Country clubs face an ever-evolving landscape of challenges and opportunities in their pursuit of providing exceptional experiences to members and ensuring financial sustainability. One key area where country clubs can benefit significantly is golf course agronomy, which plays a pivotal role in member satisfaction and overall profitability.
Stuart Lindsay has been in technology and data-driven marketing research since the early ’80’s. He’s one of the golf industry’s foremost thought leaders on industry trends, localized marketing research, weather impact statistics, and fact-based decision-making for club operators.
Today, we’re digging deep into where the golf business has been and where it’s heading…and most importantly, what club owners can do about it.
In today’s Golf Course Owner and Operator’s Forum, we’re discussing how to market your golf facility.
I’m leading a discussion on strategies that golf courses typically fail to consider. Golf is what we call a “Considered” buying process. The time it takes to usher someone along the customer lifecycle from stranger to loyal customer is often considerable – 2 to 6 months or more.
Data in the golf industry is completely fragmented. There are more than 20 major point of sale systems (think cash registers with accounting software)…and they don’t speak the same language.
There’s really no system of aggregating and using big customer data in the golf business…until now.
KPI Golf responded to 2 requests for proposal today – one of which was a whopping 90 pages long!
So, you can probably imagine the work that went into composing a 90-page RFP. I won’t mention which golf club it was, but they spent a whole lot of time, energy and money on conducting market research, surveys, competitive analysis, and outlining much of the club’s recent history. Read more
John Brown discusses the options that struggling and underperforming golf courses have. The first big misconception is that professional advice and exploratory conversations only come with hard sales pitches for club management contracts. This isn’t the case at all.
The logic first step to take is to pick up the phone and call a consulting or golf management company. KPI Golf offers free phone consultations, investing hours in learning about the club’s challenges and assessing best fit.
John Brown, Sr. is back and ready to compete with his former company, Brown Golf Management.
His new company, KPI Golf Management, will seek third-party management contracts, consulting work and leasing, mostly with private clubs. Read more
Article published Dec. 11, 2018
by John A. Brown Jr. – Principal, KPI Golf Management | john@kpigolf.com
The economy has been frothy for a long time now. Baby Boomers are retiring and playing a ton of golf…but neither will last forever.
This article is aimed at helping golf courses in tight markets to win market share while you still can, offset your senior players as they begin aging out of the system, and survive the next wave of golf course closings.
Facility: 54-Hole public municipal golf course
Location: Southeastern United States
Ownership: Municipal – County Owned
Focus: Containing Costs and Return to Profitability
About: This is a county-owned golf facility that was losing several hundred thousand dollars on an annual basis. Because of its municipal status, they couldn’t make a great deal of money through the operation, but certainly didn’t want to lose. We were charged with helping the facility break even.
