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Private clubs are using GPT technology to increase membership sales in 2023 by personalizing their sales approach, creating engaging content, and reaching potential members in new ways through various platforms such as chatbots, email campaigns, virtual tours, social media, newsletters, brochures, testimonials, blog articles, and personalized videos. GPT helps private clubs stand out from competitors and connect with potential members, resulting in high-quality content generation at scale and growth in membership.

  1. GPT-powered chatbots: Implement GPT-powered chatbots to handle basic membership inquiries and provide information to potential members 24/7.
  2. Personalized sales scripts: Use GPT to generate personalized sales scripts based on the prospects' interests, goals, and preferences.
  3. Email campaigns: Create targeted email campaigns using GPT-generated content to reach potential members with personalized messages.
  4. Virtual tours: Use GPT to write scripts for virtual tours of the club, highlighting its unique features and benefits.
  5. Social media posts: Generate social media posts using GPT to showcase the club and its offerings, engage with members and prospects, and promote events.
  6. Club newsletters: Use GPT to write engaging newsletters that keep members informed about club activities, events, and news.
  7. Brochures and flyers: Use GPT to generate custom brochures and flyers that promote the club's benefits and features.
  8. Member testimonials: Use GPT to write member testimonials that highlight the positive experiences of existing members and encourage others to join.
  9. Blog articles: Write blog articles using GPT to educate potential members about the club, its offerings, and its benefits.
  10. Personalized videos: Create personalized videos using GPT-generated scripts to showcase the club and its offerings, and to connect with potential members on a more personal level.

Behind The Hay’s Infamous Sea Lion Logo

With Tiger Wood's designed Par 3 golf course, opening of The Hay earlier last year (2021) at Pebble Beach Resort, many people may have wondered where the idea of a cute sea lion with a golf flag in its mouth may have come from. Maybe the local aquatic attractions gave it inspiration? Well no! In fact, the sea lion logo mark is actually part of Pebble Beach's history dating back to 1938. And according to the Pebble Beach Heritage Book, it's quite the fun story.

“Cynthia the Sea Lion, advertised as the world's smartest sea lion, was brought to the golf course at Pebble Beach in 1938 to demonstrate the relative ease with which one could knock the ball into the cup. It was all done in fun for the newsreel cameras of the day. As the party made its way to a coastal hole for more photographs, Cynthia, true to her moniker, evaded her handlers and made a break for the ocean. The fun was now all hers as the temptation of the sea proved too great. Cynthia’s heartbroken trainer last saw her frolicking in the surf of the Pacific Ocean. The show, however, went on with another sea lion, but at the inland Del Monte course, where the ocean was not in play.”

How to Retain Members During COVID-19

What Membership Directors and your Team can do to engage your membership during this time of social distancing and strategies you can put into place to increase membership retention rates.

There are so many unknowns of what is going to happen at your club within the next couple months. One thing that you can control is what you are doing at this time to stay connected with your membership.

Keeping your members happy is hard enough when they are at the club; now we have to think of ways to take the club to them as well as adapt to the new normal of so many restrictions. More than ever, it is important to retain each and every member.

Keeping your current members engaged virtually is something we are not use to; but it is the most essential thing you can do as a management team. Think outside of the box and give your members value add other than takeout and email updates during this pandemic. Refusing to change the way we do business can lead to the downfall of an organization; don’t let that be your club. Check out this quick inspirational video to help get you and your team get inspired to reinvent yourself and your clubs’ operations  These Are Not Unprecedented Times | Simon Sinek.

Be creative; empower all department leads to come up with ideas to send out to the membership. Here are some examples of what your team can be working on to keep your members engaged and reminding them why their membership to their club is so valuable.

Showcase your exceptional staff.

Have your golf pros create short video segments on golf tips and tricks, how to practice in your home, golf exercises, etc. Your golf staff can also create virtual brackets for tournaments ie: virtual bracket for the TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Game.

Your fitness instructors can stream their classes to do in the comfort of your homes (good to get staff to take the classes as well).

The culinary department can be doing video cooking tips from their personal kitchens or even live Q&A’s with the Executive Chef, sharing their favorite or healthy recipes to the membership, writing nutrition plans, creating meal kits for pickup and even setting up a shopping market at the club.

