The golf industry has recently been through some tough economic times. With the supply of golf courses outweighing demand, golf courses need to compete for a finite population of golfers. But to do so effectively, they need to invest in marketing and aggressively go after new customers.

Contrary to popular beliefs, businesses should continue to market even when the economy is down. Investing in marketing will boost revenue opportunities now and create future opportunities to attract new business. But, before you open your wallet, there are ways to get the most out of your marketing dollar. The following are five tips to help you get those precious golfers’ attention while using your budget wisely.

Don’t Shortchange the Strategy Process

When resources are scarce, it’s tempting to short cut the planning process. But doing so guarantees a marketing plan that is little more than a list of unrelated activities. Without a plan, you may be tempted to spend money on programs that are not the best use of your marketing dollar. By thinking in broader, more strategic terms, you can align your spending with your goals and spend your valuable time and money on programs that are worth doing.

Focus Your Resources

One issue for many businesses is spreading their marketing resources too thin. They try to execute too many diverse marketing activities without a clear goal or become reactionary and jump from one activity to another. By setting clear goals, pairing them with creative strategies and focusing your resources on doing everything possible to achieve them, you are more likely to be successful. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of golfers, one strategy could be to focus on attracting golfers from vulnerable courses that are in some type of transition. Pick the best opportunities and hammer away for at least six to nine months. Use your marketing to attract their outings, their regular golfers, their members and their leagues. But be sure to monitor all competitive activity in the process to enable you to quickly react to changes that could benefit you more.

Take Advantage of the Internet

The Internet is a powerful channel that you can utilize fully without spending a lot of the marketing budget. Traditional methods of marketing to your prospect database can be done using the Web at a fraction of the cost. Get a quality web site developed professionally that interacts with your visitors and enables you to collect information about those who come to visit. Then make sure all of your marketing programs direct your prospects to your Web site. Once there, provide valuable information to keep them coming back often to see what you have to offer.

Market to Your Customer

Once you have invested in the cost of obtaining a customer, don’t forget to nurture that relationship. It is far more cost effective to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. Remember, if you are trying to attract your competitions’ golfers, they most likely are trying to attract yours. Ignoring golfers who frequently play at your course or treating them like strangers will only encourage them to look elsewhere.
Get creative and invest in marketing that delivers value to your regular golfers. Send out monthly newsletters with golf tips, course events, and other activities. Post information in the newsletter about new merchandize or services being offered and ask for input through a Web response form. Offer an email newsletter that parallels the hardcopy version and let people opt-in to save you postage. Most of these activities are all simple and inexpensive, but they help you create a positive experience and stay visible with your customer.

Invest More – Time, Effort, and Money

When the economy is down, you should expect to invest more than just money in your marketing to stay visible. Spend time with your customers to show them you value their business and implement marketing activities that communicate clearly about what you offer that is of value to them. Use all aspects of your marketing to drive new golfers to your Web site. Get involved with your local business community through the Chamber of Commerce to encourage businesses to host their meetings at your club or schedule an outing. Attend networking events to promote your golf programs. Host a networking event at the club to encourage people to come see the facility. Participate in community events that keep your name in front of potential golfers.
Simple, effective marketing is not out of reach for businesses on limited budgets. Build your strategy. Focus your resources wisely. Invest more time and effort to communicate with your prospects. Offer value to your current customers. And, take advantage of cost-effective, Internet marketing. You will begin to see results.

“I am currently a business management student … in a marketing course. My first marketing course and I must say I am struggling with the marketing concept. I was wondering if you would be able to help me “think outside the box” better. Meaning, I, like most, are programmed to think marketing is just about selling and brand names.”

A couple of things happened when I read that statement. First, whether she knew it or not, I had to respond because she hit one of my hot buttons about marketing being perceived so narrowly – in this case selling and brand names. Second, I thought this exercise would be a good illustration of the thought process involved in developing your marketing strategy for your business.

