Strava for Influencers & Marketers
Strava is a fitness app that tracks your workouts with GPS. If you haven't heard of it, we're probably hanging out in different circles. Inevitably, whether you swim, bike or run - the conversation of Strava Leader Boards will eventually seep into post-activity chat. Egos can play up making it tough to complete an activity at recovery or easy effort. It's because of this that athletes often have mixed opinions about the inherent competition that comes from using the app.
But, despite the heat, there is plenty of brilliance underpinning this little fitness app. Don't be soured! On top of the cool opportunities for users there is a layer of importance for athletic influencers and marketers alike. Let's start with the sheer volume of users. According to Strava's 2016 Year In Review:
- 9.6 activities were shared on Strava every second in 2016
- 2.7 Million segments were created by Strava athletes
- 16 Million KMs of road, water and trail were turning into segments in the app in 2016
Following the Pros
The world is full of incredible athlete stories. I'm always curious about what it takes to be on the top and I know I'm not alone. It's super interesting to see where these athletes train and what they do to make them awesome. I'd encourage athletes that consider themselves influencers (yes, micro-influencers I'm looking at you too!) to treat their Strava profile like any other social media platform. Over 304 million activities were uploaded to Strava in 2016 and 1.3 billion Kudos accounted for, so it's a worthy place to share. Put a link to your blog or recent press coverage, edit your updates to include photos and details about workouts. Give people a reason to follow you. If you're at the pointy end of fitness talent you can even apply to have a Pro Athlete Status. Here are some athletes that are nailing it:
- Vegan Ultra Runner, Rich Roll
- Bad-Ass Pro Mountain Biker, Anneke Beerten
- Olympic Triathlete, Katie Zaferes
- Mountaineer, Cory Richards
Show Us The Gear
Strava gives users the option to tag their gear: bikes, shoes, watch etc... This is great opportunity to promote brands that you market or receive support from. A cool built in feature is the ability to see how much mileage you've put into each piece of equipment. The app will even email you when it's time to replace things.
If I were on Strava's marketing team, I'd drop in some offers for shoe replacements in the reminder email, a great opportunity to leverage partnerships or sell ad space - but that's a separate conversation.
Valley to Peak Race 2017. Photo: Clint Trahan
Strava Clubs:
Users can search for clubs by area or focus and join the leader boards within the club. It's still an evolving space that retail locations, coaches or individual brands could really take advantage of while it's fairly unsaturated. First off, creating a club on Strava can foster community outside of major events and encourage regular gatherings of brand ambassadors, customers or clients. Clubs are also an excellent way to incentivize repeat use of gear. And lastly, it's a unique way to gather some qualitative research and development feedback for brands. Here are a few of my favourite clubs:
Although this gem of an app probably isn't on the typical marketing manager or influencer's radar, it has a huge (passionate) user base with some very cool features to establish leadership and credibility as an athlete or brand. I'll be watching this space to see what's next. What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below or give me a shout out on Twitter!