This time even allows for our Superintendents to get involved! Most of your members have a lot more time on their hands to be working in their yards or gardens. Any tips on how to grow grass, planting tips, trimming of trees etc. would be great information to share! ADDED benefit: if your club has the ability to do soil testing, have the membership bring in soil samples to give suggestions on fertilizer applications or other lawn treatment plans; it’s that time of the year!

Have your beverage team organize mixology classes and/or virtual wine tastings with your sommelier.

Arrange each “club within the club” to continue as scheduled using virtual chat rooms to organize the meetings, like Zoom, (might even be a good time to start new clubs; like a book club)!

Host social events virtually for the membership; like a trivia night.

Get your Club Historian or a long-time member to host Fireside chats and tell your clubs story and engage your membership in the rich history of your club.

Most importantly don’t forget about the kids! They miss their “club” friends as much as their parents. Create a Spring packet with games, scavenger hunts, coloring contest, photo contests, etc. to mail out to those members who have children and have them post on your social media outlets or mail back to the club.

Preparing to re-open.

Organize your member database. Now more than ever is the time to do the tedious chore of going through member by member to make sure the correct information is collected. Click Here for a sample survey of what demographic information you should be collecting for each family. This information will then be used to create segmented communication lists for the members!

Connect with the membership; break up your membership list and have your managers call the members to check in on how they and their families are doing during this pandemic. Have talking points for your managers so a unified message is being communicated. Tell them what the Club’s plan is to stay connected with the membership. Take the time to ask them for feedback and what they would like to see in 2020. But, most importantly make sure to tell them how much they mean to the club and how excited the Team is to see them once you re-open.

March Facebook Ideas and Examples

Looking for some social media posting inspo? Search no further – we’ve got a slew of ideas to share. Social media is a place for your marketing strategy to stretch its legs and put its fun pants on! Since there is no shortage of fun holidays and activities in the month of March, take advantage and inject some personality into your business page!

March Awareness Causes

There are many awareness causes that you can use for March blogging and Facebook marketing. These topics can be posted on throughout the month of March so you’re not tied to a specific date. They include:

• Reading
• Women’s History
• Brain Injury
• March Madness
• Youth Art
• Nutrition

Facebook-Friendly March Holidays

There are some really great holidays this month…some are super specific while others are enjoyed by most everyone giving you loads of options for posting to Facebook.

• Read Across America / Dr. Seuss’ Birthday – March 2nd
• International Women’s Day – March 8th
• Daylight Savings – March 8th
• Girl Scout’s Day – March 12th
• Pi Day – March 14th
• St. Patrick’s Day – March 17th
• First Day of Spring – March 19th
• International Puppy Day – March 23rd
• National Medal of Honor Day –March 25th
• Mom and Pop Business Owner Day – March 29th
• MLB Opening Day – March 26th
• Crayon Day – March 31st

Hashtags for March awareness causes and holidays include:

#read2020 #womenshistory #BrainInjuryawarenessmonth #TBIChampion #MarchMadness #NationalChampionship #youthartmonth #youthart #nutritionawarenessmonth #healthyeating #healthyfood #readacrossamerica #drseuss #internationalwomensday #womensday2020 #womensdayeveryday #piday2020 #pinchme #gogreen #internationalpuppyday #puppypic #nationalmomandpop

Examples of March Facebook Posts

Check out how businesses across the country have used these fun holidays and worthy causes to promote their organizations and connect with their followers!

Pi Day

Pi Day can fit in with any business. Choose a special offering on March 14th (3.14) or use the day to grab people’s attention about a promotion. Here's a few examples from Army Navy Country Club, Philadelphia Country Club and Beechwood Country Club.

St. Patrick’s Day Facebook Posts

Get festive and invite your followers to drop in for limited time offerings inspired by the Luck of the Irish for St. Patrick’s day.

Run a Facebook contest and invite people to test their luck! To garner more followers you may incorporate an incentive to share your page for a single entry into the contest.

International Puppy Day

International Puppy Day suits every business. Just toss a photo of an adorable dog up and give a shout out to the special day, or be more strategic and amp up the Facebook marketing factor by calling all dogs for a cutest puppy contest! This tactic increases follower engagement and, let’s face it, is super cute.

Women’s History

Don’t forget about the awareness causes! Highlight Women’s History Awareness by giving a brief history lesson of women in golf.

Here's a great link: https://golfcollege.edu/history-womens-professional-golf/

March Madness

Just because you have absolutely nothing to do with sports doesn’t mean you can’t become a basketball fan for the month. If a bridal boutique, an event planning company, and a dog treat business can find a way to jump on the bandwagon, anyone can.


