Peek Inside PXG’s Multi-Million Dollar Golf Equipment Online Growth Strategy
As an owner of, or a marketer working with any Direct To Consumer (DTC) brand, you should be looking at all the potential avenues for growth, and often ideas will come from outside your industry. Or perhaps you are in the golf world too and want to know what others are up to.
Today, I am taking a look at the golf brand, PXG. ?
In terms of revenue and market share, PXG is still way down in comparison to the big players in the golf equipment space…from the limited data I could find, here are the estimates - Acushnet (Titleist & Footjoy) - $1.6billion, Callaway - $1.6billion, Taylormade - $892m, PXG at an estimated $79m.
… however, PXG has only been around for 7 years, and they got to $79m/year WITHOUT selling through retail stores.
In terms of the online presence, PXG is making some serious moves …
PXG’s website ranks higher than Taylormade, Titleist, Callaway, Cobra and Ping in global and golf specific sites.
From Sept-Nov PXG had 835k/month visits to their site, more than Cobra, Titleist & Ping while only losing out to Callaway, 937k/month visits, and Taylormade 972k/month visits.?
Once people get to the PXG website they visit more pages than any of the others and spend significantly longer on the site than any of the others…. 41 seconds longer than Taylormade.?
If you are in golf, or marketing, especially DTC, or perhaps wanting to add a DTC component to your brand, then you’ll want to know about how PXG is growing… And I still think there are some things they could improve to get even better results.
And I'll even show the EXACT ads PXG is using to drive traffic from Facebook, YouTube and Google.
About PXG - The “Ferrari” of Golf Clubs
PXG was founded by Bob Parsons, who along with being a Vietnam veteran, is quite simply a bit of a beast when it comes to building businesses, heard of GoDaddy? Yes.. that was his.?
PXG - launched in 2014 - Basically because he LOVED golf and after having spent over $350,000 on golf clubs, he decided he wanted to design and manufacture the world’s finest golf clubs.?
In 2015 PXG launched their first clubs, priced at $350 per club, 3+ times more expensive than other brands. This certainly grabbed the attention of the golf world and quite clearly demonstrated who their target market was.?
PXG became a status symbol, not unlike high-end fashion brands. They became the? “Ferrari” of golf clubs.?
And that’s how they have been known. And I would say this has likely been a part of their reason for growth.?
How Well Is PXG Doing?
PXG has recently appeared on the Inc 5000 list (a list of America’s fastest-growing private companies) for the 2nd time (2,851st). Their first appearance was in 2019, coming in at 123rd with a three-year growth of 2,805%
That’s pretty impressive!
Various sources suggest an estimated revenue of $79m/year. However, I reckon this will be growing.
So how are they doing this, in an industry where let’s be honest… They don’t like newcomers.?
Well, along with an unlimited budget for research and design, I believe the Direct To Consumer (DTC) model will have greatly helped them. And today I want to take a bit of a deep dive into their business to see what we can learn from them, see where they are strong and where I believe (from the outside) they are weak and could use improvement. I am going to focus on their online efforts here.
Hopefully, this will give you some great insight and some useful tools and strategies you could focus on for your own businesses or products that you are responsible for selling.?
How are they doing it?
Each of these could be a full in depth review on its own… maybe I should be writing a series on this.?
For today, I want to look specifically at how PXG are getting people onto their site and either purchasing clubs or booking a fitting.?
Why Direct To Consumer (DTC)??
There have been a few brands in the world of golf that have recently appeared with the DTC model, PXG included. And golf isn’t alone, just take a look at companies like GymShark (￡261m in revenue in 2021) and you’ll start to understand the potential of DTC.?
So what makes DTC so special? Why are the more established brands now creating their own DTC offerings?
Basically, with the rise of the internet, and platforms like Shopify (GymShark is built on Shopify), allow pretty much everyone the ability to sell products and get started relatively cheaply. Obviously depending on the products… Golf clubs aren’t cheap to research and manufacture.
But this essentially meant, we no longer need to rely on distributors to get products onto the shelves at big retailers and into the hands of customers.
