Tot Hill Farm: The Expansion of Social Media (2018 campaign)

Tot Hill Farm, a golf course opened in 2000, gained notoriety upon launch with a bold claim: being one of the most difficult courses in the United States. Indeed; just a few years later in 2003, Golf Digest named the course the #7 most difficult course in America.

Course creator Mike Stranz chose the rocky, uneven terrain of a natural collection of foothills in the middle of Randolph County on purpose; an unusual location that presented unique challenges both on the ranges, and amongst the community.

Tot Hill Farm's challenges were two-fold: to expand the awareness of their existence to an online space, and to promote the unique challenge of the course. These two goals went hand-in-hand with one another; we could use the current reviews and testimonies of members and cajole new viewers of the ads/golf course with the allure of a different and difficult experience -- one that was truly unlike anything they had played before at a casual course.

I began the social media campaign by gauging search engine words that fit best and had overlap between "golf" and "community." Tot Hill has been engrained in Randolph County as a special staple, and had already partnered with several businesses nearby in order to assist each other with brand awareness.

The first issue that needed addressing for Tot Hill was identifying their audiences. I began by creating an ad in Photoshop and running it across Facebook and Instagram (pictured above), testing audiences for both. The information that was gathered was that Instagram should not the focus of this campaign; the audience we were targeting almost exclusively stuck to Facebook -- albeit, as the like counter indicates, was not being cultivated properly.

I ran the ad a second time the following week, with modifications to the search engine keywords and refining the targeted audiences to be in line with the type of patron that Tot Hill would attract, along with a different and less direct call to action. Instead of getting directions to the course, a concern that was less and less prevalent as the campaign went on, I instead opted to try and drive potential viewers and golfers directly to the booking page on Tot Hill's website.

The results showed themselves immediately: a massive influx of views and, more importantly, engagement. The likes and shares spoke for themselves, and according to the golf course manager, times began to be booked more consistently on weekdays especially.

After the first stage of the campaign had been settled I quickly moved onto the second: advertising the sincere difficulty curve the course offered and pushing it forward as an ad campaign. To accomplish this, I began by finding reviews on Yelp -- specifically, reviews that were either about the beauty of the course -- or the difficulty curve.

The text in yellow indicates more negative or critical reviews. These reviews were about the course's layout or challenge; critiques of other services, such as food or traffic, were excluded.

I also skimmed more minor review pages and companies, along with scuttling the rare critique or comment from the Facebook page. With these reviews combined I made the ad above, which had the intention of driving traffic to either the Facebook page or directly to booking on the Tot Hill website. As we learned through on-course interviews and adjusted our needs accordingly, this particular theme would continue for the rest of the ads published during the four month campaign.

Other advertisements focused on the seemingly endless, beautiful fairways on display at Tot Hill. The manager of the course wanted to display the natural rock formations and sand traps scattered upon the course; an excellent idea that led to gorgeous shots that were touched up in Photoshop and After Effects, and pushed into the ad campaign.

Final Results

In total, eight ads were made and published on both Tot Hill's Facebook page and their budding Snapchat page (which has unfortunately been shut down upon the time of writing). Each ad was put on a carousel ad campaign, with revolving advertisements within the same set group depending on the day. As the numbers show, the visual ads got the most "face traffic" of likes and shares -- but the Illustrator text ads led to more bookings through the ad itself.

These trends would indicate that, while attention is drawn to more pristine locations at a glance, an effective call to action and the draw of challenge through word of mouth better drive sales.

During the ad campaign, Tot Hill's page saw unprecedented growth, finally eclipsing a 2,000 followers mark that had been eluding them since 2015, stuck at just over 1,800. With the sudden attention and bookings, the likes skyrocketed to just over 2,100 at the end of the campaign in October of 2018. In 2022, Tot Hill still occasionally circulates the ad campaign I established for them with some minor modifications, and continue to grow on Facebook to this day.