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Golf clubs across the country are closing down and going out of business across the United States of America at a extremely shocking rate. Florida, the state with more golf clubs than any other state, is seeing this more and more. A lot of these “failing” golf clubs are blaming the economy, and some are even blaming the current state of the golf world in general; but I see things differently, they should be blaming themselves.

The golf industry is behind the times in almost every core aspect of running a business in this day and time. Most golf courses still have a website that provides no information, it doesn’t collect any data from people visiting it, and looks like something that my 12 year old daughter could create in a few hours. These golf clubs need to embrace technology and develop a website that both promotes AND generates business. There are a handful of golf marketing businesses that specifically create websites to help generate more business for golf courses and their individual needs, why aren’t more clubs taking advantage of them?

Another way the golf industry is behind the times is plainly marketing in general. Look at how much golf courses are promoting themselves. Are they even promoting themselves? The average golf clubs does the following things which they call “marketing”.

• They place a black and white ad in the county newspaper showing how they just discounted the price. This only gets them into discount wars with their competition which only causes them to lose MORE money. They should instead find something that they do better than the rest of their competition, create a unique sales proposition promoting that something, start promoting their course for that something, and possibly even RAISE prices because they do something the other competing courses in the area do not.
• They place an ad in the yellow pages and local phone book. Honestly, with the invention of Google search and the amount of people who use the internet these days, how many people still use the phone book to find information? The answer is that phone book usage is dropping by ten percent almost every year! These clubs that are spending thousands of dollars a year on this single ad could be directing that extra money towards something more beneficial such as a website or direct mail campaign like I mentioned above
• They place an ad in the local penny saver.  Once again, something that is proven to be ineffective in this day and age. Instead they should be looking at fusion marketing techniques and working with other local businesses to promote their club. They could easily go to the local Chevy dealer and give away a free round of golf with every car purchase. Not only will the dealership easily accept this offer, but it will get new people, with MONEY, at the course and they will easily make up the lost green fee revenue by the new players paying for a cart fee or eating after the round at the club house. They will even convert a certain quantity of these players into returning players, which will help increase the residual income of the club. Think about that for a second, if they charge forty dollars a round, and the new players plays on average ten times a year, they just made an extra $400 off green fees alone. If you get 20 new players a year from the car dealership that’s an extra $8,000 a year from a simple green fee promotion with a car dealership!

Another way golf courses are slowly killing themselves is with real estate. A lot of golf communities that were doing well in the early 2000’s are now drowning in a sea of debt because of unsold lots, unsold homes, and not enough members. What can they do to help correct this problem? Let’s look at what Juliette Falls, which is a Florida Golf Community, in Dunnellon did. They first got a good website from a company named Legendary Marketing. They built their website into something that looks great and promotes exactly what they do. Well guess what, the economy dropped off and now they have over forty homes that are in the price range of $500,000 to more than a million and no one was buying them. How can they turn this around? They came up with a marvelous promotion that’s how! At Juliette Falls you can stay in a Nice Golf Home worth over a million dollars, play a round of golf, enjoy the onsite spa and eat at a fancy restaurant for $199 a night. If they sell only one night for every day of the year, that is over $70,000 in additional revenue for the resort AND they get new prospects and leads at the course every single day which they can use to promote to in the future! Why aren’t all the golf communities thinking this way?

As you can see, the golf industry is slowing killing itself by being behind the times in technology, marketing, real estate and a host of other things that will be addressed in a future article. If you are a member of a club, or even better part of the members committee, stand up and say something. Tell your club they need to break the mold of what they are doing. Make them think outside the comfort zone! Make your golf management firm become accountable for the actions the club takes! It just may be the only thing left that can save your golf club!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Golf Tips and Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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