Peddle

Peddle is an electric bike brand, with the aim of providing customers with beginner-friendly, accessible electric bikes. The ethos of the brand is that anyone should be able to feel good and get into fitness, no matter age, experience, or fitness level.

Conceptualising the Peddle brand and creating meaningful content for it involved an in-depth research process, writing website and marketing comms that appeal to our target audience (while not alienating other potential customers), and continuously ensuring our proposition remains relevant and well-communicatied.

Researching Peddle

Creating the Peddle brand began with two key questions: who are we, and who are our customers? I created a shortlist of names, including Peddle, that I felt would evoke an immediate association with relevant motifs: nature, exercise, confidence, ease. From there, we enacted market surveys to gauge general public reaction to the name we chose, and to figure out if it established our ideal message. The results of this survey reassured us that Peddle was a name that evoked the right emotions in the right people. We then had to go through the process of ensuring the name was legally compliant.

The other part of the research was in finding out our target audience, and the best way to appeal to them. I discovered that the electric bike market was in an 'early adopter' phase, meaning that it was essential we find a niche to ensure our continued success. I also found that, for our target audience of 40+ women, the main barriers for exercise seemed to be a lack of confidence and experience. I then compiled sources that proved the benefits of electric bikes in regards to the environment, personal fitness, and mental wellbeing - all of these being shown through data to be high priority points for our audience, especially in a post-covid world.

The Peddle voice

Before any content could be written for Peddle, I had to plan what the brand 'voice' was. This is an essential step in ensuring we hit the right note with our target audience, and 'speak their language' in a way that's engaging and gets our point across.

Peddle's core audience is people who aren't necessarily tech savvy or have a lot of experience with fitness. The brand exists to instil confidence in those who may not have expertise. Therefore, an essential part of the Peddle voice is simplicity. Peddle avoids the use of jargon, keeps descriptions short and concise, and where discussion of technological terms is necessary, these are explained in depth in basic terms.

Aside from this element, it's also important that Peddle customers feel valued by our brand, and empowered to trust us to take them on a lifestyle-changing journey. So we keep our tone light and friendly, with a conversational approach to comms.

The Peddle website

visit the site

I was in charge of the creation of all the written content for the Peddle website. This was a multi-stage process that involved the use of several skillsets along the way.

Initially, I began by working with the web development team to organise which pages we needed, and what information was to be included on each of these. To keep track of this ongoing process, I created a Master Document. This was a text-only version of the website, containing all of the written content that was to be put onto the site. This made it easier to streamline updates, keep track of changes, manage version control, and ensure that everyone building and designing the site was kept in the loop about copy changes and edits.

The copy on the Peddle site is a mixture of content intending to endear customers to our brand and create a level of trust, product pages designed to sell the bikes themselves, legal information, UX-loaded features (such as the Bike Wizard), and creative content such as blogs and video copy. I was in charge of the completion and direction of each of these. This not only meant ensuring I communicated in a way that was on-tone and inviting for our customers, but also liaising with other members of the team to ensure information remains correct, up-to-date, and accurate. The maintenance of the Peddle site is an on-going project, which will see me continue to provide content to further the mission of the brand through the main site.

SEO

As a brand that's competing in its marketplace against other, already established electric bike brands, SEO is an important part of making sure Peddle is placed in front of potential customers.

My involvement with SEO in regards to the Peddle includes intentional and thorough use of identified key-words and phrases across the website and in blogs, as well as creating meta tags for pages, to boost UX and increase the potential for users to be directed to our site based on search terms.

Social media

visit the peddle instagram

The Peddle brand has a social media presence on LinkedIn and Instagram. My role is to contribute ideas to the content calendar created for the brand, as well as providing copy for captions. It's important that these captions are relevant, accurate (especially when referring to ongoing offers, deals, or promotions), and stay within the consistent brand tone, so as to engage with our existing audience, and act as an inviting first peek for future potential customers.

Blogs

read our blogs

Brands are constantly evolving, and so are the marketplaces they exist within. Blogs are a convenient and useful way to stay in touch with customers to ensure they're kept up-to-date with business activities. But beyond that, they're essential for creating space for your brand within its market, and setting yourself as an expert in the space.

For Peddle, I use blogs to help create more of a conversation with our customers, using them as an opportunity to not only prove our reliability as a brand, but to give the impression of openness and a recognisable, friendly voice. It's also a good opportunity to both answer questions customers may have about our brand and products, while also proving that we're in the know about the industry we work in. And, as mentioned above, I use identified keywords throughout blog titles, descriptions, and body text to boost our SEO and help to drive traffic to our site.

Print ads

As part of the PR strategy for the Peddle brand launch, we've invested in print ads across multiple, relevant publications, such as National Trust magazine, Reader's Digest, The Guardian, and more. The intention of these ads is to introduce our brand to an audience who we believe may be interested in it, but who currently are unaware of it. Therefore, it's essential that the copy within these ads is direct and to-the-point, represents our brand, tone, and mission accurately, while meeting our audience halfway and appealing to their interests and lifestyles.