Hotel Case Study

The case she was working on involved the following details: There is a newly renovated 60 room hotel located just off the highway in a prime spot that is yet to be developed 10 miles from a tourist area. It offers few amenities, only continental breakfast and free cable TV. Occupancy has been decreasing and according to the survey of tourists, 68 percent are young couples or older ones with no children, 78 percent say that recreational facilities are a big attraction for accommodations, and 38 percent of these were first time visitors. The objective is to save this hotel without having to merge with a more well known chain.

After reading the brief synopsis of the case, one’s first instincts would be to increase advertising and develop the requested recreational facilities. This is a common leap that many businesses make rather than assess whether there is some market niche that would be attracted to the hotel in its given state. Marketing is very closely tied to business strategy for a reason. Marketing needs to weight the effects of various activities on both the bottom and top line of the income statement. Given that the hotel’s occupancy has declined, investing a lot of money in general advertising and building new facilities may not be a good business decision until the hotel gains a level of revenue that can justify that investment.

Develop the Marketing Strategy

Good marketing takes into account two major areas: STP – segmentation, targeting and positioning, and the four P’s: product (including packaging), pricing, place and promotion. The point of starting your marketing planning process with a market analysis that incorporates segmentation, targeting and positioning is to identify a potential target audience that would most likely buy your product or service as it currently stands, or in the worst case, surface issues with your product or service that need correcting before you can successfully sell it. Without understanding the product or service’s best STP and jumping right to the one P everyone associates with marketing, promotion, you spend money ineffectively and you miss the opportunity to focus your marketing effort and win a large share of that market at a lower cost.

Identify the Best Target Market

In this case study, the marketer first needs to think about which market segment would most likely stay at this hotel. Since it is 10 miles away from the tourist area which may contain night life and entertainment, singles probably would not be a good choice since they would want direct access to the night life with an easy walk back to the hotel.

Younger couples may be a good choice, but given the feedback that having recreational facilities is a big attraction, I would suspect that the younger set who would want to access these facilities. I did make an assumption that the recreational facility being referred to is a health club, spa or other type of service that benefits from convenient access to your room.

Another target audience would be seniors. They may appreciate the quiet of this hotel at the end of the day, getting away from the night life and relaxing so they have the energy to do more the next day. Plus, not having the recreational facility at the hotel may not be an issue with most seniors who have walked around all day or did other types of tourist activities.

The 4 P’s – Product, Pricing, Place and Promotion

Let’s assume that the seniors are our target market for this hotel. We now need to look at the 4 P’s in order to determine how we can attract this target audience to our hotel. (See this month’s tip for more on the 4 P’s).

Since the hotel is 10 miles from the tourist area, offering a free or really inexpensive shuttle service running at regularly scheduled intervals would be a benefit. They can easily get to the activities without having to drive and part their cars. If they come as a bus tour, they have the freedom to come and go as they pleased without being tied to a bus schedule.

Another attraction for seniors is discounts on meals. Work with some of the restaurants to provide discount coupons for people staying at the hotel. Put a coupon packet together for each hotel guest and have it for them when they check in.

Other ideas:

• Partner with a tour agent and work out a package deal that would work for both parties.
• Advertise with AARP or other senior citizen organizations to more effectively reach your target.
• Rent lists of seniors from these organizations to do a direct marketing campaign.

As you can see, focusing on one target audience makes developing your promotional activities much easier than if you are trying to spread your messages too thin.

Positioning and Messages

Once you have the types of promotional ideas outlined, you need to develop your positioning (how you want your target audience to perceive your hotel and its service) and your messages. Are you the hotel that offers seniors a quiet, safe haven at the end of an enjoyable day of sightseeing? Develop that into your messages for all promotional activities. When the messages are in place, you are ready to begin developing the details around the promotional activities.

Summary

Try to avoid making assumptions quickly when you are developing a marketing strategy for a particular product or service. A little bit of strategic thinking can point you in a direction that can be a winner. It is hard to tell with marketing what will and will not work because we’re dealing with people, and we all know that people are the hardest to predict, however, looking at trends, understanding the target market, and applying the four P’s to your situation can help you deliver a strategy and set of tactics that can impact the revenue and profits of your company.

Product – What is your offering?

