Budget GolfDriving stronger mobile traffic and greater visibility

Company Overview

Budget Golf has been in business for 20 years, striving to provide all golfers – men, women and juniors – with quality products at budget-friendly prices. Budget Golf shops for deals in order to pass along discounts to its customers, specializing in creating custom golf club sets, repairing old sets and helping customers plan the perfect golf outing. Focused on customer satisfaction, Budget Golf launched its e-commerce business in 2002 and now offers more than 10,000 products online to meet all the golfing needs of any avid sportsman.

The Situation

In order to drive traffic to the company’s website, Budget Golf co-founder, Todd Messineo, began to advertise on paid search channels such as Google. Todd soon recognized the value and potential of pay-per-click advertising. Google AdWords helped strengthen Budget Golf’s brand name, promote special offers and coupon codes, as well as drive consumers to specific product pages. The paid search channel quickly became a large revenue driver for the company. As the business grew, Todd found it more difficult to manage the company’s search campaigns on his own. There was no doubt that he needed help in order to truly maximize results and ROI. Todd understood that an e-commerce solution could provide better coverage and more opportunities on the paid search channel, which would be hard for him to execute on his own.

The Solution

Todd began his search for an e-commerce solution that would offer expertise in digital advertising and allow him to expand Budget Golf’s online exposure. ChannelAdvisor rose to the top as an optimal solution for Budget Golf, offering technology as well as service experts to manage Todd’s account and campaigns from start to finish. ChannelAdvisor quickly took over Budget Golf’s AdWords account, identifying optimal keywords and managing bids.

“ChannelAdvisor’s dedicated campaign managers constantly monitored our performance on search engines to ensure the greatest visibility for Budget Golf,” said Todd. “Furthermore, they evaluated year-over-year data to better understand our business and our peak seasons, since it’s important to bid up during these times to maximize results.”

In an effort to expand keyword coverage, ChannelAdvisor implemented Inventory Driven Search (IDS) for Budget Golf. ChannelAdvisor’s Inventory Driven Search feature accurately and automatically generated product-specific long tail keywords for the company. Next, ChannelAdvisor’s services experts identified another opportunity for Budget Golf to cater to its mobile customers. When Google announced Enhanced Campaigns, it was a perfect time for Budget Golf to test reaching mobile shoppers with a more aggressive campaign. Without ChannelAdvisor’s steady hand and experience guiding the process of upgrading to Enhanced Campaigns, Budget Golf may have missed an opportunity to gain exposure through mobile advertising.

The Results

The paid search channel is a significant revenue driver for Budget Golf, and with the help of ChannelAdvisor’s Managed Services team Inventory Driven Search soon became the strongest performing campaign behind keywords focused on the brand. Likewise, with Enhanced Campaigns, Budget Golf saw successful results immediately through its mobile advertising.

“Since 2011 our mobile traffic has increased from 10.5 percent to more than 30 percent of our total traffic, and with the help of Enhanced Campaigns we are hoping to increase mobile traffic to 50 percent in the next 18-24 months,” said Todd. “Additionally, we started using the location targeting feature of Enhanced Campaigns to raise bids on specific regions where sales were particularly strong. Since early results in these efforts proved to be promising, going forward we’ll be doing more to optimize bids for mobile devices and location, and increase our traffic and revenue.”