Why You Need A Digital Marketing Strategy For The Winter
Winter (certainly here in Scotland) can be a dark time for golfers. The shorter days and cold, wet weather cause some golfers to put their clubs away till spring. Others will head to the relatively dry and warmth of driving ranges and indoor practice facilities. Does this mean that you should put your marketing into hibernation? We certainly have met some golf clubs who believed there was no benefit to marketing during the winter. However, we strongly believe it is as essential to look after your marketing through the winter as it is for your greenkeepers to look after your course.
Here are some reasons why continuing to promote your club through the winter is important and how it can have enormous benefits for your club.
Be where your audience is… online!
Nielsen recorded that the average adult spends over 11 hours per day interacting with media. This includes TV, computers, mobile phones, tablets, radios, and more.
With the arrival of winter, people will spend even more time connected to their devices. This creates a perfect opportunity to beef up your social media and marketing efforts.
Nurture potential new customers
Winter is the prime time to begin nurturing golfers towards applying for membership or making bookings. During this time, there will be golfers considering becoming a member of a golf club or changing the club of which they are a member. Golf societies and visiting golfers will be looking for the perfect location for their away days. Using digital marketing during the winter to promote your packages is an excellent way to nurture these potential customers. Consider creating regular content to demonstrate different types of packages, what is included in each, and feedback from previous customers. This will help to generate interest in them and allow you to continue to nurture that interest until they are ready to make a booking or apply for membership.
Staying in the game
Retaining an interest in your club is essential during winter. Marketing throughout this period will ensure you stay connected with your current audience. There is an avalanche of retail marketing at Christmas every year: don’t let yourself get buried ten feet under!
You will likely have collected the contact information for societies or visitors who have played your course during the season. In addition, if you have been using Facebook Ads during the season, there is a chance you will have a list of archived leads in your Ads Manager. The winter is the perfect time to retarget them with a relevant offer as appropriate (Society Day packages, open competition calendar, membership packages etc.)
Build awareness and momentum for next season
Your new season likely starts very soon, in March of next year. Use the winter to engage with and build awareness of your golf course and club facilities. This means that when you start to run your new membership marketing campaigns in January and February, people will already be aware of you. It has been proven that customers are much more likely to buy from you if they are already familiar with your brand.
Continue to generate revenue
Although winter generally means that golf courses are quieter, there is still an opportunity for golf clubs to generate revenue. Some clubs can promote winter green fee deals. Others will be looking to promote early bird or winter membership. In particular, the run-up to Christmas offers clubs the chance to generate revenue as friends and family look to find the perfect present for the golfers in their lives.
Regardless of the opportunity you are looking to promote, we suggest that you consider using digital marketing to do so. It is far more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, such as print. Using a tool such as Facebook Ads will allow you to reach and target your desired audience effectively. It will also produce clear and measurable ROI to impress the finance committee. At a time when revenue generation can be a bit challenging, we would suggest that these are important ideas to consider.
How Caddie Marketing can help you
At Caddie Marketing, not only are we experts in social media and digital marketing, but we also have a deep understanding of the golf industry and the challenges it faces.
Our team use their expertise to ensure that your promotion reaches and appeals to your target market of golfers. All that will be left for you to do is work through the list of high-value leads and convert them into revenue for your club. We’ll even show you how to do that!
We pride ourselves on providing the best results and excellent ROI for our clients. Using the expertise we have built up, we have taken relatively small amounts of ad spend and turned them into significant revenue. We are confident in our ability to do the same for you.