Why an independent media house is your new local bike shop
In the first part of our ‘CIN guide to Marketing which makes a difference’ we chat with Chris Nolte, founder of Propel, a New York based eBike retailer, and hear how one man saw it differently, did it differently, and found customers who truly valued what he offered.
The year is 2011. You’re a farsighted pioneer planning on blazing a trail as early advocates and adopters of eBikes. You know they’re a future you’re going to make happen, and you plan to enable as many people as possible to ride them.
One small problem.
Your bike shop is in New York, and in 2011 eBikes are illegal.
Welcome to the world of Chris Nolte and Propel.
Setting the wider scene, in the 6 years preceding 2011 a revolution took place. Below we outline those who changed the way we interact and communicate, with friends, with businesses, and with brands. Included here is a business which took the term, “content marketing”, flipped that for “Inbound”, and in doing so radically transformed what marketing does, and how it does it – remodelling the way businesses identify and engage an audience – shifting to an approach which puts sharing knowledge, as a means to establish authority, expertise, status, and leadership, to the fore, redefining how we measure and define ‘value’.
Timeline
Digging into what transformed the world for businesses and customers alike, “HubSpot was founded on “inbound”, the notion that people don’t want to be interrupted by marketers or harassed by salespeople — they want to be helped.” You can see where Marcus Sheridan gets, “They ask, You Answer” from already, hey.
These are major cultural shifts we’re talking about here, so much so that in 2017, Forbes rated ‘They Ask, You Answer’ as one of the “11 Marketing Books Every Chief Marketing Officer Should Read”.
In the…
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