Ko Olina Golf Club case study
Ko Olina Golf Club is one of Golf Digest’s “Top 75 Resort Courses in the U.S.” It’s a challenging, 18-hole course built by a renowned golf course architect. The course features exceptional water features, multi-tiered greens, large landing areas and a moderate length, which makes it perfect for beginners and experts alike.
Given its location on the Ko Olina Resort, the golf club needed a way to reach tourists and make visitors aware of this fantastic course and all the amenities it has to offer.
Initial research identified several challenges for Ko Olina. First, we found that visiting golfers tended to scope out the local courses long before they arrive in Hawaii. That meant we needed to reach them at home, not just in the immediate area around the course. Second, a large percentage of Ko Olina’s guests are visitors from Japan which expanded the geotargeting net even further.
Finally, we had to determine the right message. The club operates in a high competition market. The problem was how to stand out amid the noise of direct competitors vying for visiting golfer dollars as well as other online advertisers going after tourist attention in general. There are lots of nice golf courses on Oahu… but not as nice as Ko Olina! 🙂
The approach was a multi-channel, conversion-optimized digital advertising funnel. At the top of the marketing funnel, we employed a brand awareness strategy to introduce Ko Olina to a cold audience (people who had never heard of the Ko Olina course) using Programmatic Digital Display Ads (PDA). PDAs excel at reaching a wide, diverse, cold audience.
At the mid-funnel level (a warm audience of people who are aware of Ko Olina) we employed Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) and Google search.
Finally, we served retargeting ads to hot leads at the bottom of the marketing funnel. This audience consisted of golfers who had visited the website or social pages, thus demonstrating that they may be ready to buy.
At all stages, the ads directed users to landing pages, which did the work of converting leads into paying customers.
The result was a 431% increase in unique visitors to the website, with 20% of ad-driven clicks resulting in online purchases.