The old model went something like…?
Club manufacturer (adds margin) → distributor (adds margin) → retailer (adds margin)
This, according to PXG, means the product is 30-40% more expensive, which isn’t ideal for the customer. And it eats into the companies profits meaning there is less to reinvest.?
Now obviously if you skip out the distributor and retailer, you now need to get those customers, so you have to become a marketer and seller of your product. But can you do that better and cheaper?
AND what if those retailers don’t put your product in a good place in the store? What if they don’t actively push your product. You are solely reliant on someone else selling your product.?
So PXG decided to take control. They built an army of professional club fitters around the USA, where people could come and get fit for their PXG clubs.?
How are they driving interest? How are they getting more and more traction? What can we learn from them?
Let’s take a look…
Summary Of PXG’s Online Strategy
Traffic Profile For PXG.com
As you can see they depend quite heavily on direct traffic and organic search. And the organic search is 85% branded search terms, which means someone who is actively searching for "PXG".?
Which I think shows us they are doing a good job of branding. People are obviously hearing the name PXG and searching for it.
They also spend a fair amount on paid ads and make sure that if some one searches for PXG, they land on the PXG site. All their paid ads also drive straight to “buy now” pages, which is no bad thing... We want to sell product. But I think there is potential, here which I'll come back to later.
Social Ads - Facebook & YouTube
PXG is clearly enjoying the use of Facebook & YouTube advertising right now. And although I am not able to dive deep into the data, we can see a few things …?
Over the last 3 months, their traffic from Facebook went up 144% (around 8,400 visits) and YouTube increased by 787% (around 5,000 visits)
YouTube Ads For PXG
Clearly, someone at PXG is pushing YouTube ads, and I am a fan, and I’d love to see the data behind these.
Most of their videos on their YouTube channel get hundreds of views, maybe a couple thousand. However, you can see the videos they are using to drive traffic as thise videos have hundreds of thousands of views.
Here are 3 of the videos they are clearly using for ads on youtube, all released in the last month:
Where are they driving to? It appears traffic is heading to the home page of their website based on the info I am getting on the YouTube traffic.
What Does PXG Spend On YouTube Ads??
It's difficult to guess, but lots of people suggest anywhere from $0.026 per view is about standard for YouTube advertising.
Which if they have had around 1million views, you’d be looking at $26k spend in the last month on youtube ads.?
They appear to have got around 1,880 visits from YouTube in last 28 days. Which would work out at $13/click.
What does that mean??
Well, nothing on its own… We would need to know the stats…?
How many of those people end up booking a fitting, or buying straight from the site?
What is the average value of an order? (To be fair, I don’t know of anyone who buys one PXG club, they normally rock a whole bag of PXG clubs, so I imagine the average order is pretty high.?
For example…
If 2% schedule a fitting from those ads… which based on going straight to the home page, I am not sure they would get that percentage, but let’s say they do…
That’s 37 fittings booked
Assume an 80% purchase rate on fittings… maybe higher to be fair… do people book fittings if they don’t intend to buy? Unlikely.?
Sales = 29
An average sale of say $2,295
= $66,555 in sales from those ads.
Is that good for PXG? Only they know based on their margins.
Facebook Ads For PXG
Looking at their main market of the USA, they have a selection of ads, for both clubs and apparel.? All drive straight to a “Buy Now” page, as in they want the user to buy a product.?
There appears to be a big focus on the new lower price range clubs, aiming at new and casual golfers.?Here's a look at some of their current ads:
What there isn’t, is any paid traffic going to content or pages focused on email list growth, or in fact a "schedule a fitting" page.
Potential On Twitter?
Interestingly, both Callaway and Taylormade appear to get a lot of traffic from Twitter, whilst PXG gets none. This could be a combination of both organic and paid traffic, but that's not clear. What is clear is that clearly there is potential traffic for PXG on Twitter, which for whatever reason, they aren’t focusing on.
Search Ads:
It's estimated they are spending $12k/month on search ads and this makes up some 7.95% of their traffic.?
