If you are a frequent visitor of GolfWRX, you are probably a golfer on the constant search for an edge on the course. You peruse the different forums anxiously hoping to find that some little thing that you’ve convinced yourself will make the difference in your game. I know this because I’m wired the same way.

I’ve spent countless nights huddled up in the dark corners of this website reading, rereading and reading again some fresh insight on Ben Hogan’s “Five Lessons” that has me convinced by morning that I’ve figured out “the secret.” I’ve dedicated as much time to analyzing what Oakley lens is best for my sunglasses (G30 non-polarized by the way) as I did preparing for the SAT.

I’ve read reviews on golf bags, balls, clubs, shoes, shirts, pants, hats, belts, instructors, practice facilities and even sunblock (Banana Boat Sport Performance UltraMist seems to be a popular choice). The point is that I, and presumably most of you, partake in this excessively analytical and borderline obsessive-compulsive behavior for a very basic reason: As long as it’s within the rules, I will take advantage of every edge, no matter how small, if it helps me on the course.

With that context in mind, I would like to introduce you to a new product that could soon become the primary return when we inevitably search for “Best on-course snack:” KingMade Jerky. Now I’m guessing some of you may have already heard about this product either by reading through the GolfWRX thread on it, or Alan Shipnuck’s in-depth look at the company’s founder and backstory on Golf.com: http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/tour-caddie-jeff-king-turns-pro-beef-jerky-business.

Rather than rehashing the content that is already out there (the thread is a great source for reviews and the column serves as an excellent primer on the company), I instead want to focus on the marketing hype surrounding KingMade Jerky and how it has the potential to turn into a hugely profitable operation.

When I think about the psychology behind marketing products to golfers, there are generally two very distinct strategies that have both proven to be effective in their own unique way, and I believe KingMade Jerky is in the rare position to capitalize on both of them. For lack of a better phrase I’ll call the first strategy “Play what the pros play,” which is based on the very basic principle that we, the consumer, will want to use the same product as people who are better than us, thinking “if it’s good enough for them then it’s certainly good enough for me.” This strategy is the very basis of sports marketing. It’s the reason why Jordan brand is so successful, the rationale that children use when they beg their parents to spend $200 on a pair of Lebron’s. To be perfectly honest, it’s also 100 percent the reason I own the same irons Tiger Woods players, a set of Nike blades.

As it relates to golf and specifically this website, it’s the underlying principle behind having a forum like “What’s In The Bag,” we may not always buy exactly what the pros play, but we still want to know what the “best of the best” are using. The club companies and equipment manufactures are well aware of this fact and they understand that by attaching themselves to successful tour players they are essentially buying credibility with a large portion of the consuming public.

I say “large portion” because GolfWRXers and other like-minded consumers tend to be less inclined to buy into the marketing hype and more likely to be skeptical of the inherent problem with paying players to use a certain products:

Is the athlete endorsing this product because it’s actually good, or are they simply doing it for the money?

More often than not, I think we can all agree it’s the money and not the efficacy of the product that serves as the driving force behind the large majority (read: 99.9 percent) of athlete endorsements. In light of this inescapable reality, the discerning consumer must turn to another resource to determine which product they should buy, which brings us to the second marketing strategy: crowdsourcing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, “crowdsourcing” is the process of obtaining information about something by soliciting opinions/reviews from a large group of people. Examples of crowdsourcing include going on to Yelp to read reviews about a restaurant/hotel you plan on visting, checking out IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes to see what others think about a certain movie, and even logging into GolfWRX and (as I previously mentioned) researching what others believe to believe to be the best sunblock for the golf course.

While “play what the pros play” is dependent upon hype and big budget ad campaigns, crowdsourcing is a strategy that involves a conscious decision to eschew that traditional marketing model. Rather than relying on celebrity endorsements, crowdsourcing simply focuses on creating a great product with the hope and belief that enough positive reviews (on sites like Yelp, IMDB and GolfWRX) will yield a groundswell of popular support that will allow the product to earn the credibility that it needs without allocating a king’s ransom toward its marketing budget. Now that we have positioned the two strategies and shown how they both coexist in today’s marketplace, let’s think for a moment about how they specifically relate to us here on GolfWRX and what it means for KingMade Jerky (I promise you I’m getting there).