The product is what you are trying to sell. It can be a physical product or a service. For service businesses, I mostly refer to this concept as packaging, because many times with service businesses, process is nice but how you package it will make the difference between someone buying your services or thinking they don’t really
need them.

If you are selling a physical product, other decisions include function, warranty, appearance, physical packaging, and service.

Price – How much will you charge for it?

Pricing is a balancing act between what you want to charge, what your competitors are charging and what your prospects will pay for your products or services. Keep in mind that what you charge should match the value your prospect is putting on the product or service. Under pricing can lead to people thinking you are lower quality – remember you get what you pay for. However, charging too much will result in people thinking you are out of line. Really assess the market factors and develop a pricing strategy that gives you your fair share of revenue while providing real value for your customers.

Place – How will your customers acquire it?

Place is bringing your products and/or services together with your target audience. Place is about distribution and convenience. You may choose to sell your product through established retailers or wholesalers or you might sell by direct mail, direct marketing (on the telephone) or through your website. The Internet does not
eliminate this factor in your overall marketing plan. It just adds another choice.

Promotion – How will your customers learn about it?

Promotion is all the ways you can reach and educate your prospects. Review the Marketing Plan Framework diagram for all the promotional choices available to you. However, before you leap into promotional activities, be sure that the other 3 Ps are in place first. Get this right and then think about how to get your message across using the best programs to reach your target market.

Summary

The key to getting your marketing mix right is to understand your customers, know your competition, be aware of your market, review your offering on a regular basis and get your business known and trusted by customers and potential customers in your target market.

This blindfolded game may be fun for children, but when it comes to your business, you need to see things with your eyes wide open. But many business owners seem to be playing this game with their business, meandering “blindfolded” through the market trying to land customers without knowing who are the most appropriate prospects.

As I continue to work with my clients, it still surprises me how many business people either have no idea who will buy from them, or they assume that everyone will. This type of thinking can result in marketing efforts that are costly and ineffective, leading to the belief that marketing does not work.

Target Market Myths

A target market is defined as the group of people or businesses that have a need, is aware of the need, and is willing to spend money to satisfy that need. Selecting the best target market possible for your business is the most important part but the most difficult part of the marketing plan for most business owners. Business owners will make many excuses when asked why they are not picking a target, but all are lame. No one wants to select a target market because they believe that they are “leaving money on the table” and neglecting potential customers.

Every business owner goes through this thought process until they discover that targeting enables you to target a more lucrative audience and develop messages with greater precision. Then the unusual phenomenon happens – your clarity about what you offer makes other prospects, even outside of your target, more likely to call you. If you narrowly define your niche market, your messages are clear, your offerings are precise, and your marketing efforts are more effective, even to those not within your target market.

Let me be very blunt about why you target a particular market. We call this group of people or businesses you want to do business with a target market because that market is the target at which you aim all your marketing efforts. Being focused on one particular market enables you to make choices that are difficult if you are all over the map. For example:

• You can select publications that target your market in which to advertise or try to gain publicity through a PR strategy.
• You can go to networking functions that target your market and miss those that don’t.
• You can target your messages, focusing on what’s important to that audience using the language they understand.

In other words, it is a way to help you focus and be really clear about why your target should work with you. It is not necessarily a restriction on what types of companies with which you do business. You may choose to not work with a particular market because you don’t have the experience or knowledge of their market, but that is a business choice. Those are decisions you can make as the opportunities arise.

Identifying Your Target

The products or services you have to offer are the most obvious constraint on what markets you can reach. In addition, you need to assess your skills and other resources available within and external to the business in order to determine which market you can best satisfy. The process is somewhat circular. You need to understand what you can do, who you wish to work with and then see if there is a match between what you can offer and what the target will actually pay for.

To get started, ask yourself the following questions about your product or service offering:

• What is your product or service offering and why is it better than the competition? What unique capability can you offer that others do not? If you offer a service and you have experience within a particular industry sector, such as high tech, healthcare or construction, you may wish to target businesses within those market sectors rather than target all businesses of a certain size.
• What is missing from your offering that you may need to add in order to satisfy the market? Can you add this piece through a strategic partnership or do you need to bring the skill in-house?

