Tips on Marketing for Golf Courses
If you have ever set out to run a Marketing campaign for a golf course, you will understand how difficult a proposition this can be. The main challenge lies in the fact that most Golf Courses do not necessarily have problems attracting people to tee off on the odd afternoon. In fact, they actually tend to be overbooked in this regard.
Average Cost for a Round of Golf
The problem is that these kinds of people do not really spend that much at the Golf Course. What, as an example, is the average cost for a round of Golf? Although that varies depending on the day of the week and other factors, the average cost is $40 for a weekend round.
How Golf Courses Really Make Money
Clearly, this is not much. In fact, most of the Golf Course that are out there have long been wallowing on the verge of unprofitability. So, how do Golf courses make money?
- Corporate Parties
- Renting out banquets
- Green fees
- Cart fees
- Equipment sales in the Pro Shop
- Equipment rental
- The bar
- Lessons
- Driving range
These are the areas that you need to target when carrying out a Marketing campaign for a Golf course. Despite everything that we have already mentioned, all is not doom and gloom within the industry. With the right mix of Marketing tools and techniques, Golf course can be turned into highly profitable entities;
- Have a professional looking Website
Your first step on the journey to running a world class marketing campaign for Golf Courses involves setting up a professional Website. This is advice that we give in almost all instances today. Marketing in today’s world has, it is safe to say, largely shifted to the World Wide Web. This is where you need to be if you are going to reach out to the maximum number of potential clients.
We need not stress here the importance of making sure that your website is professional looking. Most of your potential clients are likely to be turned off should you have a site that has missing information or is full of copy errors.
- Optimize a Golf Course’s website for the right keywords
Remember what we said about corporate parties and banquets being the main source of income for Golf Courses? This is something that you need to stress on your website. Most of the Golf Course websites that are out there are optimized for the wrong keywords.
What do we mean by that? Remember that Keywords in SEO are those phrases and words that people type into Search Engines when looking for a particular product or service. You can, and you actually should, target obvious keywords; including long tail keywords for your locality.
Let’s say you are launching a Marketing campaign for Chula Vista Golf Course, which is located in San Diego California. You should, of course, target potential customers in your area of operation. One of the keywords that you will likely have to target is; “Best Golf Course, Chula Vista.” Another would be “Best Golf Course San Diego.”
Other Keywords
Remember we have just noted that Golf courses get most of their money from hosting banquets and other corporate functions? You should, therefore, target keywords that relate to these functions because this is, really, where the money is. In this regard, your target keywords can include; “Best banquet hosting, Chula Vista,” and “best outdoor event hosting San Diego.”
- Listings on Local Review Sites
No marketing drive would, it is safe to say, be complete without a listing on local review sites. It used to be that people relied on word of mouth to get the word out about a product or service. Nowadays, if you want to get information about anything, all that you need to do is go on Yelp, Yellow Pages and other listing sites and you will be set to go.
That is why it is important for those who are engaged in Marketing for Golf courses to make sure that they get their websites on these sites. This is where people will be able to find you. Not only that, but these places represent a mostly free opportunity for your website to get the visibility that it needs.
- Google Maps
Other than on social review sites such as Yelp, you also need to have your Golf course listed on Google Maps. Doing so allows you to literally get on the map as far as the visibility of your business is concerned.
Getting listed on Google Maps is easy enough. You can follow the instructions that are in this article. Needless to say here that all that you need to do is get your business listed on Google My Business and you should be good to go. This process, which takes no more than a few minutes, exponentially increases your visibility to potential customers.
- Social Media
Marketing for Golf courses would not be complete without a strong social media presence. Again, your aim in this regard is to have as much visibility as possible, and what better way of doing so than by going to the place where people are actually spending a large chunk of their time.
Today, the average human being spends over 2 hours on social media. This gives you a great opportunity to advertise your Golf Course right where people are. Not only that, but Word of Mouth also has greater force here.
This is where people who have been to your Golf Course and have had a great time are likely to go to leave reviews. Put the word out that you are, besides being a great Golf Course, also a great event host, and you should be good to go.