Humor me for a moment and engage in small exercise that I think will help make my point. (If you’re not already doing so) I would like you to take a second and picture the different assortment of clubs in your golf bag and think about how you came to the decision to buy each and every one. Why did you buy that driver? Was it because of the commercial that promised 16 more yards? Was it because you saw you’re favorite player using it? Maybe you took a bunch of different ones to the range/launch monitor and this one simply performed the best.

How about those irons? Were you sold by reading the glowing reviews of other GolfWRXers? Did Joe Kwok (whom I can’t say enough positive things about) fit you for them? Or are you a simply a brand loyalist who would never use anything else?

What was the thought process behind your wedges? Are you a Bob Vokey/Roger Cleveland disciple? Did you decide to stray from the pack and pick up a customized set from Scratch (no pun intended)?

And what about your putter? Did you buy a Scotty Cameron because that’s what all the good players at your club use? Or maybe you were looking for something cheap and you found a great deal on BST/eBay? Whatever the case may be (and believe me I’m not judging anyone here), there was definitely some sort of thought process that went into each of those decisions and, whether you like to believe it or not, they were all somewhat influenced by external forces ranging from big-budget ad campaigns to a simple user review. All of which brings us, at long last, to the topic at hand and how I believe KingMade Jerky can capitalize on all of this in it’s pursuit of becoming a profitable company.

First off, let’s tackle “play what the pros play,” or in this case, “eat what the pros eat” and understand how KingMade fits in here. If you follow golf closely and you are a one of the millions who use social media as a vehicle to connect with your favorite golfers then more than likely you have come across tweets such as these:

Furthermore, aside from the names listed above, our own Greg Moore has noted in the KingMade GolfWRX thread that other notable names such as Tiger Woods (who reportedly ate a whole 1 pound bag over nine holes at Firestone), Joe LaCava, Matt Kuchar, Scott Brown, Luke List, James Hahn and Scott Stallings all eat it as well.

Initially, the skeptic in me wanted to think that the buzz was a result of the fraternity-like bond between Tour players and caddies. Since KingMade was created by a PGA Tour caddy, weren’t all these guys just looking out for their own and trying to help out one of their buddies? But at a certain point the evidence becomes too overwhelming. I’m not saying these guys are greedy (I would be the exact same way), but it usually takes pretty decent sized check for PGA Tour players to so enthusiastically endorse a product and then broadcast their support to the hundreds of thousands of people that follow them. In this case, and we have to take them at their word, it appears that KingMade jerky has been able to accomplish the “holy grail” of celebrity endorsements: getting them to do it for free.

Just think about how much more powerful the message becomes once you know that these pros aren’t being paid for their support. In fact, let’s juxtapose KingMade’s marketing message with what I believe to be one of the more poorly conceived corporate partnerships on tour: Jim Furyk and 5 Hour Energy.

Sports Business Daily estimates that 5 Hour Energy pays Furyk somewhere in the range of the “high six figures to low seven figures” to feature their logo on his hat. While I certainly understand the rationale behind getting the air time that goes along with being affixed to a prominent tour player’s head, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a consumer who walks into a convenience store looking to buy 5 Hour Energy simply because Jim Furyk uses it (if anything I think it’s had the opposite effect as I’m sure most of us have heard some variation of the “I bet he wishes it was 5 1/2 Hour Energy” jokes after one of Furyk’s unfortunate late-round collapses). The point is that when we watch Jim Furyk in one of those goofy commercials, we know he isn’t endorsing the product because he really loves it. He’s doing it for the money, which is totally fine except for the fact that it devalues the message.

On the other hand, we have KingMade jerky, whose message and credibility becomes exponentially more powerful with each and every uncompensated celebrity endorsement. It’s an important distinction that may go unnoticed at first, but one I’m sure Jeff King and his team are profoundly aware and appreciative of it. While it appears KingMade has already achieved and presumably exceeded their goals as it relates to “play what the pros play,” in order for them to capitalize on that success they are going to need to experience similar success in the realm of crowdsourcing. As of this writing, KingMade currently has 678 Twitter followers, 851 “Likes” on Facebook, and a 77-post thread on GolfWRX with user reviews ranging from: “This is by far the best jerky out right now,” to “Well worth the price” to “A bit underwhelmed….sorry but not as good as advertised.”

