Want to attract more people to your golf course and are wondering how to do it? It’s simple. A good marketing strategy for your golf course will not only get your business booked amidst competition but will also ensure that you continue to witness growth in your revenues year after year. Without wasting any more time in all this introductory stuff, let us start exploring the best golf course marketing ideas as given under:
1) Enhance Your Website Effectiveness
While it is very common to assume that a good website design is crucial for a golf course business, many things beyond a good design are essential in making the most out of your website. Unless your golf course website succeeds in convincing your website visitor, it cannot convert visitors into clients. Therefore you must pay regard to these points given under:
a) If you offer a free demo or play, the potential visitors must be able to schedule the time slot directly from your website.
b) If your golf course website doesn’t load within a few seconds, start inspecting various elements that take more time in loading and optimize them. You can check your site loading time with any good speed-checking site.
c) Mobile visitors are on the rise and so your site must be ready to resize according to the type of mobile device else many visitors will simply click the back button to visit another site.
d) Lay down all the best features, awards, and accreditation related to your business on the home page so that your business will seem more trustworthy.
e) Put up a high-quality video on your homepage so as to leave a bigger impact on your site visitors.
f) For a higher conversion rate, have a live chat agent ready to answer the queries of visitors instantly.
2) Are You in Right Spot Online?
Most online searches begin with a Google search and if your golf course website lies on page 2 or beyond on Google when people search for golf courses in your location, your business will definitely lose many potential leads. The key to organic traffic begins with a good ranking website on Google and this requires having a good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in place. SEO itself is a mixture of many aspects related to a website and if you don’t have good knowledge of it, you can take some time in educating yourself on this topic using information available on this topic online. If you are somehow short on time or required skills to implement SEO on your own, then you can let any competent SEO agency take over this task.
3) Additional Pack Ranking
Apart from the normal ranking of websites that you see on Google, 3 results are shown in a separate box on the first page of Google. This box is commonly known as the “Google Local Pack” and any business that successfully makes it into this pack gets more visibility and leads. There is a different set of criteria that determines the placement of websites in this section and you can read more about optimizing Google Local Pack online. If you take the services of any SEO agency, you can ask them to handle this segment too along with managing your organic ranking.
4) Pay for Faster Visibility Online
Google ads and Facebook ads provide a quick way to generate traffic and visibility. However, whether you will be able to make a positive return from paid advertising will depend upon the effectiveness with which you can manage your ad campaigns on the respective networks. All ad networks have a learning curve and jumping straight away into paid advertising without making oneself familiar with the ad basics will lead to a negative return on investment in most cases. Many free resources are present online from where you can study the ad basics for paid advertising of your golf course. Hiring an advertising agency is also an open option in case you want expert professionals to promote your golf course on ad networks.
5) Press Releases are a Wonderful Reputation Tool
If you are a privileged golf course business that has been mentioned in reputed publications online, then this will separate your business from the rest. However, you won’t have to hire an expensive public relation firm to achieve this. By utilizing the distribution network of any big press release syndication service, it is very easy to get your golf course business mentioned across some of the leading publications of the world. However, the brand building of your golf course is not the sole benefit of a press release, you will also get links and traffic as an added benefit with the press release. So use them occasionally for your business growth.
6) Bulk Up Your Website with Content
Writing and publishing posts related to golf course and golf-related topics can be a great way to start increasing visitors to your site. The more articles posted on your website, the more will be visitors and accordingly, clients. You can take the help of any good keyword finder tool like Ahrefs to discover many local-level keywords for writing like “which is the best golf course in [city]”, “how to learn golf in [city]”, etc. After having a sizeable number of articles, getting visitors passively to your site will follow automatically.
7) Remain Socially Active on Social Media
Many businesses complain that they do not get the required results with social media. In order to get good results with social media, consistency is the key. Regularly posting and sharing good content, making use of popular hashtags, and engaging with people/groups is the basic method with which your golf course business can organically start increasing its follower count on social media platforms. On average, it takes a few months of consistent efforts to start seeing results from social media marketing. If you find it hard to allot time consistently for social media marketing of your golf course, you can still grow and benefit from social media by using a social media marketing agency.
8) Use LinkedIn Creatively to Offer Packages
LinkedIn is a professional network using which you can reach out to the top-level executives of companies from your local region. To explore the potential of LinkedIn for promoting your golf course, you can make connections with top executives followed by offering special packages for the employees of their company. This way the company can offer value to its employees and you can get more clients which means a win-win for both sides.
