Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings is a family-run business that owns six luxury country clubs in six stunning locations across the United States. Each venue has restaurants, golf courses, and wedding venues designed to “create memorable experiences for all.”
Each country club targets three types of people:
- Golfers who want to play on some of the best golf courses in the country
- Happily engaged couples that are looking for the perfect venue for their special day
- Customers who want a place to relax, eat, and drink in the country club and restaurant
Six venues, each with three target markets to reach, means that Ron Jaworski Wedding’s four-person marketing team has its work cut out.
But none more so than social media manager, Joanna Haynal, who manages over 40 social media accounts, almost single handedly.
Fortunately, Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings has been using Agorapulse for over five years, meaning that the daily management of these social media accounts is much, much easier for Joanna.
Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings loves Agorapulse. However, with an unstable economy, the company needed to double-check: Was there another social media management platform that could offer them better value for money?
(Spoiler alert: There wasn’t.)
Background: Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings & Its Focus for Social Media
As a brand, Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings works hard to create a warm, friendly, and inclusive environment at its venues. Couples who get married there will keep in touch with staff for years. Also, most golfers are usually on first-name terms with the grounds staff, and the restaurants always get a steady stream of regulars through the door.
“There are people on our social media who interact and engage with us and they got married at one of our venues over ten years ago. They’re still on our accounts, and they still know our employees by name.” – Joanna Haynal, Social Media Manager for Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings
To maintain this level of long-term loyalty, and to grow their close-knit community, Ron Jaworski Weddings uses social media marketing. It’s the perfect way to stay in touch with guests, keep relationships strong, and encourage customers to share experiences with others.
“Once you come here, you stay part of the family, and that’s something that we definitely try to keep rolling with social media.” – Joanna Haynal
Five years ago, they started using Agorapulse to help them create, schedule, and publish regular content and consistently engage with their different audiences, across each of their 40 social media profiles.
These five years have been long, fulfilling, and happy ones. But as part of being a business is re-evaluating processes and tools, Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings—although still delighted with Agorapulse—decided to look elsewhere.
Why Did Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings Want to Investigate Another Social Media Management Platform?
Inflation is hitting people’s real disposable income hard. Hospitality and similar industries are feeling the squeeze.
So, Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings, decided to trial Hootsuite, Later, Loomly, and SocialPilot to see whether they could find another social media management platform that could compete with Agorapulse on value.
“Money matters, especially with our budget. We just wanted to make sure that we weren’t overpaying. We’d been with Agorapulse for so many years, and we were growing. We wanted to see if there was anything else.” – Joanna Haynal
What Happened When Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings Trialed Other Social Media Management Platforms?
Joanna was searching for a social media management platform that could do the job of a social media assistant and support her with daily tasks like content creation and post scheduling but for less money than Agorapulse.
“I was looking to see which social media management platform could help me out the most, and give us the best bang for our buck.” – Joanna Haynal
When trialing Hootsuite, Later, Loomly, and SocialPilot, she found that these new platforms were actually making her everyday tasks take much, much longer.
Why?
All four social media management platforms had unintuitive navigation
The navigational experience for all four social media management platforms was either too complex or incredibly unintuitive. That made completing even the simplest of tasks time-consuming and difficult.
Hootsuite had an overwhelming interface
Apart from being “wildly expensive,” Joanna also struggled to manage 40 social media profiles with Hootsuite: It was too overwhelming and too complicated.
With Hootsuite, she just got hit with a ton of information, which made her workload needlessly overwhelming and stressful. There was no order. It felt chaotic.
“There was so much going on and too much to look at. It was gonna probably take me all morning to go through all our insights, all our comments, and all our interactions.” – Joanna Haynal
With Agorapulse her dashboard was always clean and streamlined. She could easily flick between accounts and get a snapshot of what was going on, and see what she needed to prioritize first.
Loomly had a decentralized notification system
She found that Loomly didn’t have a central place for notifications which made it difficult, not to mention time-consuming, to keep on top of all 40 social media accounts.
“A big thing for me is having the ability to see all of our notifications in one place so I can see who needs attention. That was impossible with Loomly.” – Joanna Haynal
With Agorapulse, Joanna could view all her notifications from across all 40 profiles, in one place. This allowed her to see, at a glance, which profiles needed her urgent attention and which could wait a little longer. Doing so helped her to prioritize her workload, and it used to save her so much time.
