David Short Golf

David Short, Barney Puttick and Graham Bradley run what is quite simply one of the best golf coaching services in the business. David Short Golf is all about taking a personal approach to making their clients’ golf game better, whether that’s through coaching weekends, week-long clinics or fully escorted golf tours. The guys take a relaxed but professional approach, applying down-to-earth teaching skills in a professional way, and what’s more, they’ve all got the chops to back it up – Barney, for instance, has coached more than 35,000 golf lessons! There’s no better way to improve your golf game.

At Top Frog we were thrilled when David Short got in touch with us, asking if we could revamp the brand’s website, ramp up its social media and turbo-charge its digital life. The world of golf is a naturally scenic and visual one, and that plays to our strengths perfectly.

If you’d like to learn more about what we do, read on to find out how we helped David Short Golf become a digital superstar...

First Steps – Building a Website

There were lots of interesting requirements for the David Short Golf website that set it apart a little from the work we usually do, so the first thing to do was set about establishing exactly what we needed to make.

The David Short Golf business is built around events. Guests book onto tours, weekends and coaching sessions, and they need to be able to browse what’s available in an easy and intuitive way in order to find the event that’s right for them. We needed to build a dynamic events page that would be easy both for the company to update and its clients to use.

We designed event blocks that would show key information – namely dates, location, price and places remaining – and built pages to house them.

Prospective clients would be able to easily select which type of event they’re interested in from the top bar – a short session or a longer tour – and from there browse the events currently available, as well as have a look at ones already past.

Signing on to a week’s golf tour isn’t like buying a nice cut of meat for tonight’s dinner. People like to do their research before they sign on to something like this, they like to be assured that the people behind it know what they’re doing and that others have had good experiences with the service – this is what we in the digital business call “social proof”.

We needed to make sure that customers could see at a glance how good the guys at David Short Golf are at what they do, giving potential new customers the social proof that they would be signing onto a great golfing session.

To achieve this, we created a Reviews page where satisfied customers could leave their feedback on their experience with David Short Golf. The great part about this was that we knew it would be an easy win for the website – the customers at David Short Golf invariably have a great time on the tours, so it wasn’t long before this page was full of happy golfers telling everyone just that.

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Taking it Further – Turbo-Charging the Brand

Another interesting challenge with David Short Golf came in the social side of things. As you can see in the reviews, the guys tend to get a lot of repeat customers. People go on a golf tour or coaching weekend, and find it so useful or enjoyable (or, commonly, both!) that they quickly sign on for another one. Now, this is obviously fantastic, but it’s also important for a business not to rest on its laurels, especially in the digital world. The team needed a way to always be attracting potential new customers to the site.

So, the challenge for us was to work out how best to use social media in the world of golf. This was something the team hadn’t really considered before, so we quickly got them set up with Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Golf is a naturally scenic sport, so Instagram was the perfect place to start showing off some pretty pictures of stunning tour locations.

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We also put a lot of effort into generating ideas for Facebook – creating groups and communities where golf nuts could discuss aspects of the game and share tips and techniques.

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This allowed us to accomplish the dual purposes of attracting potential new clients while nurturing the current audience – because you don’t want to forget about those guys either! Golf is a lifelong commitment after all – as one of our wise Instagram commenters said, “I've spent most of my life golfing — the rest I've just wasted!”

The Future

We’ve had a fantastic time working with David Short Golf to turbo-charge the brand’s digital life, and we’re still on it today, keeping the website working smoothly and putting great content out on social media.

Want to see what we can do for you? Click the button to get in touch.