business to business
Back to Basics
With Advanced
Marketing Tools
Mediums for
electronic
marketing such as
Internet search
engines, social-networking sites
and e-mail alerts
are becoming more
important in the
quest for new
customers
By Mark S. Murphy
Colorado Avid Golfer (top) has
built a Web site that caters to
the players in and traveling to
the state. Canongate Golf
(right) is using the Internet to
publish golf league results.
Golf facilities cannot afford to leave any
potential business uncaptured in today’s economic climate.
Which means, as difficult as it is to spend
money when margins are tight, marketing
remains imperative. But you have to be smart
about it.
In trying to maximize bang-for-the-buck,
many golf course operators are just beginning
to consider the marketing options available
on the Internet – from the facility’s own Web
site to one-to-one e-mail marketing to social
media, online communities of people with
shared interest.
No one could accuse PGA Professional
Leigh Bader of hanging back when it comes to
making good use of the Internet. Starting with
a small nine-hole public facility in an out-of-the-way corner of southeastern Massachusetts, Bader and his partner, Joe Ricci, have
built a small empire in 3balls.com, an online
golf equipment and accessories Web site, that
is far larger now than even their very successful green-grass Pine Oaks Golf Club.
According to Bader, a member of The PGA
of America’s Communications and Public Relations Committee, when marketing on the
Internet, it is important to start with the fundamental – a Web site. “A solid Web site is the
hub for the wheel that represents your
communication to members, customers and
potential customers,” he says.
It is important to use that site not only to
disseminate information, but also to gather it.
You can do that by requiring e-mail addresses
to access the site.
The next step is making sure your message
gets through. As Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) have been installing more sophisticated
junk mail and spam filters, fewer e-mails sent
out in bulk make their way to the intended
recipients. The answer: If you want the best
results, hire an expert (see sidebar on next page).
Doug Smith, the vice president of business
development for 3balls.com, Bader and Ricci’s
online business, says that as he and the
company have grown more technologically
sophisticated, so has the range of marketing
tools they have used. Here’s how he breaks it
down:
• Search. There are two kinds of searches,
the first being “organic,” in which a search
engine (Google, Yahoo! and the like) responds to a word or phrase query by providing a list of Web sites that best match the
search criteria. To appear at the top of the
search results list consistently, you need
your site to be optimized. Keeping the
site’s information fresh or imbedding key
search terms in the computer code are two
methods that a site can be optimized. But
there are more, and the process “must be
constantly managed,” says Smith. The second type of search is paid, in which you
“buy” certain search terms in an instanta-
