Having partnered and proven an ROI with 8 new golf clubs in 2016 and with the ROI rate for each of them ranging from 174% – 400%, Albatross Digital Golf founder, James Wilkinson, talks about their latest success story with Norwood Park Golf Centre and why they have decided to start offering the Albatross 3-Month Money Back Guarantee.
The guarantee will act as a safety net for golf clubs that are on the fence about using social media and digital marketing in their marketing strategy in 2017 to find new members ranging from 7-day to flexible memberships, society bookings and green fee bookings:
“It is my firm belief that Facebook will in the next 2-3 years be the golf industry’s biggest driver for new revenue and attract and monetise the illusive so called ‘nomadic golfers’ out there.
“It will be, if it’s not already, more effective than local radio, local print, Google search ads or any other form of marketing, if done correctly.
“And despite this, I recently read in an England Golf questionnaire that a quarter of golf clubs in England still don’t use social media. Although surprising, this is good news for the more progressive golf clubs out there because what it means is that today, right now, the competition for Facebook adverts is low in the golf industry. I mean REALLY low! So low in fact that in 6 weeks one of our clients’ adverts were seen almost 80k times (impressions) by over 43k different local golfers (reach) on Facebook within a 10km radius of their club for less than £350 in ad spend.
“But this cost is guaranteed to significantly increase in the near future when big brands realise that their multi-million pound budgets are being wasted on TV ads that people can now pause and fast forward through or magazines and newspapers ads whose circulation is declining year on year.
“Now think, how many people actually still read your local newspaper? 20K in total? And how many of those people are golfers? And how many of these golfers actually see your advert?
“Or think of it another way: iPhones, tablets, Macbooks are the televisions of today…
As televisions were to the radios in the late 40’s and early 50’s
“We are living through a revolution in the way people engage with businesses and it’s no surprise that you are now seeing pretty much every major golf club operator slowly moving their advertising budget towards social media and digital marketing (I know this as it’s my job to monitor golf club social media accounts on a daily basis).
“Either we realise and act on the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had to geo-target (advertise to customers based on their geographic location) the thousands of passionate golfers that are still regularly playing golf and are on Facebook or scrolling through their email inbox daily waiting to hear from a golf club like yours… or we carry on doing the same old thing day in day out hoping existing members might recommend your club to a friend or that one of your adverts gets seen in the local newspaper.
“The fact that the golf industry, and in particular golf clubs, have been able to shrug off social media and digital marketing as a passing fad for so long is great for business at Albatross as it means that the golf clubs we work with that are embracing this dramatic shift in consumption are the ones creating more and more opportunity with the low-hanging fruit, and will continue to do so until the rest catch up, if they’re able to that is.
“I get it, nearly every golf club we have worked with has been weary about spending their marketing budgets on what is essentially a new and relatively unknown method of marketing. “However, without marketing and sales, a company gets very little, if any, promotion or exposure, meaning the chances of growth are slim to none.
“There is a mentality out there that marketing is a cost to your business rather than an investment because with traditional forms of marketing there is no hard and fast way of calculating if your Adspend is converting into new customers.
“This simply isn’t the case with digital and social media marketing which allows you to exactly measure what part of your advertising budget is working and what part isn’t. We can then reallocate budget to the campaigns that work for optimum performance. After a campaign has finished we then sit down with our client’s manager or secretary and work out how much revenue we’ve generated for them.
“Take this short case study on our latest client, Norwood Park Golf Centre, for example, where we helped them close their 7-day memberships having reached full capacity for the first time ever”:
Their Story: Award Winning Golf Club
Norwood Park Golf Centre is a leading proprietary golf club in Nottinghamshire with an 18-hole course and a 9-hole par 3 course, winners of the Nottinghamshire County Council & Sport Nottinghamshire Club of the Year and runners-up in the England Golf GolfMark Award.