Here are NBA players who also golf: https://www.wearebasket.net/top-5-nba-players-who-play-golf/

Nutrition Awareness

Work in a health-related field? You definitely should be capitalizing on March being Nutrition Awareness month. Provide links to your blog for helpful tips…

…or encourage people to educate themselves and get them excited about living a healthier lifestyle.

 

Use these ideas and real examples of Facebook posts for the month of March to help you stay creative with your marketing and have fun with it too!

7 Creative Golf Marketing Ideas to Make Your Club Stand Out

Everywhere we turn lately, we come across tips for how to execute creative golf marketing ideas this year. So we’ve collected a short list of our favorite tips.

Here are seven ideas for giving your marketing efforts a boost:

1. Ask your Members how to reach out. When is the last time you actually asked your members about how they'd like to interact with your club? There's really no excuse when you can run instant polls on your Facebook page or club website.

2. Triggered emails. Do you send members an email that makes additional offers after they’ve made a reservation or tee-time on your website? If not, you're missing a great opportunity to keep your name in front of a member who's planning to visit the club. Private Club Marketing can assist you with setting this up with your existing website/email platform.

3. Text marketing. Find out what members want by texting them a question. Then, send them a coupon for a discount on that item. This one's particularly useful for those Gen-X and -Y customers, many of whom don't seem to use email anymore.

4. What your competition isn't doing. Analyze what creative golf marketing methods your competitors are using, and look for the holes. Be somewhere they're not — maybe on the local chamber of commerce, Instagram or even bringing back the printed club newsletter.

5. Don't just network — host an event. Hosting an event is a powerful way to get known by a lot of people at once. Why? Everybody comes over to thank the host.

6. Referral rewards. This one's an oldie but goodie that's still around because it works. Let members know you'll reward them if they send you a prospective member, and turn your members into your marketing team on the cheap.

7. Simplify. Remember that too many marketing messages confuse members, especially as you spread them across various marketing channels. Try to pare down to three choices in all aspects of your marketing, from how many fonts you use to how many times you follow up.

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Tips for Creating a Successful Private Club Membership Marketing Plan

Want to realize membership strategies to market your private club more effectively? Here are a few tips for creating a successful membership marketing plan

Why would I need a membership marketing plan?

Whether you run a small, single club, a medium sized one, or a large management company, whether your club is newly founded or well-tried, there are certain daily challenges that you, as a club marketer, must inevitably face. These include driving member referrals, satisfying member demands, and achieving business goals. Such business goals should not come into being randomly or just by gut feelings. Rather, your marketing plan should be the basis of your corporate agitation. The process you should follow, in creating your marketing strategy, will be outlined for you in this article.

Make sure your membership marketing plan doesn’t become a monster, but rather is constructive and focused on the most important elements. There is no point in investing hours and hours of work into a plan just to disregard it in the end. In order to achieve your personal business goals, the membership marketing plan you devise should be something you can use in your daily operations. There are several things you should pay attention to when composing it. This means that full concentration and sufficient time are required when you sit down to devise this plan. However, the act of creating the plan alone is of course not sufficient. Your membership marketing plan should at the very least be updated regularly (say once a year) and be coherent with the general business strategy. This brief article should give you a rough understanding of how to create a private club membership marketing plan, and eventually serve you as a tool to sustain your position within the harshly competitive private club business.

Preconditions for a membership marketing plan

In order to determine precise marketing goals, you should already have formulated a clear business strategy. To do so, it is important to observe your club from a bird’s-eye view and to ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who are our members and target audiences?
  • Why should prospective members join out club verse our competitors? What advantages do we offer our members?
  • Who are our competitors?
  • What are we specialized in? How are we differentiating ourselves from our competitors? In which departments and amenities are we better?
  • What are our products and services – and for which of them did we receive positive or negative feedback?
  • What are some weaknesses of our club?
  • What is our philosophy / our vision?

You should have convincing answers at hand for these questions. Only then can you begin drafting precise goals for your marketing strategy, defining concrete demands to be achieved over a specific period. Those goals must be formulated in such a way that they are verifiable and controllable. Maybe you want to increase membership inquiries from your website by 5%, or you want to strengthen your presence on social networks. By choosing specific targets, you can later measure your performance. Do not forget to define and include budgets for marketing measures into your calculation. In the end, it’s all about making those measures worthwhile for you and your club.

