On a recent episode of Marketing Trends, Jill Thomas, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer of PGA TOUR Superstore, discussed the challenges and opportunities of marketing in the golf retail industry. She highlighted the shift in the golf consumer landscape and the need to reach diverse audiences with different motivations for playing the game. Jill also shared her experience of building a high-functioning marketing organization with limited resources and the importance of trust and credibility in implementing a multi-year transformation plan.
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What is Retail?
Retail is the sale of goods or services from a business to consumers for personal use, involving small quantities of goods sold directly to end users. Retail markets have a long history, evolving from itinerant peddlers to modern shopping malls, with an increasing focus on digital and ecommerce channels for sales. Retailers make strategic decisions on store type, product assortment, customer service, and overall market positioning, supported by services such as credit, delivery, and styling. And Thomas explains that the sportiing goods retail market, especially for golf has changed quite a bit.
The Evolving Retail Customer Landscape
Thomas explains that the golf consumer landscape has evolved, with diverse audiences playing the game for different reasons. This has created new marketing challenges and opportunities.
According to Thomas, the reason people play golf has changed in recent years, which means marketers have had to adjust their retail and storefront strategies.
When she first got started, Thomas said, “The customer of golf was very one-dimensional. You knew where to find them. You knew what they looked like and you knew why they played the game. Today, [there are] many different audiences to serve all playing the game for different reasons. Not everybody is playing for game improvement… Today, it’s about mind, body, and spirit.”
How to Build High-Functioning Marketing Organizations
Building a high-functioning marketing organization with limited resources requires strategic thinking and the ability to prioritize and execute effectively. When Thomas came into her role with the PGA Tour Superstore, she took a long-game approach.
“As a marketing leader, you’re supposed to come in and listen and do your first 90-day presentation,” she said. “I couldn’t wait 90 days. I was in there two weeks later with our CEO and I said, ‘Listen, you have a great foundation here… We need to invest in data and digital.’
“These are big investments, they’re not going to happen overnight. It’s going to be a multi-year plan. And I presented him with a three-year plan for transforming the digital side of the business, but also for the team itself.”
The Importance of Data and AI
In today’s world of marketing where digital, retail, and storefront are all critical, there is more need data. And with that data, marketers can be more creative with their campaigns, especially when they use AI to help them.
For Thomas, she split her teams into disciplines, and each discipline has marching orders to help them gather and use data in new ways.
“Every single one of them has a task every month to implement AI somewhere… to make us more efficient.
“That is the most interesting thing happening from a marketing perspective. Data analytics, big data, and AI have been around for a long time. But how we leverage it to make our jobs more efficient, that’s the new stuff. ”
