Trading tee times for golf course marketing is a bad idea.

UPDATED 5/27/13

Our business model is to stand beside the golf course owner and operator.


Recently, GolfNow, a subsidiary of Golf Channel, began an advertising campaign that refers to pricing by golf course owners as “preposterous” in order to promote the discounted, reselling of tee times with their product. This form of negative advertising only hampers us as golf course owners to appropriately price our product, as well as harming the golf industry as a whole.

I know that the issue of 3rd-party tee time resellers has become a hot topic of the past few years and now is our time to act. As we all know, for a golf course to stay in business and be successful in today's economy, pricing has to balance profitability and be competitive based upon the value it provides the golfer. It is unfair of an outside party, such as GolfNow, to make a statement that doesn't understand that balance or have an investment in the facility.

Join me and other members of the NGCOA Board of Directors in signing an online petition atChange.org to let GolfNow know that we take offense to the mischaracterization of our pricing structure and asking that GolfNow stop the negative portrayal of golf course owners and join us in creating a positive message to convey the benefits of playing golf to grow the industry.
The petition can be found by clicking here.

By adding a comment on why this is important to you, you can add a personal voice to the petition that will be sent straight to Jeff Foster, senior vice president of new media at Golf Channel, including GolfNow.
Our voices have been heard already in the past 24 hours as the video has been removed from its spot on GolfNow’s offical YouTube page. By further advancing our displeasure, we can make sure the GolfNow stops airing the commercial on major TV networks and changes the focus of their advertising campaign to a more positive message.

Thank you for your support of this important issue facing all golf course owners.
Sincerely,

Linda Rogers
President, NGCOA Board of Directors
Owner, Juday Creek Golf Course

P.S. When you register to sign the petition, please remember to add the address mail@change.org to your “safe-sender list” in case it goes to spam. 


UPDATED 7/2/12:  This post has caused considerable uproar in the golfing community.  To be clear, this post was originally written by Patrick F Bruce, my father and long time business analyst for such brands such as Disney, McDonald's and General Mills.  We have received numerous calls, emails in support of our message and thanked consistently for "telling it straight."  Thank you to those who understand our message- and we congratulate the PGA for making a stand in these statements from their President Allen Wronokski on the subject.

http://www.pgalinks.com/index.cfm?ctc=6645&cid=2290

NGCOA Best Practices
https://images.magnetmail.net/images/clients/NGCOA/attach/BestPractice_ThirdPartyResellers.pdf

4/18
by Patrick Bruce

There was a time when third party booking engines had a place in the golf industry – but not anymore!

As a business analyst, I have worked in the golf course marketing arena since the Oldsmobile Scramble was held at Walt Disney World in the mid-80’s, and I am alarmed at the control that the third party tee-time booking engine have had on golf course owners.

As a business analyst, I have always been an advocate of growing “net bottom line” profits, leveraging your “own” customers’ database and use the best online marketing practices and implement technology that helps your golf course increase rounds and revenue.

I have never been an advocate of giving your rounds away to someone else to sell. In my mind; taking your rounds, giving them to a third party with a state of the art website and your money to spend and then allowing them to sell your rounds at a lower price than you can sell them is not a good strategy.

The difference between dumb and stupid is when you don’t know any better because you haven’t been told.

In this economy where price erosion is out of control, it's important that your golf courses discount less and stop giving away tee times to third-parties that take them and re-sell them at half the rate you could get if you sold that time on your own.

We believe that 3rd party golf booking engines are not playing fair and we question the partnership in the conflict of interest business model.

The best place to sell your tee times is on your website or though social media, and anyone that tells you differently is simply not giving you good advice.

Third-parties (software companies, webpage companies, tee time resellers, etc.) have used the practice of taking your tee times and discounting the time lower than you can sell them yourself, and they do it aggressively.

According to SEOBook.com; In March 2012 one third party was spending $1200 a day using Google Pay per Click to attract Golfers, and another was spending close to $600 a day! That is over a half million dollars a year spent by two companies to sell YOUR golf rounds; and to the best of my knowledge neither one of those companies owns a golf course!

In essence these companies are spending this money to train your customers to go away from your golf course's website to find a better tee time price, but more important than that- they are capturing your potential customers sensitive database Information, and using it to help market your competitors.

Take a look at the chart below, notice how the golf course rounds go down as the spending by the booking engines goes up. we don’t believe this is a coincidence!

This practice is creating additional competition for courses, and for an industry challenged by excess supply, and decreasing demand; increasing competition is not the right solution.  Especially now with the advent of social media,  it’s imperative that golf course owners capture, engage, and nurture the limited number of “heavy users” golfers. (My definition of a heavy user is someone that plays at least 12 times a year).

For our marketing money, we want the top 10% of heavy users of golf courses; in my database (and only my database). That way, I can engage them; and get them to help me market to their circle of friends.

Using sophisticated predictive analytics, (hyper-targeting) I would fix my marketing cost as a percentage of total revenues; otherwise my marketing costs are “non-controllable”.

Then I would employ a zero based budgeting system by  planning for the costs of a marketing campaign by assuming at first a budget of zero and judiciously adding costs that are necessary for performance.

In this model each individual marketing campaign is carefully scrutinized and justified.

Expenses are not assumed just because they took place in a prior year or a prior budget, they must instead be demonstrated as necessary on a per campaign basis. Each marketing campaign (including traditional media) is considered in light of potential alternatives, and priorities are developed for choosing between different alternative proposals.

For example if my total revenue for one month was $50,000, my marketing budget target would be limited to 5% of the total golf course revenue( $2500) and my marketing manager would have to come to me with a program that fits that budget, and all marketing expenditures would have to fall under that percentage.

That way I can invest that $2500 into driving people directly to my database. , where my future cost of marketing to them is dramatically reduced!

After 35 years in business, and many working with golf courses, I have learned that golf course owners treat new and old problems the same even when different management developed the original budgets

Consequently, the budgets were based on prior years' expenditures which were more likely to treat older traditional media as higher priorities the more efficient internet / social marketing, because money was budgeted for them already.

And the most traditional was “no cost booking engines”; well to my mind third parties can no longer justify “no out of pocket money", when less rounds of golf have been played and the prices to play a round of golf is a lot cheaper than it was five years ago, yet they still have the budgets to spend over a half a million dollars on marketing expense.

Like I said, the difference between dumb and stupid…. Consider yourself told.

Patrick Bruce, telling it straight.