Using your current clients and customers as a model, determine the following:

• Are your current clients what you consider your ideal target market? Are they easy to work with, love what you offer, and feel that you offer them high value for their money?
• What are the characteristics of your ideal customer?
• What customers would you like to work with and can you offer them something that they are willing to pay money for?

Given the above information, is there another market that may be better suited to your offerings that you can either go after in addition to or in place of your current set of clients? Again, determine the following:

• What do they need and what are they lacking?
• Why would they want to do business with you?
• What do you offer them that others do not?

Collecting this information enables you to view your business from the perspective of your strengths, pinpointing the market that needs what you have to offer.

Benefits to Your Business

Going through this exercise has many benefits to your business. Knowledge of your target market enables you to make better decisions about your product or service offerings, including pricing, packaging, service, and distribution. Depending on your business, it is helpful to understand the market size and how buying decisions are made. Knowing how you can best service this market helps you focus your business on the products and services that best meet their needs. Pairing your offerings with the market you wish to serve surfaces opportunities that you may not have noticed before, finding a niche that you can service better than your competition.

So begin today assessing your ideal target market and the products and services you offer and how they fit. It’s a good first step in focusing your marketing effort. Next month, we’ll continue our discussion on target markets and dive more in to market segmentation.

Stuck in a Rut

Many businesses get stuck in a rut of success. But when a business is successful, they have an attitude of “don’t fix what’s not broken” and “keep doing what we’re doing because it works”. The business wallows in its success and becomes complacent. When a business is complacent, it becomes the prime target of a competitor that will find a way to sweep in and take over the market you comfortably own.

These times are not for complacency. The business climate is tough and there are many competitive businesses vying for your customer’s dollars. Your business needs to incorporate marketing as an integral part of your business and you need to constantly be looking for ways to stand out, not only to new prospects, but to your current customers as well.

Taking an Objective View

When was the last time you sat back and took a hard look at your company’s entire image from the view of a customer? Does your business come across as nothing special? Do your prospects see your company as an innovative enterprise that can help them be more successful? Do you offer products or services that beat the competition in customer satisfaction?

Evaluating your company can be difficult for business owners because we are very close to our businesses. We may underestimate our value and uniqueness and miss opportunities to really shine. It is also hard to see where we may be weak and where our competitors may attack. It would be valuable to your business to get an outside opinion to help you develop a plan to really exploit your strengths in a way that will get you more business quickly.

Also evaluate your competition and see what they are delivering as key messages. This is not an exercise to copy what they are doing but an exercise for you to determine what your business does that is different from your competition. Most likely you will find all your competitors saying the same thing. If you lay out all of your competitors’ messages side by side, could you tell which message belonged to which company? Probably not.

Once you have evaluated your company, the competition and identified areas that you could exploit more aggressively, you now need to reevaluate your marketing plan and determine whether there is a change required in your marketing strategy. Marketing is more than the outbound communication that most of us see and hear daily. Marketing is about understanding your target market, finding out what they need and are willing to pay for and then creating an offer they cannot refuse. Take a look at the following for your business:

• Is it time to reposition your company in the market?
• Can you add a new service that offers more value to your customer?
• Are your messages hitting the target right between the eyes?
• Can you package your services and price them in a way that really makes you different and more appealing to your target audience?

Brainstorm and be creative about your business. Break out of the rut and do something different.

Spice Up Your Business with Daring Marketing

Once you have identified your new business strengths, you need to tell the world about them. This is where you can do something really different that grabs the attention of your target market. Spend some time brainstorming with colleagues to develop some new ideas and strengthen your company’s marketing messages. Stop trying to be the same as all your competitors and create something that your competitors will want to copy. Marketing can still develop creative, new ideas that make you stand out. Everything has not been tried and it is the innovative company that wins in this market.

