Tag: price

Breaking Down Muni Misconceptions

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The profile of the typical municipal course golfer isn’t flattering: outfit from Goodwill, handicap (if he has one) well into double figures and frugal to a fault, especially when it comes to green fees.

To use a term made popular by former vice president Joe Biden, conventional wisdom is a “bunch of malarkey” — at least the part that paints the muni golfer willing to play any available goat track as long as it’s cheap.

“Loyal muni golfers will surprise you,” says Derek Johnston, a fellow partner at Global Golf Advisors Partners, who oversaw a research project our firm conducted for the city and county of Los Angeles. “Our research showed that municipal golfers can be not only extremely proud of the courses they play, but also extremely loyal.”

The common thinking among public course administrators and operators is that keeping prices low is the key to golfer satisfaction, loyalty and engagement. However, the GGA Partners study of several thousand L.A.-area municipal course golfers revealed that most are not as price-conscious as their reputation suggests. In fact, most say they would pay a higher green fee if certain important criteria are achieved.

The first of those criteria is course conditioning. Specifically, golfers referenced improved putting surfaces — more consistent roll and green speed — and teeing areas. Whether their home course was one of the premier muni courses within the city and county system or one of the more modest, these golfers cited golf course conditions as a top priority and worthy of a few more bucks.

But what do they consider “higher prices?” Seventy percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay a 5 percent to 15 percent higher green fee for improved course conditions.

“For most of these courses, a 10 percent increase on average in green fee revenue is significant, given the high volume of rounds played,” Johnston says. “Revenue growth of this proportion recommends serious consideration for investing the resources required to produce improved playing surfaces.”

The second surprising finding from GGA Partners’ research in Los Angeles was the importance golfers placed on pace of play in relation to the value they received for their green fee. Fifty-five percent of muni course golfers expressed a willingness to pay more per round for improved pace of play. “Teaming with USGA analysts, who conducted on-site golfer tests, we learned that pace of play and the sense of ‘getting one’s money’s worth’ were closely aligned,” Johnston says.

GGA Partners’ research of L.A.-area muni golf courses identified solutions that are available to administrators and operators of muni courses nationwide. While some of these findings fly in the face of conventional wisdom, they bring focus to several important demographic facts that should be considered when putting together a strategic plan and again during the budgeting process.

  • Muni golfers are a mixed socioeconomic bag. Many muni course players are not “belongers” and have little interest in joining a private club. In many cases, they are part of an increasingly mobile workforce and are reluctant to establish roots within a club community because they don’t want financial obligations limiting or influencing their next career move.
  • Muni golfers are not necessarily “cheap” and unwilling to pay for an enjoyable round of golf. In fact, many are like most golfers in that they will pay more for aspects of their round that they feel provide value and enjoyment.
  • Capacity for more golf rounds exists at many muni courses, which gives avid golfers opportunities to play more rounds in less-congested conditions.
  • The fastest growing segments of new golfers – women and kids – have easy access with very little friction, as in no joining fees or monthly dues, when playing at muni golf courses.

The potential for increased revenues when pace of play and course conditions are improved is a business model that deserves careful evaluation in most markets today. We certainly know that golf course superintendents at most municipal facilities could provide improved conditions given an increase in their agronomy and maintenance budgets. But what is the potential in your market for increased participation incremental green fees? The best way to know the answer to that question is to ask your golfers. Their answers might be a pleasant surprise.

This article with authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine.

Avoiding a Category Overload

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When was the last time you conducted a thorough review into your membership categories?

GGA’s Bennett DeLozier explains how a streamlining process can help to slim down the number of categories and keep them relevant in today’s marketplace.

“Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information” – Edward Tufte

Across North America and Europe a competitive landscape for membership has emerged, with more leisure pursuits competing with one another than ever.

Naturally, club leaders across the world are not sitting back and watching the evolution of customer needs and wants without acting. But while a great deal of this action is well-placed – from the introduction of intermediate and family memberships in North America to flexible membership schemes in Europe – in other instances it is leading to an uninformed inflation of membership categories, creating confusion for customers and an administrative headache for club leaders.

A trail of memberships

It is common for categories to emerge at a particular point in time, often as a reaction to an event, as an attempt to appease a vocal minority, or in an effort to attract a specific new member cohort.

