Golf Academy
Georgia Golf Academy Grows Inbound Leads 50x
Reynolds Golf Academy is a golf school located in Georgia, USA. The Golf Academy offers golf lessons and corporate outings and is run by 6 employees, including four golf instructors, an administrative assistant and a corporate salesperson.
Challenge
Charlie King, golf professional and director of instruction at Reynolds Golf Academy, and his small staff had been relying mainly on traditional marketing to reach their target audience, but magazine advertisements and direct mail were expensive and very difficult to measure. Also, in a down economy, with many consumers cutting back, the pressure was on to make Reynolds Golf Academy stand out from its competitors.
After evaluating the Golf Academy’s website using Hubspot’s Website Grader, a free search engine optimization (SEO) tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of websites, Charlie was convinced that there was more he could do to improve the organization’s web presence.
Charlie wanted to employ an “inbound” approach to marketing, one that focused on creating useful, relevant content to attract qualified customers who want to be found. All he needed was the tools to implement that strategy quickly, effectively and affordably.
Solution
In August 2008, Charlie began using Hubspot’s inbound marketing software. Having a website that was more than an “online brochure” was important to Charlie. He wanted the Golf Academy’s website to be an interactive destination where visitors to his website could learn about his “New Rules” of golf instruction through YouTube videos and his free downloadable e-books.
They publishing a blog on the website using HubSpot’s blogging software and optimized the website’s pages using search engine optimization tools. They can now monitors traffic to the website using marketing analytics and use keyword analysis tools to see which keywords are bringing in qualified sales leads. Using HubSpot’s competitor analysis tool, they can see how the golf academy’s website is performing against its competitors.
When visitors to the website sign up for the newsletter or download one of Charlie’s three e-books on golf instruction, they use Hubspot’s lead management system to track where the inbound links are coming from and determine which strategies are working. Reynolds Golf Academy now gets most of its customers from the web or word-of-mouth.
“Hubspot has helped me execute my online marketing strategy,” said Charlie. “I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of where marketing is going to be into the future. I’m getting a jump on my competitors.”
Results
Charlie’s results since signing up with HubSpot have been impressive. “We built a website that has increased in traffic, that has increased in inbound links,” said Charlie. In search engine results, “The number of keywords that we show up on has gone up dramatically.”
More specifically, he has seen the following results:
- Increased traffic and lead volume by over 50x
- Accumulated over 300 blog subscribers
- Attracted 4,191 inbound links from over 230 domains
- The website’s traffic rank has improved from 5.9 million to between 1 million and 2 million
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