Melissa Taylor is embracing modern marketing to expand her reach.
Coming up with the name was easy.
“I just really enjoy a pun,” says Melissa Taylor, assistant professional at Eastwood Golf Club in Melbourne and proponent of Taylored To You Golf Coaching.
Exposed to the concept of personal branding and marketing as she completed her PGA traineeship under Luke Bower at Eastwood, Taylor made the decision to embrace social media as a way of growing her clientele beyond the club membership.
Promoting your business through social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn remains a relatively new concept for many PGA professionals, but Taylor understood its power as she set about targeting beginner women golfers with little previous exposure to the game.
“I just believe you can reach so many people using it,” Taylor said of her use of social media. “A lot of the guys and girls that I’ve come through my time with all seemed to latch onto that same kind of idea, whereas some of the older PGA professionals tend not to and rely on word of mouth to market their services. I want to be reaching more than our membership base at our club and a lot of the time I’m trying to market to those who have never even played golf before.
“The great thing with social media is that when you’re doing promotional marketing, you can target certain people. So while they might not have a specific interest in golf, you can choose the fact that they’re interested in fitness and all of a sudden that comes up in their news feed and that’s a seed that’s planted, that maybe they want to try golf.”
In designing her logo, Taylor had front of mind the type of golfers she wanted to attract. With the help of best friend Molly Drane, who runs a marketing company called Good Golly Creative, Taylor wanted a logo that was appealing to the female eye, from the colours to the font.
“The fact that my name’s actually written in more cursive writing, that really appeals to me,” said Taylor, who coaches men and women at Eastwood. “I felt it made it look a bit more feminine than just normal block writing.
“Molly gave me different colour palettes to choose from and we went with the blues and the softer tones. Not particularly because I looked into whether that would be better, but to me it looked softer and more welcoming – a bit more inviting and a bit more feminine.
“I listen to different business podcasts and I get a lot of information from those about the need to be marketing a tone of voice and that tone of voice is included in your colour schemes.”
Estimating that a third of her coaching clientele has come by way of her social-media activations, Taylor also utilises Facebook in particular to turn her beginners into bona fide golfers. If the golf club environment is still intimidating for some, Taylor connects her students from her various programs into one dedicated Facebook group to provide an online community that gathers in the real world to share their love of golf.
“While some of my content is presented to everybody, I actually have quite a lot of content on Facebook specifically for them.
“For the girls who haven’t particularly shared numbers or what have you, someone might put out a post and say, ‘I’m going to the driving range to have a practise. Does anyone want to join me?’ They’re all part of that community and have a place to be able to reach out to each other. Quite a few of them that have exchanged numbers, which has been a really great thing to see.” – Tony Webeck
