Uncategorised Archives - Page 8 of 8

D is for Digital Marketing…

Jul 2, 2017 3 min read

Digital marketing is at the core of what we do at The Revenue Club (alongside Revenue Management of course). To give you an idea of the explosion of online usage in the last 15 years and the importance of digital when marketing your green fees/golf course, consider this: in 2000 about 361 million people were online worldwide. In 2014 there were over 3 billion, that’s a growth rate of 765%. Today nearly half the world is online.

Still not sure if you should sell green fees online? In Europe, the numbers are even more impressive: over 75% of Europeans have internet access. On average Europeans have more than 1 mobile subscription each! No matter which device they use, on average people spend over 1,900 minutes per month online – that’s over 30 hours!

So what are these people doing online? Many of these digitally connected people are shopping. In 2013 the total in online sales for both goods and services in Europe was 364 billion Euros! It is very difficult to get the data for green fee’s alone, however we know that from 2007–2016 Teeofftimes.co.uk has grown from booking 10,000 rounds of golf per year to around 700,000 rounds of golf per year. The adoption of direct online booking technology has been slow in golf compared to other industries. We are still astounded when we find a golf course promoting green fees online but with no way for a golfer to book there and then or even worse, when the booking button is at the bottom of a website!

When people think about digital marketing they tend to think about websites, however this is not the only way you can reach customers. Other examples include a listing in a local business directory (like Google My Business), a presence on social media sites, a website with e-commerce (i.e. being able to buy tee times), a mobile app, email, SEM (Search Engine Marketing such as Google Adwords) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

To successfully market green fees through digital platforms we believe you will need:

A well thought out and flexible plan.
To set some realistic expectations. Digital marketing such as SEO/SEM can take time to have an impact.
Make sure you track and measure how your marketing is performing (Analytics).
Adapt to change in technology and your industry. For example, is your tee time booking engine mobile responsive?

When working with our partner courses, we are sure to set out the best and most cost effective route to market for your tee times. For us the idea is to get the right customers (i.e. golfers, who live locally and are looking to buy a round of golf), at the right cost (which the most efficient route to market SEM, SEO, a third party, Social Media or another channel). Once the customer lands on the right page, it is then important to measure the conversion (lookers to bookers). If customers are not buying a green fee this could be down to a number of factors including availability/price (inside your control) and weather (outside of your control). It is also important to remember that not all online green fee revenue is equal. Some costs too much to capture and some could have earned you more!

Digital Marketing is a complex subject and not all golf course operators have the time or expertise to effectively market their golf course online. We see our subscription service as like having a personal trainer. Sure, you are capable of doing it yourself but having an expert at hand is more efficient and you will get better results! If your digital marketing is a little ‘flabby’ then please get in touch on [email protected].

Jun 25, 2017 2 min read

Channel management when referring to the green fee/visitor business relates to how a golfer books their tee time or green fee. Traditionally golfers had to book direct with the golf course in person or over the telephone as this was the only choice. Even then, golfers sometimes had to book through a member of the course they wanted to play.

Nowadays golfers have a plethora of channels to book their round of golf. The traditional method of telephone or walk-in still plays a large part in the amount of green fees taken by a golf course. However, times are changing and golfers now can book in a number of ways, including but not limited to (and in no particular order):

Third party tee time re-sellers: e.g Teeofftimes.co.uk, GolfNow, Teetimes.co.uk who provide a marketplace for golfers to search and book tee times. Similar to booking.com in the hotel industry and skyscanner.net in the airline industry.
Golf travel agents/tour operators: such as Golfbreaks.com who now offer a ‘tours section’ to their website and service. This means a golfer will tour a number of differnt courses, often staying at a hotel which does not have a golf course attached. There are also a number of other golf travel agents who offer a similar service. It is worth noting that these tour operators are now looking to make bookings via a golf course’s electronic tee sheet, this will aid customer service through providing live tee time availability and reducing administration costs for both golf course and tour operator.
Group Marketing: a number of golf courses in similar locations have also chosen to market themselves together in order to make booking multiple rounds on multiple days easier for the golfer.
Website: Directly through the courses own website/booking engine. This is arguably the most underutilised and under promoted channel for the golf industry.
Open Competitions: sites such as GolfEmpire are essentially a marketplace website for booking open competitions.
Flexible membership schemes: Playmore.golf allows its members to use 20% of their points at an ‘away’ venue. These additional points essentially generate a green fee for the course being played.
Apps: are playing an increasing role in people booking green fees online.
Social Media: golf courses can now enable direct booking through their social media (if they have the right technology).

Traditionally a golf course would measure the number of green fees being paid under two or three categories; visitor, member guest, society and resident (if there is a hotel onsite). In today’s digital world that simply isn’t enough. Each booking channel is likely to have a different cost associated to it and require marketing in a different way. It is important for courses to understand how much business is coming through which channel, what costs are associated to that channel, and how/when to maximise/market the channel.

