As the world’s largest golf equipment retailer, TaylorMade-adidas Golf brand has a formidable challenge of keeping the attention of fickle consumers. "Every golf-equipment company is just one bad decision away from losing substantial market share," says golf industry analyst Casey Alexander (Newport, 2013). Through a series of risky management and brand strategy decisions, aggressive marketing, and a laser focus on new product development, TaylorMade was able to secure the top spot from brands such as Callaway, Titleist, & Ping. In 2012, TaylorMade secured 47% of every dollar spent on woods (Newport, 2013) - that’s a pretty healthy market share. Staking the claim as the “#1 Driver in Golf” is a powerful position to have in the mind of consumers.
But have you bought a golf club recently? Golf club technology terms might cause even the more skilled golfer’s eyes to glaze over, let alone a newbie to the game. The golf club purchase today is a highly involved purchase. Consumers will typically go through the standard learning model, consisting of a “learn - feel - do sequence” (Belch & Belch, 2014). Golfers will research various clubs, try them at a driving range, golf course, or in a retail store, and talk to golfing peers throughout the decision process. For a company like TaylorMade, how do you deliver the in-depth club technology information, which is often a key point of differentiation, when consumers’ attention spans are waning. When the average person gets distracted in 8 seconds and 81 percent of people only skim the content they read online (Kim, 2015), a website can be a tough place to convert the sale in a highly involved purchase.
In recent years, TaylorMade has revamped their e-commerce website and introduced supporting digital properties to gather data to support their retail growth. One of the tools they use to enhance their website visitor data is their Irons Recommender, a short 5 question interactive tool that gathers information related to the the golfer’s skill level and product preference.
The data collected here provides rich insight into their visitor behavior that can be used to for remarketing campaigns and to refine segmentation. It also provides insight into gaps in their product line. For example, what if they receive more responses in the 25+ handicap segment who are prioritize “Forgiveness and Distance” in their top 2, does the current product line meet this consumer’s needs? Is there a blind spot in their product line that due to high brand awareness they should address?
“An estimated 84 percent of communications will be visual by 2018” (Kim, 2015). As consumers’ attention spans shorten, integrating visual into e-commerce experiences will be an imperative. TaylorMade is staying ahead of the curve and leveraging the use of video on their site to increase engagement and influence purchase. The highly visual product experience pages “help funnel golfers towards sale by capturing the energy and tactile thrill of the in-store experience” (Blitz Agency, 2015). Here is one example of a product page showcasing their PSi irons. The page incorporate multiple interactive experiences, with each event generating another point of visitor data. Shooting a 360 degree product demo videos with two of the world’s best golfers is not cheap content to produce, but by analyzing how it impacts the path to purchase, the marketing team can justify and optimize their video content.
TaylorMade also knows that the best online customer service needs to compare with the best offline experience. “44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer” (Levin, n.d.). Along with a product recommender, there is also a product specialist pop-up box. Not only does this help TaylorMade address customer concerns immediately, it provides another source of actionable insights. The chat stream data can be analyzed to understand customer pain points. Is there something intuitively wrong with the website user experience? Is there a missing piece of product information? Is there an unmet need in the marketplace? For goal conversions, TaylorMade can also analyze the data to understand where the chat box is most impactful along various goal paths.
TaylorMade is also connecting with the customer on the course through the launch of a new app, in partnership with Microsoft, on the Microsoft Band platform. On the surface, the tool provides consumers deep data analytics on their golf game. myRoundPro will allow golfers to track their scores, golf game stats, and performance over time. For TaylorMade, the tool becomes a walking golf equipment user laboratory. “...we wanted to see how players were performing on the course. We were curious, for instance, how many times a player hit 3-wood during a round, and where their drives typically ended up — little questions we didn't know the answers to at the time” (Wall, 2015). The data collected will allow TaylorMade to gather an enormous array of golf consumer performance data on the course and connect it to website behavior user data. I could read the marketing claims now, “The new JPi irons from TaylorMade helped golfers improve their shots gained by 23%!” Because the myRoundPro tool is not just for TaylorMade equipment users, it will allow TaylorMade to gather rich data on golf consumers that can be used to refine their buyer personas, target ads based on golfing behavior, leverage geotargeting, and identify new product needs based on shot performance.
After reviewing the TaylorMade website, there were two recommendations that come to mind.
- Present an email capture modal lightbox. I was never presented with a call to action that would allow the brand to continue the engagement, especially by capturing my email address. This is an easy micro-conversion that could lead to macro conversions. There is a link on the site for an email sign-up, but I would recommend a lightbox sign up form to nurture potential customers by capturing a visitors email address proactively.
- Social engagement. I recommend integrating both brand and user generated content from their social channels into the website to improve engagement and bring word of mouth marketing onto the branded site. Links to their social channels are buried in the bottom right corner of the site, and would seem to only encourage exit rates. TaylorMade could take a page out of the PGA Tour playbook and repurpose their content into a fan hub on the TaylorMade site by using a tool like Livefyre. This would increase time on page and allow for other goals and micro-conversions to be placed amidst this content.
In the e-commerce world, the leaderboard is a crowded space. TaylorMade is staying on top of their game so far, matching their digital experience innovation to their golf equipment innovation.
References:
Belch, G. E., & Belch, M. A. (2014). Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing perspective (10th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Blitzagency.com (2015). Case Study: TaylorMadegolf.com. Retrieved from http://www.blitzagency.com/taylormade-golf-case-study
Kim, L. (2015, November 23). 16 Eye-Popping Statistics You Need to Know About Visual Content Marketing. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/larry-kim/visual-content-marketing-16-eye-popping-statistics-you-need-to-know.html
Levin, L. (n.d.). 5 Reasons Why Live Chat is The Untapped Potential for Your Business. Kissmetrics [Web log]. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/live-chat/
Newport, J. (2013, February 10). How TaylorMade made its move. Wall Street Journal (Online). Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324900204578286173274533026
Wall, J. (2015, September 3). TaylorMade unveils myRoundPro analytics platform. Retrieved from http://www.pgatour.com/equipmentreport/2015/09/3/taylormade-roundpro-analytics.html
