GolfNow PPC Audit

Overview
GolfNow offers golfers the opportunity to stay connected with their favorite sport both on and off the course. Through its website (GolfNow.com), email alerts, toll-free phone service, PDA notifications, text messages and RSS feeds, GolfNow provides its customers with real-time updates on news and course offers. Currently the company manages more than 1.5 million golfer accounts online.

GolfNow is the largest tee time retailer in the United States. The company services 25 states and maintains unique partnerships with more than 1,500 golf courses around the country. To date, GolfNow sold more than 4.5 million rounds of golf through its website GolfNow.com.

Anvil has provided GolfNow with the necessary audit, strategy and ongoing management to achieve the retailer's desired goals of fine-tuning its pay-per-click (PPC) program to improve online tee time bookings.

Objective
Anvil was tasked with auditing the complex account, lowering customer acquisition cost from search engine advertising and increasing the number of tee times booked online from paid search engine referral traffic.

Challenge
The GolfNow customer base is both expansive and geographically segmented, covering more than 25 local and international markets including Phoenix, Orlando, San Francisco, and Mexico. Within each market, GolfNow hosts two individual landing pages for each golf course that offers tee times online.

Additionally, tee times are only available up to two weeks in advance, limiting the benefits to last-minute and local golfers (as opposed to golfers planning trips). Furthermore, Anvil took on the account during the low-end of the golf season, as winter approached.

Strategy
Anvil used a multi-faceted approach to audit and improve GolfNow paid search performance:

  • Separated the search and content network campaigns and incorporated unique keyword structures for each.
  • Refined the geographic targeting for both search and the content network, within 50-mile radius of each market, to focus on local golfers.
  • Created a multitude of ad groups for search and the content network in each market
  • Targeted course-loyal golfers through individual course queries, casual golfers through geo-modified queries and new golfers through general queries (more than 750 ad groups in total).
  • Performed keyword research to create a differentiated mix of over 100,000 keywords to populate all the ad groups.
  • Created a series of ads with different value propositions.
  • Aggressively tested ad variations and keywords, monitoring performance metrics and adjusting settings accordingly. Feedback in one market was then transferred to other markets and tested, with many A/B tests occurring in parallel.

Results
Shortly after implementing making the revisions deemed necessary during the audit phase, Anvil was able to generate the following PPC campaign results:

  • Increased monthly impressions by 486%
  • Increased monthly clicks by 306%
  • Increased monthly conversion rate by 76%
  • Increased monthly conversions (tee times booked) by 617%
The preceding results were achieved while Anvil simultaneously decreased key cost factors:

  • Decreased cost-per-click (CPC) by -48%
  • Decreased cost-per-conversion by -71%
The long term results of Anvil's audit and subsequent revisions and ongoing management have yielded the following results. Year over year results include:

  • Increased year over year click through rate by 36%
  • Increased year over year conversion rate by 33%
  • Decreased year over year cost per conversion by 43%
  • Increased year over year average monthly bookings by 128%
  • Decreased year over year cost per click by 10%

URL
GolfNow.com Discount Tee Times