As the PGA TOUR's exclusive retail partner, the PGA TOUR Superstore offers unparalleled access to the latest gear and apparel in the golf and tennis industries. Through this partnership and a dedication to educating its customers, they've positioned themselves as the authority on golf with unrivaled knowledge and customer service.

BRAND & AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Though the PGA TOUR Superstore had a strong brick and mortar presence and a positive reputation in the golfing community, it was struggling to connect its in-store and online experiences. Additionally, a newly launched e-commerce platform and increasing online competition revealed a need for them to revamp their existing PPC campaigns. Nebo was tasked with overhauling Paid Search efforts to not only increase online sales, but to improve Return on Ad Spend, and we needed to produce these results quickly in order to coincide with the approaching holiday season.

Prior to crafting a strategy, we began with intensive qualitative and quantitative audience research, talking to key stakeholders within the company, PGA TOUR partners and target audience members.

During this research, it became evident that the golfing audience was far more dynamic and multi-faceted than one consisting of just affluent male Baby Boomers. The audience included such diverse segments as young beginners, high school athletes, weekend warriors, early technology adopters and 65+ year-old dilettantes. Furthermore, various sub-segments existed based on playing style.

At a high level, younger demographics tended to be more influenced by what Pro players were using and wearing, whereas the more established demographics exhibited strong brand loyalty, particularly to the high-end brands.

Additionally, we found an opportunity to use PGATSS's robust selection of women's gear and clothing to target the rising female golfer audience.

SOLVING THE PROBLEM

Much of our strategy was informed by these user insights, comprehensive industry and competitive research and the user behaviors gleaned from time lag and path length reports in Google Analytics. We used the combination of these findings to guide the new strategy, which included tailored search, display, Product Listing Ads (PLAs) and retargeting efforts.

While we began with a thorough audit of PGATSS's existing campaigns to address immediate concerns, we simultaneously built new campaigns structured to achieve our return on ad spend (ROAS) goals.

New search campaigns covering category and product keywords replaced legacy campaigns comprised of only broad keywords. These new campaigns included over 38,000 long-tail keywords aimed at users with a high intent to purchase, and bids were carefully optimized daily to reach ROAS goals.

One of the biggest undertakings was working with the PGATSS IT team to set up a product data feed for Product Listing Ads and Google Shopping. In addition to creating PLA campaigns, the data feed was used to create Liquid Ads in AdRoll, a third party retargeting platform. These ads dynamically generated product images that the user had previously viewed—along with complementary items—into ads for customized retargeting experiences.

Retargeting campaigns were also revamped to include audiences based on pages visited, actions taken, on-site engagement metrics and off-site behaviors. We even expanded retargeting efforts into AdRoll and Facebook Exchange, increasing user reach.

In addition to ongoing efforts, Nebo created several one-off campaigns to run alongside promotions for holiday weekends, golf tour weekends and national sales including Cyber Monday. By leveraging these opportunities, Nebo was able to significantly increase sales during pre-holiday months that were historically slow.

With the creation and implementation of our new campaigns based on this qualitative and quantitative research, we quickly saw a massive increase in campaign performance, setting PGATSS up for a very successful holiday season.

RESULTS

Nebo's campaigns for PGATSS produced astonishing results. Together, we exceeded our ROAS goals and also achieved a number of other successes:

• PPC ecommerce conversion rate increased 393.88%
• PPC share of site revenue increased 1,473%
• Total PPC revenue increased 5,047%
• Overall revenue from retargeting increased 2,007%
• PPC cost per conversion decreased 96.04%
• ROAS increased every month, an overall improvement of 2,258%