9) Unleash More Potential from Your Website with Emails
If 10 people arrive on your golf course website, a maximum of 2 to 3 out of them might turn into your customers while the rest will not avail of your golf course service owing to numerous reasons. To increase this percentage of people converting into customers, an effective method is to start collecting the email address of site visitors by offering them some valuable thing in return for their email addresses. This exchange item can be a few free entries and play on your golf course or a free ebook related to golf, etc. It is very easy to promote your golf course over and over again once you get the email address of interested people as email marketing gives a direct marketing channel.
10) Use Quality Directories for Double Benefit
If you start searching for various keywords related to golf course on Google, you can easily discover that apart from sites owned by golf course owners, there are directories like Yelp too that show up on the first page of Google. A good marketing strategy is to make your golf course business profile on all such high-ranking directories so that you will not only get new clients as a result of this but will also gain backlinks from these powerful directories. Many SEO agencies do list their client’s profiles on such directories as part of their backlink-building strategy.
11) Get Video Marketing Done for More Benefits
Reading about something through text and seeing something through videos are two different mechanisms for generating experience in human beings. It is clearly proven that videos have a far better impact on human beings. This is why if you use videos to promote your golf course, it will have a much greater conversion rate. Another fact is that if you upload videos on Youtube for less competitive keywords related to golf course, these videos will tend to rank much faster on Google search as compared to a website. So start posting videos on Youtube along with embedding a video on the homepage of your website in order to benefit from video marketing.
12) Compel People to Refer Your Business
Asking people to refer your golf course is one thing while compelling people to refer your golf course is a much better marketing strategy. While it is normal for business owners to ask their clients to refer their business to their friend circle, the results achieved from this method can be increased significantly if you can provide some incentives to your current customers to promote your golf course to their friends. These incentives can include longer membership benefits, monetary rewards, etc.
13) Online Marketing is Not the Only Option
While better targeting and lower rates are the two best features of online marketing, offline marketing occupies its own significance. Banners, billboards, newspaper ads, face-to-face meetings, distributing visiting cards, etc are some of the very common promotion strategies under the realm of offline marketing. These methods can be used as per the conditions and budget of your business.
14) Stay Active in Building Reviews
Many people do check and consider reviews when they select businesses and services online. So ask each of your golf course members to leave reviews online and if possible, also provide some good incentives to do so. If anyone leaves a negative review even though for no fault from your side, reach out to the concerned person to sort out things because it is not worth spoiling your image online for just some minor issues.
15) Drone Shot Videos + Voluntary Promotion
For every player at your golf course, give a sample drone-captured video while they play at your golf course. Ask them to share this video on their social media so that they get likes and shares while you get the free promotion. These drone-captured videos can also be used to build a mesmerizing portfolio along with serving as content for your social media and Youtube channel.
16) Get Social Media Contests Ready
Announcing contests for social media promotion is a great way to let people promote your golf course for availing rewards. Since most people trust their friend circle better than any business, social media promotion by people will yield much better results due to the presence of the trust factor.
17) Reach Out to Selected Influencers
Influencers in categories related to golf and sports are the best candidates who can promote your golf course to their followers on social media. You can also invite local influencers to your golf course followed by getting their presence recorded and shared on their social media profiles to create a bigger impact.
18) Provide Add Ons for More Revenues
Be it golf-related accessories or food items served at your golf course, you can add related products in order to get a bigger dollar value per client.
19) Use Charity to Spread Your Name
Donate to popular charities and you can then access their network to introduce your golf course to new people. You can also use your donation-giving activity as a press release for spreading goodwill for your business.
20) Get Players to Compete
Hosting tournaments can attract a good crowd and will create an environment of competition which will make your golf course more popular. To spice up things even more, you can even add new twists in a competition like men vs women, one locality vs another, IT professionals vs medical professionals, etc.
21) Host Weekend Family Specials + Special Occasions
There are many families who spend their weekends in some outer locations and you can capitalize on this by offering a part of your venue for families. You can keep a basic requirement that they will share the photos of your venue on their social media in exchange for using your golf course. You can also do the same for labor day, independence day, and other special occasions.
22) Leverage Partnerships
Build partnerships with golf accessory-selling businesses, hotels, tour operators, etc so that they can provide you with new clients. You can, in exchange, give them some commissions or free rounds at your golf course.
23) Sell More with Bundled Packages
Offer discount bundles like extra rounds for bigger subscriptions, free food along with more rounds, etc. This will allow you to sell more of your bigger packages which means more revenue for your business.
24) Affiliate Program
Open an affiliate program and share some percentage with those affiliates who send clients to you. Joining a big affiliate network as an advertiser is a great method to get your affiliate program known to thousands of affiliates.
We hope that these golf course marketing ideas would give you plenty of insights to grow your customers. In case you are not clear on any sub-topic or want to share some tips from your side, let us know in the section (comment box) below.