But if you look at GymShark, their paid traffic amounts to 16.08% of their 11.94m visits in November.
Data for PXG suggests the following:
They are using a combination of search ads and product ads, which examples of are below:
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PXG's Display Ads
While I’ve been focusing on the equipment in this article, PXG is clearly showing a push towards apparel with their Display Ads. take a look...
Apparel is a great way to allow fans to continue to come back and buy from the brand. You won’t buy clubs every year (ok some people do), but clothing, well golfers buy a lot of that, and people buy from brands they love.? This is a great way to keep people in the PXG world.
Side note… What do Taylormade’s Display Ads Tell Us About Their Strategy?
Taylormade is making a big push towards golf club personalization and subscription golf balls.
I actually quite like the idea of golf balls on subscription and am intrigued to see how this compares to Vice’s bulk buy option.
Organic Search:
With 30.15% of traffic coming from organic search, that might feel pretty good, and it is. We don’t mind google sending lots of free traffic. However, I feel there is a big scope for improvement here…?
Of that traffic, 85% of it is from branded keywords. So people actively searching for “PXG”. meaning they already know the brand and are looking for something from them.?
If you look at the likes of other DTC brands in different industries they are seeing much higher non-branded searches. For example, Dollar Shave Club - 31% non-branded; Manscaped - 29% non-branded.
That means people are searching for solutions to their problems and are coming to those sites as a result.?
What all this tells me is that PXG is really only targeting people who are ready to buy now, and doing a great job of it.
This means, to me anyway, there is a HUGE potential to bring people into the PXG world who aren’t aware they exist or don’t really know the brand that well.
Side note... GymShark, are actually more similar to PXG with 12% non-branded search terms. It would be interesting to look at market share in relation to branded search terms.
Next, I want to take a look at the PXG website...
Home Page Breakdown - (USA vs UK)
USA Home Page?
(I had taken a screenshot of the whole page, but the dimensions of the image were too big.. so I have focused on what we see when we first get to the home page. However, my notes refer to the whole home page)
There is a LOT going on and I’m not sure what their main goal of this page is, there is just a lot of stuff thrown onto this page. It feels like every potential piece of information and offer is thrown on here.?
At the top, it's "buy this deal", shop apparel, or buy the 0211’s (and I am sure they will cycle these top 3 options).
Then scroll down and you’ve got ALL the clubs listed, then scroll down more and you’ve … well everything. It’s confusing. And the problem is, that when you give people too many options is they end up buying nothing.?
I’d like to see more of a journey for the customer. For example, if you look at their main apparel page, it’s a much clearer journey for the user. Male or Female clothing - user makes a decision and clicks.
PXG UK Website
I actually prefer the UK website design, although obviously, the data in terms of fittings and actually what their goals are dictates what design it should be, of which I don’t have access to that knowledge.?
Why do I prefer the UK site? Because there is an immediate and obvious call to action - ‘Schedule a Fitting’.?
It’s immediately clear what the best thing to do is. And as a golfer, I think that likely is the best thing for me to do.?
Let's take a look at this funnel:
'Schedule A Fitting' Funnel
Clearly a big way they have grown is through their custom fittings. Bringing people to a venue to experience PXG. And like with a lot of products, getting the product into the potential customers hands is the main barrier.
Let’s take a look at their “Schedule A Fitting” funnel.
Currently, they don’t appear to run ads on Facebook or Youtube to drive people straight to fittings, it’s just general ads driving to the home page.??
How To Improve This Funnel:
1. Much Stronger Call To Action (CTA) On Home Page
The buttons and links to booking a fitting feel almost hidden on the home page. I would make it more like the UK site and have a strong CTA.?
2. ‘Schedule A Fitting’ Specific Ads
Focus ad spend within a certain radius of all fitting centers and drive people to fittings - using a specific landing page - not the home page.?
3. Retargeting Ads
I imagine a lot of people get to page 2, even page 3, and leave. I would LOVE to see some Facebook retargeting ads. These people were so close to scheduling a fitting and clearer wanted to, but for whatever reason didn’t. Let’s get them back
I say all this, and perhaps, PXG's goals isn't to increase the number of fittings. Perhaps they do want to focus on more online sales. They are now offering fittings over the phone.
