Golf Blog | Golf Convergence

On January 26, 2010, The Business of Golf – What Are You Thinking? How to Maximize the Financial Return of a Golf Course sold its 400th copy. We also won the 2010 ING Book Media Outstanding Achievement Award at the PGA Merchandise Show. The award recognizes excellence in journalism. To be recognized by one’s well-respected peers who are the leading golf journalists throughout the golf world is thrilling. This project was truly a labor of love.

Golf course owners throughout the world are seeking solutions; in fact,the book is in its first six months of publication and the book has already been purchased in 11 countries including Australia, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, and South Africa.

To ensure that the net operating income surges in 2011, we are conducting complimentary webinars. The schedule appears in the left hand column.

As each class is limited to 100, we suggest you enroll early if you have an interest. Note that the introductory class, held on January 25, 2011, was fully subscribed. Some very well-known golf course owners and management companies were in attendance. Four countries were also represented in the Webinar. Thus, we are having an encore presentation of this webinar on February 1, 2011. If you would like to attend, you can register here:

The goal for each Webinar will be straightforward. Most people are too overwhelmed by data to discover the details.These sessions will script carefully, clearly, and crisply the vital moves golf course owners need to make in 2011. They will create a vivid picture as to what is possible and engage the creative energy of your management and staff. Together, these educational sessions will create the path to execute a series of small changes that will make a substantial positive impact.

At each Webinar, participants will be provided complimentary operational tools that can be downloaded and implemented immediately.

This is our fourth email providing updates on lessons I have learned while marketing the book that may benefit you.

Lesson 1 – Hubspot.com: The Hubspot webinar titled, “Optimizing your Web site” is a must for every golf course operator. It is simply fabulous. From learning about title tags, the optimum keywords, placing your phone number and call to action on every page, this seminar will reveal the weakness in your Web site. You might ask, “Why are title tags and keywords important?” They serve as the “index markers” by which Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines find and identify content. It is important to use these tools properly to obtain a front page listing on customer Internet queries.

How you will Benefit: Go to www.hubspot.com and register. The visibility of your golf course will soar on the web if the suggestions are fully implemented. Further, in addition to getting front page listing, the popularity of your site is also important. Wonder what your current rank is? Go www.alexa.com and type your url and your competitor’s url. You will learn if your site is more frequently visited than your competitors. Here are some industry benchmarks for comparison:

Also go to www.webgrader.com and obtain a free evaluation of your Web site. Enter your #1 competitor’s site against yours to determine how your site compares.

Lesson 2 Email Social Media: Email marketing is more important than social media. Facebook, Plaxo, Linked-In appear to have limited applicability with respect to business-to-business relationships. Unless you are operating a large business, such as Best Buy, United Airlines, etc., social media may consume significant resources with little short-term investment.

How you can benefit:

Time is a precious commodity, and you are already overburdened. It is our suggestion that you be a follower and not a leader in these social forums unless you have a very large business-to-consumer presence. Let others determine if these marketing methods prove fruitful.

Lesson 3: Groupon is Very Dangerous and Unlikely to Produce ROI: Groupon is very dangerous for a golf course. See my blog: for the details on how the ROI for liquidating tee times just doesn’t pencil and the basic rules for selecting a discount program. You might also want to see my blog: regarding how the consumer controls the price at your golf course and why individually negotiated tee times may become a reality.

How you can benefit: Unless you think you are going to increase your rounds by 400% from the promotion offered, boycott Groupon.

Summary

We have been very fortunate to have several clients see significant positive reversals in their net income in 2010. One went from a loss of $450,000 to a profit of $250,000. Another changed a $100,000 loss to a $900,000 gain. The credit belongs to the management and staff at those courses for execution of the plan. Together with them, we created and shaped the path, provided motivation, and tweaked the environmentto help them build the habits for success.

Like a researcher at a University, we have a hypothesis on how to increase the net income that has been proven “true” in early “laboratory tests.” Working together, we will fine tune the formulas, improve the benchmarks, and create a system that each of you can easily implement and benefit from.

We look forward to your presence with us on this journey.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.