Their Goal: Fresh New Faces
Already a successful, flourishing golf club, General Manager Paul Thornton wanted to drive new society and green fee revenue with new golfers that have never played Norwood Park before and increase awareness more widely in the local area and further afield.
Their Solution: Improving on success
Starting out with an already very engaging Facebook page and their team posting daily, Paul consulted with Albatross Digital Golf after joining an online coaching session to find out what Norwood Park Golf Centre could do to build on their success.
Paul and his team decided to run with a society lead generation campaign run over the course of 2 months during the summer of 2016 using high quality course images, drone videos and highlighting customer reviews, and the various awards Norwood Park Golf Centre have won over the years, to attract the interest of a wide new regional audience on Facebook.
Their Success: Full Membership Reaches Capacity
Despite concentrating initially on societies and green fees, the success of the campaigns over the summer have led to a boost in 7 day memberships that has been so successful that Norwood Park took the decision to close Full Membership as they have reached their capacity. In 4 months they saw:
- Ads seen by 30,487 local golfers
- 174.48% Return On Investment
- £2.74 return from every £1 spent
Paul Thornton – General Manager, Norwood Park Golf Centre, says: “For some time I had been concerned that we weren’t engaging and communicating effectively with our non-member golfers. We have always had a healthy database and had a social media presence which meant that we could email out and post our news regularly but I felt that this wasn’t translating into enough sales.
The social media campaign and membership and society drive we ran with Albatross has been so successful that we recently took the decision with our owners, to close Full Membership as we have reached our capacity.
I’m delighted that I took the decision to work with Albatross and I would definitely recommend them (although not to my nearby competitors for obvious reasons!)”
“What I find interesting about this latest case study” continues Wilkinson, “is that Paul and Norwood Park Golf Centre were not just content with having a healthy number of members, they wanted to raise awareness about their fantastic course to the thousands of local golfers out there that hadn’t played it and increase society bookings and green fee revenue too.
“The fact that we’ve helped them achieve this goal, as well as help them reach full 7-day membership capacity in just 4 months shows the power of social media and digital marketing campaigns.
“Which leads me on nicely to our 3-Month Money Back Guarantee. Over the past two years we have run enough marketing campaigns for golf clubs that as a company we can now forecast and estimate the success of a golf clubs results before we even start working with them.
“This gives us the confidence to be able to offer a 3-Month Money Back Guarantee on our monthly retainer against any revenue unrecouped during this period. There is literally nothing like this that I know of in the U.K. for golf clubs to take advantage of.
“So essentially, you have 3 choices and regardless, you will choose one of the three today:
Choice 1: You can do nothing, and of course you know where that will lead…. To a town called “nowhere” and a life-time of hoping golfers stumble upon your course and decide to choose you over the competition.
Choice 2: If you have the time you can take the tips I’m about to share with you on my online coaching session (see below), go your own way and hopefully that won’t lead to months, or even years of wasted time and frustration for you trying to figure how to join all the dots.
Or, you can do something smart, and join me on our online coaching session where I will be going through exactly how we’ve helped all 8 of the clubs we’ve worked with in 2016 generate a Return On Investment of 174% or more, and how we can set this up for your golf club which also includes a 3-Month Money Back Guarantee which you simply cannot lose out on.
So now it’s your turn…
If you think this offer sounds right to and you are looking to make 2017 the year you truly get to grips with how to find new customers online using social media and digital marketing, then join me on the coaching session by signing up here:
http://albatrossdigitalgolf.com/3monthguaranteewebinar
Or book an appointment for a one-on-one consultation by calling 0207 8560579 and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
James Wilkinson – Founder & CEO, Albatross Digital Golf
About Us
WE HELP GOLF COURSES who struggle with acquiring new leads,
FIND NEW MEMBERS in a matter of months,
OR YOUR MONEY BACK: obtain proven ROI-positive results guaranteed.
http://albatrossdigitalgolf.com/
T: 0207 8560579