None of the four social media management platforms integrated with Google Business
As part of her role, Joanna has to monitor and respond to Google Business reviews. So she needed her new social media management solution to link up to Google Business reviews so she could respond to any new reviews quickly, from within the platform, as she did with Agorapulse.
Unfortunately, none of the four social media management platforms integrated with Google Business. So, she had to trawl through her emails to make sure she didn’t miss a Google Business review notification. More time wasted.
Most of the four social media management platforms were limited to 30 profiles
She also found that the number of social media accounts she was able to add, without having to pay a lot more, was frustratingly limited. Most of the platforms she trialed only allowed her to add and manage up to 30 social media profiles.
She needed over 40.
In summary
Some of the social media management platforms she trialed looked cheaper.
In reality, the cost of the time it would take her to use something so clunky and unintuitive, meant that it would end up costing her more.
“Sometimes, you see that the price per month is less, but then there is all this additional time that you spend getting lost in the tool, switching between tabs, trying to find things, and just figuring out UX that is not user-friendly. You spend money on that because you spend your time on that.” – Joanna Haynal
Why Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings Chose to Stay With Agorapulse
After completing trials with SocialPilot, Loomly, Hootsuite, and Later, Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings chose to stay with Agorapulse: They found that we were the best social media management platform for value.
“Ultimately the thing that is most beneficial and valuable to us is our time. And we could see that Agorapulse was able to give us more time.” – Joanna Haynal
There were two key reasons why Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings found us to be the best value for money:
With Agorapulse, everything is centralized
Joanna realized that she was able to get more done with Agorapulse because everything was in one single place. She didn’t need to switch between profiles to check the notifications from all 40 accounts, for example. It was all there, for her to see, with the click of one button.
She could create posts, schedule content, respond to messages, reply to Google Business reviews, and build reports, without leaving the Agorapulse platform. She couldn’t do this with the other social media management platforms that she trialed.
“With SocialPilot or Hootsuite, for example, you have to click on each individual account to get the information that you need. So it wasn’t as seamless as Agorapulse, which was the main issue that I just couldn’t get past.” – Joanna Haynal
Agorapulse has features that are super-easy to use
When Joanna first started at Ron JaworskiGolf & Weddings, they were already using Agorapulse. But, because the marketing team was so small, and Joanna was the first and only social media expert at the company, nobody was able to help her get to grips with how to use the platform.
She quickly realized that Agorapulse was incredibly intuitive and easy to use, so she didn’t actually need much help. This was especially apparent with the publishing features that allowed her to create, schedule, and publish content to multiple accounts. They were comprehensive enough to make her job easier, without being overly complicated to use.
“Something that we were looking for was the ease of publishing, especially because we publish to more than one account. That was something that we just felt was really seamless with Agorapulse.” – Joanna Haynal
When the business expanded the team to include a marketing assistant, she found she was able to train him on how to use Agorapulse easily. He was able to pick it up straight away.
This all hit home when she was trialing the other social media management platforms. They were all so clunky, inefficient, and overly complicated to use in comparison. She wasn’t able to hit the ground running like she had when she first started using Agorapulse.
In Conclusion
“When it came down to it, Agorapulse was more aligned with our budget, even with the new pricing changes. It works for our team, and we decided that we just didn’t have a reason to switch.” – Joanna Haynal
Although many social media management tools may look cheaper and claim to offer better value per month, you have to consider the time it would take you to use it daily.
If its features are difficult to use, its navigation unintuitive, and its dashboard confusing, then it will take you longer to complete your day-to-day tasks.
If you have to spend most of your day completing trivial jobs (like creating and publishing content for instance) when will you have time to build your social media strategy and improve your performance?
“Some tools seem to be cheaper than Agorapulse, but when you calculate how much more time you need to spend using them, it turns out that they’re more expensive after all. Agorapulse is like an additional teammate who can do many smaller tasks for you, so you can focus on the most important items.” – Joanna Haynal
Time really is money.
After a thorough search, Ron Jaworski Golf & Weddings has found the social media teammate it’s been looking for.
Like an ideal partner in a rom-com, we were there all along.
