1 Apr 2016

Golf Managers Must Understand and Manage Marketing

By Dr. Patrick J. Montana, USGTF Master Golf Teaching Professional 

One of the biggest concerns of golf club managers today is retaining current members or customers and attracting new members or customers.  This is a marketing problem, and golf club managers must understand and manage marketing in our changing world. Marketing in its broadest sense is a concept for running the entire business.  It puts the customer at the center of the business universe and not the organization.  In other words, we must start in the marketplace and work backward from customer needs to develop our products and services – not the other way around. This so-called “marketing concept” is based not only on being customer-oriented, but also on doing it profitably.  We are not interested in volume for volume’s sake, but in volume at a profit which flows as a result of meeting people’s needs effectively and solving their problems with our products and services. In its broadest sense, the purpose of marketing is to cause change in your favor.  It takes a conscious pre-planned effort and requires that top management first set a specific measurable objective for the golf club facility, which will serve as a guideline for the functional areas to do their planning and their research aimed at discovering opportunities for causing profitable change in their marketplace.
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IS IT POSSIBLE TO REVERSE COURSE?
1 Apr 2016

IS IT POSSIBLE TO REVERSE COURSE?

Seems like talk of changing golf always comes up this time of year. Most likely because the Masters is just around the corner, which signifies the start of the golf season for many north of the Mason-Dixon Line. I have recently seen discussions of rolling back the golf ball or creating a tournament ball. The subject of bifurcation has come up again, also; bifurcation, a glorified term for having a different set of rules for pros and amateurs. Like amateurs don’t play by different rules already. How many times have you seen mulligans off the first tee or inside-the-leather happy zones? Those same golfers then go in and post scores and receive handicaps. Every time I see or hear such talk, I am reminded of phrases like, “How you going to keep them down on the farm?” or “You can never go home again.” In the history of golf, the game has never reversed course. The only constant has been the theme that more is better. And judging by the money invested in club and ball design, course conditions and extravagant clubhouses, it must be worth it. Sometimes I think there is more science in the head of a driver than in a NASA rocket. Tour pros are hitting the ball well over 300 yards, requiring courses to be stretched to 7,500-7,600 yards to keep them at bay. Many old and venerable courses can’t hold up to the onslaught. A lot of traditionalists don’t like that and advocate slowing things down. The problem is that a majority loves the long ball, and advertisers provide the siren song for their odyssey. I don’t see reversing course as an option. Too much money for all concerned at stake. Besides no one wants an old jalopy when a shiny new chic mobile can be had so easily. Slowing it down. I don’t see it anytime soon. That ship sailed long ago.
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30 Mar 2016

Importance VS. Loyalty Improvements

By Marc Gelbke

One of yearly “hot topics” in golf course managers’ annual budget meetings, with either the owner(s) or board of directors, is the conversation on how much, and on what particular items, capital improvements should be made for the upcoming year. Of course, the main question I would always ask myself each year is with what improvements we could improve our bottom line. The vast majority of golf course owners and boards of directors conduct strategic planning on an annual basis for their operations by the seat of their pants. Most of these decision-makers have no real evidence prioritizing what capital improvements, if any, should be made for the facility that will, at the same time, improve capital gains. Instead, these vast expenditures are made on hunches as to what the owners or boards thinks is important to the golfers. With specific surveys to your targeted cliental, one could get a more accurate baseline on what is important to golfers and what creates true loyalty. Once you have collected enough hard data, you can compare this side-by-side and see where they would intersect and use that as a point of measure. Furthermore, you may rank them by “moderate high,” “high,” and “very high” for each category. If you collected enough data and analyzed the results, you may see that, for instance, conditions of bunkers, fairways, tees and golf shop rank on the very high importance scale to your golfers, but on the very high important loyalty side you may find that overall golf course conditions, conditions of greens, course value, staff service and friendliness, quality of practice facility, and overall course design rank as the top favorites. Remember, loyalty promotes word-of-mouth recommendations, the most powerful tool for golfer/member retention and new membership/golfer business.  So, if I had to recommend where to spend capital improvement money, I would stick to the loyalty side, and it will most likely provide a reasonable return on our investments.
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