily sell bikes, and you can’t ride a bike in the snow.” That means that currently, search spending is high on terms relating directly to road and mountain bikes, while during the winter months, search spending will be less across the board and more focused on items such as bicycle trainers that can be used indoors, he adds.
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