Many clubs react to changes in the market by adding or creating a new membership category to appeal to specific segments. When structured properly, this can be an effective way to cast a wider net and appeal to different audiences. However, when this happens in an unstructured way over a number of years, a club may end up administering upwards of 15 to 20 categories at a time.

More categories mean more discounting, different access, and different privileges. Membership samples per category get smaller, and it becomes too much to administer and too confusing for existing and prospective members alike.

Top-performing clubs have fewer membership categories, largely because they enjoy demand such that members are attracted to them versus the other way around. For others, what should be a set of simple, straightforward membership categories becomes a patchwork quilt, absent of any tangible strategy or current solution to underpin its creation.

Naturally, tackling this issue has its challenges. How do you begin to evaluate and streamline so many categories? How do you negotiate shifting members from one category to another?

Streamlining your categories

Current market intelligence and supporting research is essential to guide this process. Once you understand the current market circumstances and positioning of your club, you can identify where membership categories may need to be realigned to attract future members.

The key is to study internal membership utilization rigorously so you can understand where your club has the capacity to grow. The adjustment of existing categories or development of new ones should be based on creating access and privileges in areas where the club has room to grow, not necessarily where prospective members desire it.

To illustrate the importance of proportionate categories, think about one which has emerged in recent years particularly: the intermediate or young professional category.

Typically offered to those between the ages of 25-35 (with a great deal of variance depending on the club and location), its origins are rooted in the issue of affordability both in dues and initiation fees. This has given way to lower dues, waived initiation fees, or a tiered system based on a particular age bracket.

While the introduction of such a category has been, in most cases, an appropriate tactic, it is one in need of constant analysis. As young intermediate members age into their mid-thirties their lifestyles begin to evolve, so does what they need, want and expect from their club experience.

This poses a challenge to clubs: do you change the existing intermediate category or create a new one to meet evolving demands?

The answer comes back to robust intelligence – intelligence which enables club leaders to get ahead of this challenge long before it makes its way to the doorstep. Intelligence allows you to measure and monitor utilization, enabling category adjustments which match lifestyle changes and market trends.

Moving members

Whether you’re dealing with category overload, wrangling legacy categories that you are looking to streamline, or have members moving up an age category where there are implications to their dues or privileges, at a certain point in time it is necessary to change.

But it’s difficult to change members from one category to another.

Legacy categories can be contentious, as members are unlikely to welcome category change – especially if this means an increase in dues. Club leaders should enter the process with the primary aim of growing where the club has the capacity to grow and a secondary aim of establishing a fair playing field across the membership base.

The best practice approach is to identify categories that have become irrelevant and essentially ‘grandfather’ those members into new categories which fit the room-to-grow bill, allowing them the opportunity to transition into new categories under advantageous terms.

If we look back to our young professional categories, when the time comes for them to move up the ranks to full membership, invest time and attention into the process. Why? Because these members have reached a pinch point, a ‘fight or flight’ moment in their membership tenure. If they decide to progress through to full membership now, the likelihood that they will stay for the long-term increases substantially.

Communicating your product

Before communicating your streamlined categories, club leaders should have answers to the following: Are the current categories relevant? Are they performing financially? Are category offerings causing issues with facility accessibility or compaction of activities? How do they situate within the local market and relative to competitor offerings? What benefits will category changes provide existing members? What benefits will they provide the club?

Once in position to communicate the changes internally, preempt what members will think. The primary concern for them will be, naturally, “How does this impact me?”. But the club’s agenda should also form part of the equation. Communicate how the changes will make the club more attractive to future generations and how they will support the club’s financial sustainability. Although it may feel self-serving, it will help to mitigate any ill-feeling among members by giving clarity and a sense of purpose to the changes.

For the change itself, successful clubs provide the option to transition into a new category that has similar access under favorable terms (such as a lateral move into a new category at no cost; or, upgrading to a higher privilege category at a lower incremental entrance fee compared to that of a new member off the street).

Externally, the focus should be on competitive advantage through value. It’s easy to compete with local competitors on price, but it’s not necessarily advantageous to the club. The best clubs look at ways to establish their competitive advantages by adding new programming and subtle category elements that make the value proposition more attractive. Injecting value is preferable to cutting costs.

Clarity over confusion

A proactive and streamlined approach to membership categories has much to offer: an easy-to-manage administrative process and clarity for existing members, prospective members and the Board.

