Golf Course Marketing Plans and Planning Ahead
Are you:
frustrated with the lack of play/revenue being generated at your club?
incensed by competitors heavily discounting their greens fees and membership initiation fees?
searching for ways to drive new players/members to your Club?
desirous of getting your marketing plan organized and proactive?
How to Hire a Marketing Consultant
If so, go to my FREE MARKETING CONSULTATION page, fill out the brief survey, and e-mail it to me. This survey will provide me the very basics about your Club and your situation. Then we can set up a convenient time for your FREE marketing consultation. It’s easy, takes less than 90 seconds to fill the survey out, and it will help me answer your immediate marketing questions. And, after nearly 30 years in the golf course marketing business, if I can’t answer your specific questions, I’ll bet I know someone who can. I’ll be glad to introduce you.
Golf Course Marketing: More Than Just Advertising
There is a common misunderstanding that golf course marketing is advertising. The fact is: advertising is a part of marketing, but marketing isn’t advertising. Marketing is doing the research necessary to offer a product to an audience that will likely respond favorably: market research, competitor analysis (not just rate comparisons), course positioning, pricing, demographic growth analysis, economic growth analysis, consumer and facility demand analysis’, supply (of golf holes) versus demand, market age and household income analysis, ethnicity research, etc. (That sounds more complicated than it really is, I know.)
Marketing includes all those activities that are performed in order to offer your golf course and facilities to your target customers (memberships or public-access play). How would you know who your target audience is if you do not understand your unique market? Marketing includes all those research activities that contribute to the development, pricing, communication and promotion of your golf course.
‘Promotion’ is the marketing element used to communicate your courses message and unique selling point (USP) to prospective customers (target markets), and influencing those potential golfers to play your course repeatedly or join your member ranks. It is this promotional side of marketing that includes, yes!, advertising. Therefore, advertising should be viewed as only a part of marketing.
In the proverbial nutshell: Marketing is getting prepared by planning ahead, using market data to identify target customers, and inviting your new prospects to your Club.