Clearly this is the space where KingMade needs to make up the most ground. Obviously no product will ever be able to garner 100 percent support from 100 percent of consumers, but they definitely need to do everything they can to expand their reach (particularly on social media) so that there are more mouths to spread the (hopefully good) word.

While I have never tried the product and therefore I cannot speak to whether or not it lives up to the lofty expectations set by the tour players we just talked about, I will tell you that this is not a company that I would bet against. For starters, I don’t believe that that many influential people would go out of their way to support a product (or a friend) for free without truly believing in it. So with that in mind let’s work off of the premise that KingMade has managed to create a very solid product.

Here’s what I see happening in the coming months: We will continue to see PGA Tour players and influencers tweet about the product as they continue to try and help out a member of their fraternity and that will continue to build the brand’s awareness certainly among hard-core golfers and eventually among more casual fans as well.We will also start to see KingMade popping up on the television coverage every once in awhile, may in the way of a player’s towel as seen here:

A Kingmade Jerky towel on PGA Tour player Scott Brown’s bag.

Or perhaps we might even catch Tiger, GMac, Rickie, or Kuch devouring a bag during a stoppage in play. The more examples we get of this, the more you are going to see people Googling “What was Rickie Fowler eating on the seventh tee” or tweeting at Golf Channel’s Tiger Tracker asking him, “What was that snack El Tigre just pulled out of his bag?” These may seem like trivial examples, but in this day in age it’s how nascent brands with little-to-no advertising budget get built. Outside of the PGA Tour, I think you are going to start see “in the know” golfers breaking out bags of KingMade at your local course, which will inevitably lead to questions from the rest of the foursome, a sample piece or two, and if it’s agreeable to them, a new customer.

If you consider yourself a “stick” or at least someone who wants to look like a good golfer, think about how quickly some other similar products have spread like wildfire and become ubiquitous at amateur tournaments. Have you ever seen a commercial for how driveway markers can be used as alignment aids? I doubt it, but you have seen tour players and other really good amateurs with those orange rods sticking out of their bag, so you went and got one too (I know I did).

What about Amino Vital energy drink? I’ve personally never seen the product advertised on television, but I went and bought some because I saw it all over tour player’s towels and I wanted whatever edge they were getting. How about something as simple as the “Player’s Towel”? Up until a couple of years ago, all the good players I knew were still using those cheap hotel towels. You know, the ones that are a little shorter than normal with the little lines in them. Then, all of a sudden, I played with a guy in a  tournament who was using a Player’s Towel. I thought it looked cool, so I asked him about it and then went and bought one. And I wasn’t the only one. The next thing I knew, they were everywhere. It’s a fascinating cycle where these smaller, usually more expensive, boutique-type products basically go viral within the golf community and they blow up and become profitable companies.

One of the best parts of being a member of the GolfWRX community is having the ability to learn about these companies in their infancy, watching them grow up before your very own eyes and rooting for the good people behind the scenes during the entire process (and let’s be honest it’s also fun to be the guy in your group whose always ahead of the game, like getting in early on a successful IPO). Off the top of my head, besides the ones I previously listed, I can think of several examples of companies like these who have gone on to experience some serious success in the industry: Byron Morgan, Scratch, KBS, Jones Golf Bags, Stitch and Iliac Headcovers… the list goes on and on.

KingMade is easy to dismiss because it’s “just” a snack company, but if we are willing to invest the time and energy to find the right Oakley lens or best sunblock, shouldn’t we care just as much about our on-course nutrition? If I was a betting man I’d wager that we will. In the eternal pursuit of every edge, there is no detail too small and no rock that should go left unturned. If I’m going to have a snack on the course, then I want to have the BEST snack. And if KingMade is as good as they say it is, then I’ll bite, hook, line and sinker.

To paraphrase the motivational speech that Al Pacino delivers toward the end of Any Given Sunday, life (and golf) is a game of inches, which is why it’s time for me to wrap up this column. The UPS guy is at the door. He just arrived with my sample pack.