A review of your membership categories also offers the opportunity to view each through the lens of the future and under the guidance of current research. With membership dues representing a hugely significant revenue component for any club, this process is time well spent.

For guidance on how to revise your club’s membership categories, connect with
Bennett DeLozier.

Three Steps to Connect Marketing to Sales

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In theory, sales and marketing should be two of the most integrated and connected aspects of your Club’s operation.  The reality, unfortunately, is that in some businesses they are operating almost independently and singing entirely different tunes.  For the Club, what this divergence leads to is ineffective messaging and lost prospects.  The importance of connecting sales to marketing is clear, so the question is: how can we achieve it?

To understand how to improve this connection, it is first important to understand the difference between the two disciplines of marketing and sales.

Marketing is a management planning process; it is focused on the strategies and techniques of crafting goods and services, all the way from a concept to an end-product or service.

The sales process is focused on the strategies and techniques of convincing a customer to exchange their cash for that product or service.

The marketing process develops a perceived need for your product in the mind of a customer, and the sales process then allows the customer to satisfy their perceived need for your product by purchasing it.

Although separate and distinct disciplines, marketing and sales efforts must be carefully aligned to achieve their highest potential in generating a steady stream of customers for your Club.

Using this three-step procedure to connect your marketing to sales will put you on the path to generating more qualified prospects and selling more memberships.

Step One – Clearly Define Your Four P’s

Successful marketing captures your business through the lens of your customer’s needs – and the satisfaction of those perceived needs – by defining the “Four P’s” of your offering: Product, Price, Place, Promotion.

To test how well-defined your product is at this moment, ask each member of both your management and sales teams to give you their “elevator pitch”.  If those pitches are not identical, or if they are not focused on precisely what differentiates your Club from its competition, then you have work to do.

Defining your Product properly begins with your mission statement – the single sentence that describes why you exist.

Once you have that definition, you must develop your brand position – an expression of what makes your Club distinct, unique, and fills a particular consumer need in a way that none of your competitors can.

Your brand position is critical: If you do not understand what you are offering, neither will your prospects.  Even more disturbing is this reality: If you don’t define your product, someone else will, and you may not like their story.

After “product” comes Price, Place and Promotion:

Price is self-explanatory.

The definition of Place is a clear analysis and understanding of the specific target audience for your product, and the tactics you have selected and employed to reach that audience.

Your definition of Promotion is the complete list of methods you will use to broadcast your product to your audience – for example: brochures, a website, mobile apps, print or digital ads.

With your “Four P’s” clearly defined and in hand, let’s move to Step Two.

Step Two – Singing from the Same Sheet Music

Step two along the path to connecting marketing to sales is teaching your team, particularly your sales force, to “sing from the same sheet music”.

To do this you will need to train your team to:

a) be comfortable with presenting your Club according to this script

b) understand the importance of presenting a consistent image and message when promoting the Club in the marketplace

Consistently reinforce and remind your staff of its importance in all employee communications.  You could do this as part of your email signature, through a notice on employee message boards, or verbally during employee meetings.  Just as consumers are bombarded with over 3,000 messages a day, so are your employees.  Make sure it’s your message that sticks.

Constantly encourage employees to share how and when they have promoted the Club and reward them with both private and public recognition for their efforts.

With your marketing in place and your implementation team deployed, it’s on to Step Three.

Step Three – Track, Analyze and Adjust

Your Club is now positioned consistently across all communication channels and your employees are all singing from the same sheet music, but how do you know for certain that marketing is now connected to sales?

The answer is through data collection and analysis.

  • Ask consumers where they learned about you when they visit or call the club
  • Incorporate unique URLs and telephone numbers into published advertising to identify what technique connected with what specific audience
  • Google analytics provides a wealth of data about prospects who have visited your website: where they visit from, what pages they visit, how long they spend on your site and more
  • Social media sites also provide data on likes and engagement
  • Tracking pixels can also be added to emails and webpages to follow the activities of users

Review and analysis of this data will expose what is working and what needs to be adjusted to create maximum impact.

The combination of a clear and consistent Club message, the effective broadcast of that message to your target audience, your sales team singing the same song, and close attention paid to what is working and what is not will connect your marketing to sales – providing a steady stream of qualified prospects to your door and new members to your Club.

This article was authored by GGA Senior Associate and Marketing expert Linda Dillenbeck.

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