Create specific marketing measures

You have taken an important first step by doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis as well as defining a business strategy. By now, you are getting ready to actually start working on your membership marketing plan. That includes developing certain measures for the following categories – the so-called four P’s.

  • Product
  • Price
  • Promotion
  • Place

It is highly recommended that you do some sort of brainstorming with different managers from respective departments of your club. Hear everyone’s opinion, let them speak, and be open and even eager for new ideas. Afterward, you can – either on your own or with your team – make a cost-benefit analysis of the various ideas. Those measures that show great promise for your budget can then be included in your membership marketing plan. Concrete examples of frequently used elements could be:

  • Club logo / business cards
  • Direct mailing / Club Newsletter
  • Presence on social networks
  • Online Advertisements

Concrete measures must be formulated precisely and be achievable within a certain time frame. Do not hesitate to be ambitious here, but do stay down-to-earth. Often, multiple small steps are necessary if one wants to achieve a single, bigger goal. Always keep your target audience in mind and set up a logical agenda, coherent with your business strategy. Share your membership marketing plan with all of your employees, letting them know that they are a part of this plan and have contributed to its development.

This process also has the advantage of giving different departments the chance to better understand the work of their colleagues, as they search to include everyone into a general business strategy.

Performance review

Your membership marketing plan should be your guide into the future. As such, you should constantly challenge the goals determined within. In the fast-shifting club business, a correct analysis of the situation and the related goals one day can be outdated and irrelevant overnight. Internal changes can have an impact on a club and its marketing efforts, of course, but so can shifts in the social, political and economic environment your club is attached to. Keeping your plan up to date doesn’t mean that you need to hire economic and political experts, but you should pay attention to external events and be ready to adapt when necessary.

A performance review offers valuable clues as to the effectiveness and profitability of your business strategies and marketing efforts.

Somewhere between the constant optimization and adjustment of your strategies and the necessary patience to let your ideas come into being, you might find the secret to an effective membership marketing plan. Control your success regularly by looking at numbers and stats, as well as by organizing team meetings. It is the only way to ensure that you achieve the goals as you’ve set them out in your membership marketing plan.

Final words

A membership marketing plan supports you and your club in different ways. Not only does it help you gain new prospects and turn one-time guests into new members, it also helps you embed unclear and indefinite business goals into concrete frameworks, and eventually to implement them with well thought out measures.

As a first step, it is important to develop and formulate a general business strategy, essential for your club to position itself properly. In due course, you and some handpicked coworkers should also determine some clear business objectives, from which you can deduce certain marketing measures.

From there, things get more elaborate as you have to put your – to this point still purely theoretical – membership marketing plan into practice. From here you need to be patient, as well as vigilant of how your strategies will fit your day in, day out work processes. Ideally, you want to create an action plan for and with your employees to describe how exactly you want your ideas to be applied.

Once you’ve managed to successfully implement the membership marketing plan into your daily workflows, you must not forget to carefully observe the impact of your measures. Not until your strategies bring about real improvements, your employees work together to realize objectives, and you’ve managed to prove a profit, can you consider the implementation of your membership marketing plan completed successfully. Until that happens, be critical, do not hesitate to challenge formulated goals and adapt them to altered circumstances. This is the only way for you to guarantee – whether you happen to run a small single club, a medium sized one or a large management company – that you have done everything in your power to tap into the full potential of your club and membership.

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5 Digital Marketing Strategies for 2019 that Private Clubs & Golf Resort Brands Should Invest In

Digital marketing for private clubs and golf resorts is a complex operation because, if done correctly, it relies on multiple strategies running in sync to achieve a common goal. When the focus is on the golf and hospitality industry, this becomes even more challenging because digital marketing must improve internal goals like ADR to improve a club or resort's GOP.

So why is club marketing in 2019 any different? Remember that more than 90% of your members and guests go to Google in search of their ideal club or golf course property. Meaning your content must appease Google's best practices while remaining highly relevant in targeting your ideal members and guests.

In 2018 there were several Google algorithm updates that impact how clubs and golf resort properties appear in the search engine today. On top of this, your target audiences no longer inquire on a whim; they engage in tons of online research before that first call is made. From reading review sites to downloading golf guides on luxury resorts, to reading blogs and engaging current and past guests on social media platforms, your ideal customer invests a great deal of time and energy into making a final decision. This is why partnering with a club focused digital marketing agency that has the technology and experience to run a comprehensive growth marketing strategy is paramount to achieving goals and improving your clubs membership and revenue goals.