One common theme across the PXG sites is… the options are to schedule a fitting or buy now. There is potential here…
Not Ready To Buy. What Then?
But what if I’m not ready to buy or schedule a fitting? How is PXG bringing me into their world??
Could they capture my email address? Of course they could, do they, unfortunately not (well not currently anyway).?
If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there is a “Stay informed” field, but… I doubt anyone does it (I did it just to see what emails I would get).
I believe there is a lot more they could be doing with generating new leads, new community and future sales. And actually, to me that shows a huge level of potential, which is very exciting.
As a quick example, they could run competitions/giveaways. Not just for clubs and apparel either. Meet the pro opportunities, special golf day opportunities. There are loads they could do to create even more of a buzz and community around the brand.
Potential Content Play
One thing PXG don't appear to be focused on is content - blogs, guides etc. They do have a news section, but it feels hidden on the site.
What I think is very interesting is that a couple of the blog posts are driving traffic to the site. Answering questions like…. “Hybrids vs irons”, which shows me there is potential for more traffic coming from sources like this.?
The question then is…Why aren’t they doing it?? Is it a resource thing? Or have they tested in the past and felt it wasn’t getting enough traction?
Offline Experiences - The Rise Of DTC Retail Stores
Now what’s interesting, is that a lot of the DTC brands are now creating offline experiences too. For example, GymShark has launched their first retail store in London and PXG now has 12 retail locations in the USA.
Obviously, PXG has grown based on having fitters around the world, but these weren’t full-blown PXG retail stores to begin with.?
They did this AFTER gaining success and traction. Dramatically reducing the risk to begin with by not having those overheads from the start, and now, bringing in physical locations to give their fans a local base.?
Are we likely to see a PXG store in the UK? Is there a big enough market for them here yet?
No Affiliate Program For PXG?
Callaway and Taylormade both have affiliate programs, whereas PXG do not. I’m intrigued as to why not?
I understand their principle was not to have a “middle man” in terms of retail, but I see affiliates as different. It’s just marketing spend. The publishers only get paid on sales.
I feel like having a strong affiliate program would encourage more publishers and creators to put out more content about PXG.
What’s Next For PXG?
New Markets…?
New Line Of Clubs:
PXG has launched a new line of clubs that are more affordable, actually, at ￡75/club they are incredibly competitive. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of people going full PXG with these new clubs.?
This marks quite a major move by PXG and again, one that has a lot of potential. Now it will be about educating people, letting them know they have clubs at this lower budget.?
UK Focus?
It appears that they are moving quite significantly into the UK market… I say this based on the fact they are currently hiring for a load of positions in a UK warehouse.?
I’d expect to see lots more from PXG in the UK.
In Summary…?
PXG has done some amazing things over the last 7 years and I don't expect them to slow down. They clearly built up great brand awareness shown by the number of people searching for them online.
The Things I would be interested to test with PXG
Conclusion
If you are in the same market as PXG, you certainly have your work cut out for you. However, what they have shown is that it’s possible. New brands can come into this space and disrupt. This article will have also, hopefully, shown you what areas they are strong and where they might be weak.
If you are not in golf, you should be thinking about what they are doing and how you could do it in your business.
PXG does seem to have led the way for DTC brands and now more golf club brands are popping up. The likes of Sub 70 who won the award for No.1 DTC Golf Brand, which is amazing.
What You Should Do Now:
If you are serious about growing your business, implementing new strategies for growth, then let’s chat, pop me a message on here or email me at [email protected] and let’s jump on a call.?
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it then please hit that like button. It would mean a lot to me and it helps others see the story.
Founder & CEO at Hole19
3 年Interesting analysis Chris Wright ? - interesting to see the big differences between the US & UK website, though that is most likely related to the differences in distribution models US vs UK.
Founder & Specialist Golf Physiotherapist at Driving Performance Golf Ltd
3 年Very interesting read Chris. Some useful insight and ideas/strategies they use. Thanks