Spice up your marketing by using non-traditional techniques. Make use of controversy in your advertising campaigns if you can. The Dove® advertising campaign that uses “real” women to push Dove’s new firming collection of lotions and creams is considered controversial because the women aren’t the typical “perfect” model that you would expect in campaigns that show women in their underwear. This campaign has gotten a lot of publicity from talk shows to Oprah. Can you present your message in some way that is different from the norm? It doesn’t have to be an advertisement to use controversy. Direct marketing can accomplish the same thing.

Innovative Businesses Stand Out

More businesses would be better served by innovation. Whether you are in financial services, legal, consulting or any service business, the more innovative your offerings, the more your business will stand out from your competition. Determine what your clients and prospects need and define a product or service to fulfill those needs. Be creative and package your services in a way that makes it very profitable for you but provides a high value service to your clients. When you have that service package in place, get creative in your marketing.

Take creativity to the next level for your web site or other sales tools. Make use of color, imagery, and design that is different from your competitive peers. Get noticed with something that stands out. Too many business owners feel that doing something different would risk their reputation. The best thing you can do to differentiate your business from your competitors is to look different when a prospect first visits your web site. Being different will not chase your ideal client away if you have done your homework. On the contrary – your different look should attract your ideal client if you know what they want.

Don’t Become Invisible

It is too easy for us to conform. There is no risk in looking like your competition (or so you think). But successful businesses are those that integrate marketing into the heart of their business and are not afraid to do something different. I’m not condoning out of character marketing to get attention. But just because a marketing activity may seem a bit “hokey”, it doesn’t mean it won’t work. If you are afraid to take a risk and be more aggressive in your marketing, you are risking more than your reputation. Test out something different. Your results may surprise you.

Knowing what you want your business to be in the long run (5 year vision is a good target) helps you keep an eye on the direction you sometimes get forced to take in order to make money. John Jantsch has an interesting post about What’s the picture of your business when it’s done? that keeping an eye on your vision. Is everything you are doing in your business helping you move toward your vision?

But once you have your vision, knowing what you want to achieve in the next 12 months helps you focus your marketing effort.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is your revenue goal for the year?
• How do you want your business to look at the end of the year?
• How many new clients you need?
• How many current clients you need to sell more to?
• What new services or products do you need to offer to achieve your business goals?

For example, you have a service that you sell for $1000. If you want to make $60,000 from this service in new business in 2008, you need 60 new clients over the year. Now break it into months and you need to close 5 new clients a month. Now your marketing plan can focus on getting you 5 clients or more a month, right?

Now let’s determine what will that take. How many prospects do you need to have in order to close 5 new clients a month? 10? 20? 50? Look at your history – for every 10 prospects, how many do you close? If you are not closing many, take a look at your:

• Target market – are you trying to sell to everyone and anyone? Have you selected your target and focused on your ideal client?
• Marketing messages – are you not communicating your value appropriately?
• Marketing strategy – are you wasting money on inconsistent activities that are not focused on your ideal client? If you know your ideal client, you should be able to figure out how to reach them with what marketing activities.

From this effort, you should be able to come up with what you need to do and how much it will cost. Lay it all out in a spread sheet in at least a quarterly format (revenue goals, marketing activities with associated marketing budget by quarter), and there you have it – a simple marketing plan.

Now do the same thing with revenue from current clients. What is your strategy to upsell current clients?

By breaking your marketing planning process into smaller pieces, you have a more manageable marketing task ahead of you. Even if the plan is simple, it will help you focus your efforts and know what it really is going to take to achieve your goals.

Choosing an ideal client allows you to target a more lucrative audience and develop messages with greater precision. The clarity you achieve in your messages about what you offer makes other businesses even outside of your ideal target more likely to call you, giving you the choice of whether you want to work with them or not. If you narrowly define your market, your messages are clear, your offerings are precise, and your marketing efforts are more effective, even to those not within your primary target market.

You will also find that ideal clients take less time, resources and energy to satisfy because they value what you have to offer.

Drew’s Marketing Minute has a great post about helping an IT Services company refine their target market. The thought process he uses to help them refine their target is a good exercise for every business owner to go through.

Once you define your ideal client profile, you can be more selective and weed out those clients and prospects that don’t fit the profile. The more focused you are, the more you will attract and retain those ideal clients that can help your business thrive.