With more than 15 years of club marketing industry experience, we decided to share some of the strategies we use to help our club partners achieve their goals. This article is meant to assist private clubs and their executive teams in recognizing the value in working with a club marketing team, while also sharing some of our strategies and approaches for those who want to try these tactics internally. These hacks and tips can be powerful weapons for private clubs in 2019, seeking to dominate their industry and outperform their competitors.

Utilizing Facebook in an SEO Strategy, the Right Way

The way SEO and Facebook will work together in 2019 has changed from previous years. In an attempt to limit commercial content from Facebook's news feed, Zuckerberg came forward in January 2018 stating that reducing the amount of this content would be a main focus in order to increase content shared by friends and family.

When commercial content gets shared, liked, and clicked, powerful social signals are sent to Google, letting the search engine know that people favor the content. As a result, the website's domain authority goes up, as well as ranking for keywords and terms in general. This means old strategies won't be as efficient. Not to say that SEO has no place working alongside Facebook. On the contrary, there are tons of leads and bookings that can be generated from a SEO Facebook hybrid strategy. The logic behind the strategy and its working points need to be reset to work in line with the way Google's algorithm has evolved, and how Facebook's filter has changed.

So what does this mean for club marketing? This: generating clicks from user-shared content as opposed to the automation of commercial content (though automating content on Facebook still holds value) is the better play for 2019 IF organic search optimization is part of the overarching strategy. When executing an SEO / Facebook club marketing campaign, the best digital marketing agencies create Facebook user profiles that mirror their client's ideal member persona. Hospitality marketers use these and participate in social groups that focus on the golf, club and hospitality industry where conversational strategies are initiated to extract data to help improve content marketing and audience targeting tactics. In addition such strategies also engage users while sharing content in a natural manner that advocates the precise club property targeting ideal people likely to convert. A conversation strategy is laid out to work with any personality type that might engage in the conversation, and a goal exists to either convert that person into a lead, a booked guest, or an advocate of the property. By sharing target content, SEO can improve, as can direct bookings. This can have a profound impact and proven return on your investment, and is worth running within the parameters of 2019 SEO considerations and Facebook's newly enhanced filter on commercial content.

Define the Right Budget Necessary for Achieving Growth Marketing Goal

The marketing budget must be allocated within the arena of an agile environment that can weather the usual and unexpected storms that naturally come in a competitive space. In the last few years most clubs have made big shifts in their budget from offline channels like print advertising to more measurable online marketing channels. But with all the various digital marketing channels comes the challenge of knowing which ones will best reach your audiences, how to leverage them with other strategies and tools, and how to weave them into the overall strategy while on pace to get a healthy ROI. Without a logic-forward framework and the ability to select and align the right marketing channels, chaos can erupt wasting time and dollars.

Private club digital marketing agencies prove to be extremely valuable in helping hospitality brands overcome the challenges of budget allocation across channels. Unless your club has a limitless budget, this won't be a challenge. But the reality is that any serious club has a budget even if to track their growth and the pace to hit goals while always remaining cognizant that budget dilution across digital marketing channels causes multiple internal issues.

Budget dilution occurs when marketers allocate small amounts of a budget across a wide number of channels as opposed to taking a higher chunk of the budget and using it in a more impactful manner through a carefully selected, customized singular strategy that lives in a multi-channel approach where various strategies leverage one another–something the best club digital marketing agencies are known for controlling.Budget dilution occurs when marketers allocate small amounts of a budget across a wide number of channels as opposed to taking a higher chunk of the budget and using it in a more impactful manner through a carefully selected, customized singular strategy that lives in a multi-channel approach where various strategies leverage one another–something the best club digital marketing agencies are known for controlling.

Creating Owned Assets

Your marketing strategy should work to not only attract and convert the right audiences, but bring in data that helps create and grow owned assets used to ensure audience targeting is always relevant thus enabling a strategy that continues to target the needs of your guests. The goal isn't to create content and tactics that are entirely evergreen, as the club industry and its buyers evolve too quickly. However, most buyer-needs remain consistent and this is where owned assets can add a ton of value to your marketing investment.

