Top Golf Club marketing tips
Handling your golf club marketing in a recession can be a difficult task. However, if done correctly, conducting golf club marketing in a recession can be the perfect opportunity to gain market share from your competitors as they cut back on their activities.
Here’s our top ten tips for improving your golf club marketing:
10. Know your enemy
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors can help you to position your golf club perfectly. Research your competitors and develop ways to exploit their weaknesses and replicate their strengths to best effect.
9. Use photography
So many golf clubs either fail to use or use really poor images of their club throughout their golf club marketing materials. Great photography can really sell the beauty of your course and facilities to a potential new member or player. If you had the choice, surely you would always play the more beautiful course? Bear this in mind when adding photography to your promotional materials and golf course website.
8. Get ranked online
In this modern world the majority of visitors and new members for your golf club will find you online. Ensuring that your website and details are found easily online is therefore key to your success. Be sure to conduct Search Engine Optimisation on geographic terms such as ‘golf course Surrey’ (if you are a Surrey golf course) for maximum returns. Try to think like your visitors, what would you search for online if you were in their golf shoes?
7. Always fill your tees
Yes, this is the very foundation of golf course marketing fill as many tee slots as possible. This doesn’t mean it isn’t as important as any other point on this list. Use promotions to fill unpopular teetimes, even if they are not sold at your target cost per teetime. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to upgrade these visitors to more expensive teetimes in the future after they enjoy your course, and attract new visitors when they see how busy your course is even at usually unpopular teetimes!
6. Don't make your players work
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Always work hard to ensure that the process of booking, arriving and playing your course is as easy as possible. If players come up against too many barriers, they will soon find another course to play. Ease the process by providing an online tee time booking system, clear directions to your course online and ample signposting. 5. Understand your membersResearching your competitors is a good idea, but researching your members is an even better idea. Your members are the group that generate you the most revenue, so take time to understand their needs and requirements from your club. |
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When you understand what makes your members happy, ensure that you do it, and do it well. Exceed their expectations and they will become less focused on your prices and more focused on spreading the word about your wonderful golf course to other potential members.
4. Use your members
Once you have delighted your current members, be sure to use them to spread the word and acquire new members. You may find that many of your members are extremely well-networked businesspeople, so look to introduce a referral scheme to encourage them to spread the word to their contacts about your wonderful golf club.
3. Please your members
There’s nothing like going somewhere where you feel like part of a special and exclusive group. Do your best to tailor the golf course experience for each of your members for maximum satisfaction. Ensure that your staff remember as many names as possible, remember drink preferences and facts about the home life of your members. Having such a personalised service can really add value to your golf course membership.
2. Package around the golf
For many of your members and visitors it’s not just about the golf - and it shouldn’t be just about the golf for you either. A day spent playing golf by your members is a chance for you to use your golf club marketing to package in other extras that you normally wouldn’t sell. Packaging in drinks, hotel rooms, spa days for partners and buggies could earn you revenues that previously would never have existed.
1. Have fun
If you’re not enjoying marketing your golf course, then how do you expect your visitors and members to enjoy playing on it? Take pride and enjoyment in what you are doing on a day to day basis and your staff will too. You will quickly find that their enthusiasm becomes infectious and your members start to experience and enjoy the buzz around your golf course as well!
