Driving for the Green With SEM

When Brandon Whildin joined DeKalb, IL-based Diamond Tour Golf as director of marketing about three years ago, the company had almost no Web presence. Diamond had been importing and selling golf club components — heads, shafts and grips — for about seven years by that time. Business was conducted mostly over the phone and dealt in volume-discount sales to small or midsize club makers. It also was extremely seasonal.

“Three-quarters of the year you would do great, but that last quarter you were just working to keep the lights on,” he says.

Whildin saw a need to reach out to the consumer golf market, where the discounts are shallower and the margins better. He kicked off that effort by turning into a do-it-yourself search engine marketer, bidding on 20 or 30 keywords.

By last year, that outreach effort had produced more consumer sales. But Whildin felt “overwhelmed” by the effort of keeping track of a growing stable of keywords. He also knew that Diamond’s Web site needed an overhaul, and he had no idea how to hook into the array of shopping engines then gaining momentum as marketing tools.

So Whildin went out looking for a search engine marketing agency, settled on Chicago’s Resolution Media, and began working with it to transform the B-to-B supplier into a Web retailer.

First, Resolution upped Diamond’s keyword bids almost tenfold. The company now uses about 2,200 to 2,300 terms in its search strategy. Getting the right keywords in place took about half a year. And along the way, Diamond’s product line was integrated into some of the major shopping engines.

Then, last September, Whildin and the agency began planning a more organized strategy to reach individual consumers. A strong online holiday promotion, started that month, was the first step. In past years, Diamond had offered a few fully assembled golf sets at a discount price. But in 2004, Resolution helped the company offer consumers a selection of club heads in different categories, each of which could be customized with a choice of two shafts and grips. The promotion was bannered at the top of Diamond’s home page, which also offered interactive menus for selecting parts combinations.

Whildin is extremely pleased with the makeover results. By Nov. 30, the holiday promo had boosted sales $100,000 over the same period in 2003 — a 57% increase.

He expects even better numbers in January and February. “That’s really the start of the golf season for manufacturers,” he says. “That’s when the itch sets in.”

Now, as an online retailer, Diamond is in an excellent position to scratch it.