Email databases are one of the most valuable owned assets in the world of hospitality marketing. In order to create high-quality email lists that can be segmented into unique cohorts each having their own lead nurturing workflow, customer insights must first be extrapolated in order to create the right kind of content that generates leads. For example, high-quality blogs paired with the right technology and topic-specific downloadable content can capture information on people and convert them into high-quality leads that already reveal topics they care about along with their perceived expectations. These insights will allow for segmentation thus giving your email database more value.

Email Marketing, with Automation Technology, Can Be a Powerful Tool

Email has a bad reputation as being an over-used marketing tool. But if done correctly so not to spam recipients, it is known to be one of the most powerful tools in club marketing. The more bad emails clubs send out, the lower the open rate is. It's simply the consequence of poorly-thought, rushed email blasts that fail to resonate with potential guests.

We already talked about how owned assets, such as valuable email lists, are crucial for private clubs. In order to execute a winning email marketing strategy, you need a high-quality list with content going out that your leads care about. But keep in mind your best email contacts are likely contacts in several competitor databases. This means creating the right content within a workflow with an effective cadence that targets the right groups is key, and something that club marketing agencies offering growth stacks do extremely well thanks to the advanced competitor insight technology they are known for offering their clients.

We recently worked with a luxury development group in the midwest to help them pinpoint data that matters to get a more focused sense of their customers and the solutions they are looking for when researching 2nd home private club properties. Real estate firms and clubs can acquire tons of data, but most of it falls through the cracks due to poorly trained internal teams, and a lack of technology (common pain point).

Our process involved implementing a powerful CRM and analytics tracking tool that recorded and mapped out all the digital touch-points guests went through while exploring the website, as well as the journey they went through to find the website. There was an immediate impact once the data was farmed, analyzed, and used to optimize the website all while the Growth Stack worked to create personalized content strategies, then fueled by automation. The volume of customer data more than tripled in a matter of weeks, and logic-based content addressing newly discovered buyer pain points saw an increase in website traffic, and more importantly, leads that converted to real sales. In addition, being able to pinpoint direct revenue from individual strategies and channels helped improve the marketing budget's effectiveness.

Club Digital Marketing Growth Stacks

We have briefly touched on how using a multi-channel approach for attracting and converting guests is a core part of any club marketing strategy. And this is exactly what a club digital marketing Growth Stack entails (as well as the other strategies covered in this article). Keep in mind that a Growth Stack is a customized set of tools and strategies designed to run in synch to achieve a common goal (or set of goals). Private Club Marketing's Growth Stack uses a logic grounded in understanding how your customers engage with your club property's content, and any content related to your industry. Then, using a multi-channel approach, club marketing agencies attract, educate, and convert leads in a timely manner while staying within budget.

While your competitors are likely investing in paid media, SEO and social media strategies there is likely zero communication from one strategy to the other. And when multiple strategies don't talk to one another, lead quality and flow often takes a dip. This is where clubs that partner with savvy digital marketing agencies can soar above the competition by capitalizing on their weakness. Remember, Growth Stacks empower private clubs to maximize every arm of their marketing strategy while leveraging others all within the same approach. As a result, time is saved, investment is kept within budget, and valuable data can be harvested and used to continue the process thus ensuring the strategy remains relevant and hyper focused to resonate with your ideal guests.

As technology advances, so too does the way your ideal guests search for private clubs and golf resort properties. These are the five main strategies Private Club Marketing generally utilizes in a customized approach for every client running them together to empower business growth for exceptional clubs and resorts. But based on your unique goals and customers, other tactics can be added for maximum results and ROI. In order to stay competitive, clubs must be up to date in their methods for attracting and converting leads, and the Growth Stack is the ideal master strategy that offers measurable results.

5 Takeaways from the Florida Membership Marketing Summit

For anyone working in membership sales and club marketing, there was no better place to be this May than the Inaugural Florida Membership Marketing Summit. Held in Naples, Fl the event was an opportunity to learn and share with other membership thought leaders and practitioners working to promote membership at over 80 resort, golf, yacht and country clubs. This year, it was encouraging to see five different presentations that featured customer service, social selling, and marketing technologies. The summit also served as a great opportunity to learn about some of the challenges and opportunities in the private club industry, specific to Florida.

Here are five quick takeaways from the Summit:

Customer Service is a Contact Sport
Getting your club staff to recognize that they are part of the membership sales and retention process. From remembering names to preferences, to a simple smile. Here are the 5-E's to improve your customer experience.

