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.