Changing the Game

Golf. It brings to mind—tradition, green jackets, scorecards and that little pencil you can only find on a golf course. Usually people don’t associate the game of golf with technology or software but Golf Genius Software has introduced three revolutionary software products into the game. Their flagship product, GolfTripGenius, is an online golf trip manager that has been successfully used by over 10,000 golf trip captains around the world since it was introduced in 2010. In the fall of 2012, they used HubSpot’s innovative marketing software to help promote the launch of GolfLeagueGenius, a comprehensive game-changing way to manage social and competitive golf leagues. This January, the company is using the proven inbound marketing model to market and launch GolfEventGenius, the third website in the product suite. GolfEventGenius gives member-guests, club events, charity and corporate outings the look and feel of a professional tournament.

Golf Genius Marketing Struggles with Limitations

Like many tech companies, Golf Genius Software’s marketing objectives were to raise brand awareness of their products by attracting and nurturing qualified leads to gain new customers. Before using HubSpot, Golf Genius Software had several limitations in regards to their ability to track leads, understand their online behaviors and equating overall marketing success.

This problem was compounded by their website limitations. If they wanted to run a campaign or make changes to the site, they had to call in their development team, who already had their hands full developing the company’s latest and greatest products. As they approached the launch of GolfLeagueGenius, Golf Genius Software’s Director of Marketing, Billy Condon, knew they needed to solve these problems in order to be successful. He understood they needed a marketing platform with tools that could enable his small marketing team to properly execute and run their marketing campaigns. 

Implementing a Persona-Driven Marketing Strategy

With the launch of GolfLeagueGenius in 2012, Billy saw a huge opportunity for accelerated growth of both product offerings. He knew they needed a strategy to capitalize on this niche product and market so he looked to HubSpot for help.

Billy and his marketing manager, Alyssa Rosend, worked with their HubSpot consultant to build a game plan that began by identifying common characteristics that exemplified their target customers. From there, they developed different buyer personas for their various product offerings. These personas are specific groups of golf industry professionals and enthusiasts who share similar demographics, budgets, challenges and goals. They now know that both sales and marketing are more successful online when they can address each of their personas’ needs differently.

To do this, they create educational content and used HubSpot’s Landing Pages, Lead Management and Workflow tools to capture and nurture leads when they sign up for a free trial of their software. Alyssa can now easily design and build workflows for their multiple products, variety of users, and their online interactions. Unlike traditional marketing automation logic, Alyssa doesn’t rely on arbitrary email opens and click-throughs to decide what the next step should be to engage her prospects. With HubSpot, she uses insights gained from ALL online interactions of her prospects across social media, landing pages, CTA click throughs, and page views. Once a lead has taken a desired action, such as becomes a paying customer; they get moved into a different workflow with targeted messaging. This happens automatically, whether that action happened in or outside the workflow sequence so Alyssa can be secure knowing she is sending the right message to the right person at the appropriate time.