Club's Need a Multi-Faceted Marketing Strategy
Susan Green from the Oaks Club put together a panel of experts on club marketing. From social media to curated content in print, web, and video all need to be part of your marketing strategy moving forward. When establishing a marketing plan be sure to include ways to show ROI for every dollar spent. If you cannot give definitive ROI and tracking, move on. Here are some great ways Private Club Marketing can assist your club to execute its marketing strategy.

Automated Chatbots are an Asset to Signing New Business
Setting up automated chatbots to answer simple questions like “when is Taco Tuesday? Or, what's the Dress Code?” can drastically improve member and guest communication and free your membership and admin team up from these daunting questions that members constantly reach out to ask you. In addition, a non-automated chatbot can allow you to connect with more website visitors looking for membership and event information. Check out Private Club Marketing's website for an example of how Chatbot's work. CLICK HERE

Your Club Should be on Social Media (Regardless of non-profit status)
Whether you like it or not, most of your members are already on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Fish where the fish are! Try to limit advertising all the time on your posts (especially if your a not-for-profit club). Members want to see what's coming up and been happening at your club – share those and watch your social media engagement grow. Here's our Social Media Tips for Private Clubs.

Elevate your PR Strategy
Have new and exciting things coming up at your club that you want the local paper to write about? Be sure it's newsworthy to the public and not just your members. Start fostering relationships with your favorite writers, bloggers, and photographers sooner than later (recommend before you start a major renovation or announcement). When submitting news to your local paper it's best practices to have a press release already written and completed for the paper's editorial team. That way they have most of the work done and may just need to follow up on a quote or 2 from your press release.

Soho House: Digital Practices That Every Club Should Learn From

High-end private clubs have a habit of playing it safe, but Soho House & Co has embraced digital marketing with the enthusiasm of a startup — helped along by forward thinking leadership from investors like Ron Burkle and Founder Nick Jones. Its digital footprint includes over 60 sites, incorporating a weekly club newsletter through its members only app and expertly curated content from staff from across the brand’s 18+ properties.

The driving force behind its digital strategy is Kris Shaw, Digital Director at Soho House & Co. Shaw had been the in-house social media manager for brands like the BBC and MTV before moving to Soho House in 2009, right in the middle of the worst of the economic recession. Shaw and his colleagues quickly moved to completely rebuild the brand’s digital presence. “When I joined Soho House in 2009 it was a clean slate, SohoHouse.com was a just a landing page with 6 logos and the business had just received significant investment, it was a great time to start to move the brand forward digitally.”

We were able to chat with the driving force behind it's digital strategy, Kris Shaw, Digital Director at Soho House for a quick Q&A.

PCM: Would you talk a bit about your content strategy?

Our content strategy has always been to super-serve our members. Once the customer is within our member’s portal they get access to a wealth of events, videos, podcasts and great articles. Much like our physical clubs everything interesting happens behind closed doors.

PCM: How has SohoHouse.com performed for you?

SohoHouse.com is the driving force of the business digitally- but there is still a long way we could  go to really maximise the return on the amount of traffic we get to the site.

Our Digital strategy has followed the many openings of Soho House & Co over the years, which means that we have a lot of our traffic siloed into different brand websites. We are looking at ways to improve the user journeys across our 60 different sites and apps to make it a much simpler experience for our customers.

PCM: When you began rethinking Soho Houses digital strategy in 2009 your digital plans probably seemed quite ambitious. How did you get buy-in across the company?

It was a collaborative effort. There was significant buy in from our senior team who all appreciated our need to launch a new members experience online. We had to take the whole company on the journey, which involved a lot of presentations explaining the vision of what we wanted to do and the change it would mean to our customers and internal processes.

PCM: What have you learned about digital in past 5 years since taking over as Digital Director?

The most significant challenge that I’ve seen for the hospitality industry over the last few years is around integrating into the multitude of third party software services that we use.  It's very difficult to present this as one unified experience to the customer.

There are very few brands that can exist without some kind of internal development team these days. Five years ago, mid size brands could still exist with their entire digital portfolio managed by an external agency, now that seems increasingly inefficient.

Contact Private Club Marketing to assist your club with its digital footprint and to increase online engagement with our creative services team. From email newsletters, to curated content and social media growth, our team of proven professional can assist your club with professional online marketing services. To learn more and to discuss your club's needs, contact us at info@privateclubmarketing or call us at (949) 743-5793.

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