Planning
How should a golf club brief a marketing partner?
What to put in a brief for a golf club's marketing partner: one commercial priority, real capacity, named owners, decisions, dependencies, and how to sign off the work.
Brief the job before the channels
A good brief for a marketing partner starts with one commercial priority, the people the club wants to help, and the capacity it has to serve them. Then it sets out the problem you can see, what already exists, who owns each decision, what the work depends on, and how you'll know it has been delivered.
Connected work doesn't mean putting every channel into the first phase. It means the website, campaign, content, communications, and customer journey each have a named owner, and a clear handover where they meet. Then a partner can recommend a sensible scope without guessing how the club runs.
Start with the commercial job and real capacity
“Grow membership” or “improve marketing” leaves too much open. Name the membership category, visitor period, society dates, event spaces, or other priority you mean. Then say what the club can actually deliver: the places available, the dates, the operating limits, and the people who'll handle the response.
Keep what you've seen separate from what you think is causing it. A page may get visits without enough bookings, or the team may hear the same question again and again, but neither tells you why. Give the partner the evidence you have, and ask the work to test or settle the right question.
Eight things the brief should cover
Give each of these a concrete answer. If one can't be answered yet, name the person who has to decide it, rather than leaving a supplier to fill the gap quietly.
- Commercial priority: Which one membership, visitor, society, event, hospitality, or relationship priority should the work support, over what period, and which business measure will the club watch?
- Audience and capacity: Who does the club want to help, and how much can it really serve, given its dates, tee times, spaces, budget, and staff cover?
- The problem: What's happening now, shown with a current source, example, or customer journey, and kept separate from what you think is causing it?
- Existing assets and systems: Which approved brand, photography, film, copy, web pages, booking routes, data sources, and systems are already in use, who owns each, and what state is it in?
- Who does what at the club: Who supplies facts and access, who checks capacity, who handles enquiries and bookings, and who keeps the information current after handover?
- Decisions: Who approves the brief, budget, message, creative, technical changes, and release, and who can stop or change the work if something isn't ready?
- Dependencies: Which decisions, access, permissions, content, prices, availability, integrations, or supplier handovers must be ready, who owns each, and by when?
- Acceptance: What must be delivered, checked, and accepted before the work is complete, kept apart from later measures such as enquiries, bookings, or revenue?
If the evidence points to an identity problem, use our guide to choose whether to fix an application, refresh the system, or rebrand before you specify the work.
Agree who does what
The club stays the source for current prices, capacity, operating rules, permissions, and final approval. The brief should also say who receives an enquiry, who answers a booking question, who maintains the source information, and who decides whether a change is ready to go live.
Ask the partner to set out its deliverables, assumptions, and dependencies against those owners. The evidence that a piece of work is done should be something you can see: an approved page, a tested route, a handed over file, a recorded source, or a working report. Enquiries, bookings, and revenue come later, in outcome measurement, and shouldn't be treated as proof that a deliverable was done correctly.
An example: weekday visitor tee times
Take a club that wants to make better use of the visitor tee times it already releases on Tuesday to Thursday, from April to June. Golf operations has confirmed 80 visitor tee times a week for the period. The audience is occasional golfers within a practical drive who want a good weekday round and a simple way to book. Weekend capacity and member competitions are out of scope. The club will watch confirmed visitor bookings and the share of released capacity used, without assuming marketing alone decides either.
The visitor page lists prices and links to the booking system, but it doesn't explain the weekday experience or answer the questions the golf team hears before a first visit. Booking reports show unused released times. The club doesn't yet know whether the main cause is the offer, the presentation, the reach, the booking route, or a mix. It already has an approved identity, a current course photography folder, the visitor page, a third party tee time booking system, an email platform, and social accounts. The marketing coordinator marks which images and copy are current, and the booking supplier stays responsible for its booking system.
The general manager owns the priority, chooses the proposal, and approves release. The golf manager confirms times, prices, and restrictions each week, and approves the availability and offer wording. The marketing coordinator supplies approved assets, approves how the brand and source material are used, and keeps the visitor page current. The golf team owns customer questions and booking exceptions. The maximum project budget is £12,000, including partner fees and paid media spend, and proposals must show those costs separately. No advert, email, or page change goes live while availability or the booking destination is unconfirmed.
The timeline runs like this:
- By 31 January, the golf manager confirms weekday availability and prices for April to June.
- By 5 February, the marketing coordinator records permission for the chosen photography and provides access to the website and campaign accounts.
- By 7 February, the booking supplier confirms the destination links and an export of the baseline report.
- By 9 February, the general manager approves how the golf team will handle booking questions.
- By 16 February, the general manager chooses a proposal. The club won't commit to an April release until every dependency has its evidence.
- By 25 March, the general manager accepts the finished work.
The work is accepted when the visitor page update and campaign materials match the approved brief, every link and booking path has been checked on desktop and mobile, source and destination tracking is recorded, the owners have the final files, and the reporting can tell released capacity, visits, and confirmed bookings apart. How bookings perform after that is reviewed separately.
Check the brief before you send it
- There's one commercial priority, specific enough to plan around.
- The audience and the available capacity match up.
- What you've seen is kept separate from guesses about the cause.
- Existing assets and systems each have a current owner and state.
- Approvals, handovers, and decisions to stop belong to named roles.
- Every dependency has an owner and a date.
- Delivery and commercial results are judged on different evidence.
Connected marketing
Give the work one clear starting point.
Explore how Albatross brings brand, campaigns, content, websites, and connected Capture technology together around the opportunity your club needs to improve.
