Membership Marketing

Marketing Your Club Membership

There has never been a more important time for your club to consider the implementation of marketing activity to help attract new members and retain your existing customers.

The SGU and SLGA have significantly increased our resources to assist clubs with these challenges, with the introduction of a National Golf Awareness Week each year and the launch of our ‘Time to Join the Club’ national membership marketing campaign.

We appreciate budgets are very tight in the current economic climate, however at the majority of clubs, your membership is your biggest asset and a little investment in marketing can reap great rewards. You don’t have to spend thousands of pounds but with good planning and effective delivery, you can deliver a successful campaign.

Working with a number of clubs who have shared their positive experiences on the impact of marketing, coupled with our own in-house expertise, this section of the website provides a useful guide to Membership Marketing, featuring a wide range of templates, case studies and practical tools to help clubs develop and deliver their own local marketing campaign.

 

1. Situational Analysis

We recommend clubs begin the planning stage by analysing your current membership and visitor numbers in relation to your club’s financial situation. The following guide helps clubs to understand where your focus areas should be and assists with suggestions on a variety of elements within the club marketing mix. The guide has been produced in association with Derek Mortimer, a past captain at Murcar Links Golf Club who used the template to successfully develop his own club’s marketing plan.

Situational Analysis Template

 

2. Marketing Planning and Activation

Once your club has carried out it's Situational Analysis, we recommend the implementation of a long-term marketing plan to meet the objectives you have set out. To assist with this, we have produced a number of guides which feature ideas for both short and long term marketing activity, which have already been successfully used by a number of other clubs across Scotland.

Recruiting New Members Guide

Communication Channels Guide

Retaining Existing Members Guide

 

3. Case Studies

There’s nothing quite like real life evidence to back up your case to raise the importance of marketing at your next committee meeting. To further assist with your planning we have listed a series of case studies from clubs who have successfully delivered marketing activity to drive new members or keep existing members. These should help inspire ideas for your club.

Open Days: Case Study

Young Adult Membership Suggestions: Case Study

Recruitment of Lady Members: Case Study

Local Advertising: Case Study

Better Club Marketing: Case Study

Membership Recruitment: Case Study

Membership Accessibility: Case Study

Membership Marketing for Smaller Clubs: Case Study

 

4. Communicating to New Members

Key to retaining your new members is good communication. Once you have done all the hard work in attracting a new customer to your club, it’s vital that you maintain communication with them, from simple things like a warm and friendly welcome letter to a new members’ induction night. The following guide gives a series of tips on this area to help your club become more customer-focused.

Engaging with New Members Guide

 

5. Communicating to Existing Members

Don’t forget about your existing members! You can’t afford to take your existing members for granted and never assume they will simply pay their fees year on year without being made to feel ‘loved’. Communication to existing members is more important than ever, but communication should be easier than ever with the increase in e-marketing, websites and social networking channels available to you at little cost.

It’s key to remember that communication is not just one-way and you should provide your members with a route to feedback their opinions and ideas, to show you are listening to them. The links below provide you with a guide to enhancing your existing member communication channels.

Members Satisfaction Questionnaire 

Members Leaving Questionnaire

 

6. Evaluation

Once you’ve delivered your marketing plan, don’t rest on your laurels. It’s vital that you evaluate what you’ve done, so you can improve what you do for next year and report back to your committee what the return on your club’s investment has been.

After you’ve carried out your evaluation, we’d love to hear from you, so we can highlight your club’s success in the media and share best practice with other clubs.

Drop us an e-mail to sgu@scottishgolf.org or call 01334 466 477 and let us know about your experiences.

 

7. Become a Customer Focused Club

Underpinning all your marketing activity should be focusing on your customers and a shared belief in the importance of good marketing. Consider the following checklist to ensure that your club has all the correct tools in place:

* Do you have a marketing convenor or sub-group within your committee?
* Have you allocated a marketing budget?
* Have you researched your current membership profile and established which groups you would like to target?
* Have you put together a list of the benefits of joining your golf club which you can use to ‘sell’ the club to prospective members (and existing members)?
* Do you have a formal welcome and induction process for new members?
* Do you have a communications plan in place for existing members?
* Have you considered how you can improve/enhance your offering to existing members?
* Do you know the reasons why members (if any) are leaving your club?
* Are you doing all you can to prevent further loss of members using the reasons above?

You should gain a better understanding on how well positioned your club is to deliver a successful marketing plan once you answer all the questions above. If your answers are all ‘Yes’ you are well placed to take the next steps forward.

 

8. The SGU and SLGA National Marketing Campaign

With so many clubs of varying shapes, sizes and location, it’s clear that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to membership marketing. However, almost all clubs face the same challenge of trying to grow the membership base.

With the aim of increasing awareness of the benefits of joining a golf club and keeping club membership in the public eye, the SGU and SLGA carried out national marketing campaigns in 2009 and 2010, themed ‘Love Golf? Join the Club’ and ‘Its Time to Join the Club’ respectively. These campaigns, using a combination of radio, press, outdoor, promotional and on-line advertising, helped to create a platform for clubs to activate at a local level and gave the impetus to reach a wide audience across Scotland.

To get a flavour of the advertising messages used and the media schedule adopted, click on the links below:

Time to Join the Club Campaign Summary

Time to Join the Club Media Schedule

 

9. Golf Awareness Week

The SGU and SLGA use the traditional start of the domestic golf season – the US Masters – to kick off membership marketing activity, given the lighter nights, Easter holidays, warmer weather and anticipation of the season ahead.

Golf Awareness Week is used as the theme to encourage clubs to launch their own local activity, with many national and local newspapers featuring the activity that is taking place at golf clubs up and down the country to generate more coverage of the campaign.

The 2011 Golf Awareness Week will take place from Saturday 9 April to Sunday 17 April.

 

10. SGU Marketing Hotline

For any query relating to Membership Marketing or even just for a general discussion on your club’s membership marketing activity, please call one of our Marketing Team on 01334 466 483 and we’ll be delighted to help or point you in the right direction.