Here at The Revenue Club we are big believers in channel management and have a number of processes to help courses maximise their returns and minimise their costs. If you would like to learn more about channel management then please send us an email on [email protected].

B is for Barter…

Jun 21, 2017. 3 min read

Barter (AKA trade) is a payment method used by businesses who generally provide technology or tee time distribution services to golf courses. Barter means a golf course gives away a number of tee times in exchange for technology or distribution services, the company receiving these times then sells and keeps the revenue generated by them. There are a variety of companies who use barter as a payment vehicle in the UK and Irish markets including, Online Tee Times (teetimes.co.uk), Whole in 1 Golf, BRS Golf, Teeofftimes.co.uk and GolfNow.

There are a variety of pros and cons to using barter. Here’s our top ones:

The pros are:

Barter can ease cash-flow, most golf clubs have lots of inventory but limited cash.
Barter can help a golf course operator access the latest technology.
Barter can help attract new/different golfers to a facility.
Barter can help create on-spend at a course, through the golfers that purchased the barter time.

The cons are:

Barter can cause a golf course operator to lose of control of their tee time pricing.
Barter can compete with, and displace a golf course’s own tee time sales when golfers are booking online.
The value for the services provided through a barter agreement can seem opaque. Course operators may struggle to forecast how much they will pay for the services in comparison to others.
The amount of trade sold is not always transparent.

It is important to understand that there are a number of versions of barter/trade tee times, which come under a variety of different names. For example, you can have; rolling barter/trade, which is where the tee time moves through-out the day until it is sold. Fixed barter/trade, where the tee time bartered is a specific time per day. Block n’ Roll, this is when 1 player/group books, the remaining player slots move to the next available time and can then be sold again (this can be influenced by the tee sheet you use). It is worth noting most barter operators will enable you to put a price floor in place, along with a time window where the bartered tee times can be sold.

The Revenue Club are neither for nor against trade as a payment method, for us it’s all about proportionality of cost versus benefit, and so what works for some clubs might not work for others. However, we do believe that the total amount paid should provide value for the products and services received. This is no different to if you were paying via a more traditional cash method for any product or service. It can be helpful think of barter is a form of credit, therefore a course operator should expect their provider to earn more from barter sales than if they were to pay them using the traditional cash method.

One of the keys to using barter as a successful payment method is transparency and good management. This allows the golf course operator to understand how much the product/service has cost and then make informed decisions on the value it has provided. There are also a number of other factors to consider when payment is made via barter, such as revenue displacement from different booking channels. Our monthly subscription service is designed to help highlight and manages all factors to ensure a win:win.

If you would like further assistance making barter work well for your course then please email us on [email protected].

#Barter #TradeTeeTimes #GolfNow #BRSGolf #Teeofftimescouk #Wholein1Golf #OnlineTeeTimes

A is for A new start…

Jun 12, 2017 2 min read

With ‘The Revenue Club’ just launching, and the premise of the business being to help golf courses attract more green fees from digital marketing we decided to create a weekly blog on the A – Z of online marketing in golf.

We are welcoming any specific topics which you would like to review and are happy to share any viewpoints you may have in the blog. Ultimately the internet and social media are what we make of them, and we hope that this blog and The Revenue Club will help courses increase their revenue from a digital platform

So with no further waffle here goes…

There are many terms we could choose to focus for A, Audience, Anchor Text or Analytics, so we decided to cover all three:

Audience: Also known as “target market,” your audience is the group of people you’re trying to reach with your message. In the golf world, this is any person who may purchase a green fee or membership, almost any golfer!

To market effectively, you need to know who your audience is. Otherwise, how can you appeal to them? In the case of booking green fees online we know from our experience at Teeofftimes.co.uk/GolfNow/BRS Golf that the target audience searching to book golf online is male dominated and generally between 25 – 50 years old.

Social media platforms provide an excellent opportunity to learn about your audience enabling you to produce better content for your digital marketing. If you want to learn more about this we suggest having a Google of ‘Social Listening Tools’.

Analytics: Arguably the most important item in digital marketing, or for that matter any marketing! The list of potential KPI’s in the digital world is endless from Bounce Rate to Visits. It is therefore imperative that you know what you are trying to analyse and pick the right data to do so.

When it comes to selling green fees online one of the most important KPI’s is conversion. This measures the number of unique page visits against the number of sales made (in this case tee times) and displays it as a percentage. Conversion rates vary dependent on what it is the e-commerce platform is selling. In golf, they also vary due to a number of factors; price, competitive supply, weather/time of year demand, time of day, day of week… the list goes on. Remember, if you are not measuring conversion then how can you improve it?

Anchor Text: is the blue/purple writing which appears above or instead of the web address. It is often the first thing a person see’s when searching on Google (or any other search engine), so it is important that it is articulates relevant content.

Well that’s all for this week but please feel free to send in any ‘B’s for discussion in next weeks blog.

Thanks for reading.

#Analytics #AnchorText

Uncategorised

D is for Digital Marketing…

C is for Channel Management…

B is for Barter…

A is for A new start…