We could say that marketing is, quite simply, a discipline that provides, designs or builds tools to help achieve the company’s sales objectives. That is why no company, or almost none, can afford to do without it.

Marketing has traditionally been associated with advertising or merchandising. They are indeed part of marketing, but there is much more to it. Fortunately, today we work with far more efficient and analytical marketing: digital marketing lets us act with a surgeon’s precision, reaching the right customer at the right moment. We can also analyse what has worked and where we need to make changes, optimising the resources we invest and getting the highest possible return.

Focusing on golf, we need to look at the sector’s particular features to see where a digital marketing strategy can be especially effective, since more traditional actions do not have the reach we need.

First of all, bear in mind that in most cases our customer (end customer or intermediary) is thousands of kilometres away, so the best way to reach them is digitally.

In addition, the buying process is not usually quick; it needs quite a lot of information before a decision is made. Think of our website or social media profiles as the shop window of our business. What people see there will make them book, or choose another club. It is essential that we work on our digital presence and that what we show is true to our product: let’s not create false expectations or neglect our appearance so much that it discourages the purchase. Our website is like our home: when we have guests, we like to have it tidy and clean so they enjoy moving from room to room and leave with such a good impression that they want to come back.

B2B marketing
Buying through agencies still carries a lot of weight, and digital tour operators (with their online brochure and a call centre handling requests) prevail over high-street agencies. So a large share of bookings are made online, and the trend is growing. Once again, if we want to sell, we have to be in this digital environment.

A club’s customers can be very diverse, by location, age or reason for booking (golf break, long stay, season pass, academy, etc.). With digital marketing tools we can design specific strategies for each profile, so that each one receives only the information that interests them.

Inbound marketing
Golf encompasses a sport, a lifestyle, travel, events, competitions, agronomy. In short, many varied topics for creating interesting content for our customers and followers. This is precisely one of the premises of inbound marketing: attracting customers by providing value (as opposed to the interruption in content consumption that traditional advertising involves).

Finally, we cannot forget that we are in a sector where digitalisation is still at an early stage, but we must also bear in mind that there is a new generation of golfers who are digital natives and who are customers of today and tomorrow. When developing our marketing plan, we must make sure there is a balance between integrating offline and online, so that we cover our entire potential market.

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