In our November 2019 issue, we offered a batch of innovative marketing ideas that coaches could implement quickly. Kick off 2020 with these additional tips:
Create programs and opportunities for late-shift professionals:
Executive chefs at fine-dining restaurants are well-paid. So are hospital radiologists and other non-9-to-5 professionals. These are prime candidates for your weekday coaching business—people who need a distraction from their responsibilities and a new challenge that’s fun and engaging. Could you create a “Golf Clinic for Clinicians” from the nearby hospital, custom-designed to fit their schedules? How about creating a series of clinics for chefs and wait staffers at the top five restaurants in your market? One way to kick-start an outreach to medical professionals who work late hours is to link your event to their hospital’s annual golf tournament fundraiser. If you are the golf coach who becomes well known to these networks, word will get around, and your business will enjoy an excellent pool of clients who follow a different schedule than the rest of the world.
Stage a putting expo and show all the putting-performance help now available:
All under one roof (although there’s no actual roof) you can gather your staff of instructors, a putter-fitting expert, perhaps a rep from a manufacturer known for its putter line, putting practice-aids, an AimPoint teacher and all sorts of other resources from this putting-intense era for a putting expo. Acclaimed teacher Nicole Weller called her event at The Landings Club in coastal Georgia a “Putting Fair.” Weller’s members received coaching in distance control, putt reading, and alignment/aim, along with all the other bells and whistles gathered on her practice green. The direct result was increased exposure by members to the club’s golf professionals, nine putters sold at the fair plus interest in spin-off lessons, extra practice sessions, and clinics to advance ideas that were discovered during the fair.
Connect your golf instruction offerings to the yoga community:
It’s highly impressive to see how intently golf coaches have studied bio-kinesiology and other aspects of the fitness-golf connection. Question: Do any of the 1,000 or so regular yoga students in your area know that flexibility and golf success go together? Do the yoga instructors? Think about this: Whatever value the local yoga teachers feel they are delivering to their students, you could give them one more arrow for their quiver—they are helping their clients develop the type of flexibility, balance and conditioning that a good golf swing thrives on. Any yoga student who has remotely considered trying golf is, at the very minimum, going to get a little thrill at knowing they’ve got a significant advantage over the non-yoga beginner—and that’s an incentive for them to come to the tee. How about a Get Golf Ready just for active yoga students? Or a demo at the yoga class showing how well a limber and yoga-trained body can make good golf swings? Self-improvement is the umbrella concept for the yoga student and golf student alike—make that connection in your local market and see what happens.
Market to league golfers (who can arrive early):
It’s a familiar summertime sight in public golf—league golfers hustling to the tee because they have so little time to get from their place of business to the course. But some league players aren’t in that time crunch and can arrive long before teammates. This means there is quite likely some form of coaching and pre-round prep that could fit into this time slot. Try surveying the league database to see who wants to show up early for putting, chipping, or perhaps some bunker help. The sessions would be relatively short and would often use a group format, so the out-of-pocket for these customers can be on the low side. Meanwhile, they become candidates for your full programs, and an advertisement for your skills if they start winning more than their fair share of matches. Use Your Email Signature to Drive Traffic to Your Offers, Events, and Ancillary Products: Every email you send to an active client or prospect can have multiple “actionable” links/buttons. Do you conduct New Student Assessments? And do you have a dedicated booking page on your website for NSA’s? Embed a link to that page in a message that says: “Click here for an in-person assessment of your golf skills” or words to that effect. If you market a swing aid or practice app that golfers can learn about online, create a hyperlink button for that. Every email you send can and probably should have this calls-to-action, which are easy to create—there are even online tools for customizing them to your preference.
Got a marketing tip? Send it to lorin.anderson@golfchannel.com, and we’ll be glad to share it—with proper credit to you—in an upcoming issue.