Grassroots efforts to urge policy makers to allow golf to resume

As some states begin to re-open golf courses other states  have yet to follow suit. Here is a great initiative by a Pennsylvania club, Indian Valley Country Club, to engage with their policy-makers and show their membership they are being proactive in getting golf to resume in a safe and responsible manner.

General Manager, Eric Beck, CCM; put together a template for you to “share this effort with your membership, give them an outlet to express their opinions, and show what your club is doing to get golf going again”!

**Can be modified for all states

If your state has re-opened, as Pennsylvania recently has, check out these tips that Private Club Marketing has put together to help with Gaining Members during your Club Re-Opening

Pipeline Marketing: 3 Ways Golf Clubs Can Improve ROI

Pipeline Marketing is one of the most commonly reported performance metrics for private golf and country clubs. Here are 3 Ways to Measure your ROI.

Resort and Club Member Relations and Marketing Directors point to their pipeline marketing metric with pride because it serves as a sign of accountability and proclaims, “We, as Membership professionals, take our role in our club's revenue creation process seriously!”

If marketing intends to demonstrate accountability, you’ll need to show performance against what marketing invests in. To get your arms around this, look at where marketing program dollars are being spent. If your club spends significantly on sales enablement, pipeline acceleration or renewal efforts, measuring your marketing sourced pipeline is a rough way to demonstrate achievement.

Instead, look at significant areas of investment and ask what they’re expected to achieve. Commonly, marketing is expected to help sales close their pipeline faster, succeed in more deal cycles, and drive client relationships and revenue. But sales has a role in this, too. And some marketing leaders – cautious about asserting too much credit for metrics they don’t own singularly – retreat into sourcing metrics. That’s a mistake – it leaves marketing investment uncovered by metrics that can show marketing impact.

The Right Way to Measure

Demonstrating the impact of marketing when performance is the result of cross-functional efforts requires three elements:

  1. Show performance of shared impact metrics. Whether the goal is increased deal velocity, better renewal rates or improved customer loyalty, you need to demonstrate that the impact metrics marketing invests in are, in fact, improving.
  2. Provide proof of marketing participation. You need to prove that when marketing tactics are accepted by target audiences, impact metrics improve. If marketing isn’t involved, it will be uncomfortably difficult to assert any marketing influence over that performance improvement.
  3. Present evidence that performance metrics change as marketing participation changes. Evidence of marketing impact requires a comparison. Some deal cycles may have light levels of marketing interaction, some may have heavy levels, and some may have no marketing interaction at all. When you compare what improvements take place when marketing is present to what happens when marketing is not, you can develop reasonable proof that marketing is making a difference.

The latter type of metric is commonly referred to as measuring marketing influence. Clubs and resorts new to measuring marketing influence typically begin by measuring what portion of sales pipeline marketing has interacted with. The number of clubs doing this has been trending up in recent years, but only less than 50 percent of marketing organizations regularly measure marketing-influenced pipeline. The other 50 percent of organizations likely have a gap in their measurement approach and the way they prove marketing’s value. And when value isn’t proven, marketing resources understandably come under fire.

The good news is that even if your club isn’t incorporating influence into its measurement system, it’s not too late to start.

Private Club Social Media Policy

Just thinking about writing a social media policy makes us cringe. It's one of those tasks that membership and club managers know should be a priority but will find any excuse to avoid. And yet for all the procrastinating, it's not that difficult a task. To help, here are a few things to consider when writing your policy.

Why do you need a social media policy?

Given the explosive popularity of social networking, it's likely your employees are already actively engaging. Considering the public nature of social media and the rapid-fire speed at which information can spread, without proper guidelines in place your Club is exposed to risks. These risks range from employees “social NOTworking” on company time to an employee posting offensive content that causes serious damage to your Club's reputation.

By providing clear guidelines on what's appropriate and what's not appropriate, a social media policy will help mitigate risks and contain fallout in the event of a breach of conduct or a full-on crisis.

Equally important, a social media policy will help mobilize some of your greatest advocates: your employees and members. Everyone at your club has a role in shaping your reputation, and the more voices sharing relevant content about your golf course, tennis facilities, dining room, spa, fitness center, events, etc. the greater your reach. The policy should encourage staff to support your social media activities rather than discourage them for fear of breaking rules.

Request Our Sample Social Media Policy

 

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Social Media Policies…
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by Andrew W. Singer, Esq. and Jason B. Klimpl, Esq.