Crushing Club Marketing

You want a younger membership yet you need to retain your existing legacy members, as well. But each demographic has different needs and interests. What's more, each demographic values things like luxury, status, and relaxation differently. While some of your older members may go to the club to get away from work, your younger members may want a place to hunker down and treat the club as a second home or office. If you find that hard to believe, then you'll want to check out this episode of Crushing Club Marketing. Our guest, Amy Lynch, CEO of Generational Edge, is a generational expert and breaks down all you need to know about marketing to different generations.

Adapting to a changing industry is difficult no matter the business, and the private club industry is going through that today. The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, is one of the most historic country clubs in the industry, yet they've been able to stay on top of the latest marketing and communications trends. This club may ring a bell to some of our listeners who tuned into an earlier Crushing Club Marketing episode with guest Jackie Singleton, the director of communications and technology at The Country Club. In this week's episode, we take a look at how The Country Club has created a strong culture that begins with exceptional leadership. Assistant General Manager Kristen LaCount shares how clear vision and strong leadership have propelled the Country Club on a steady path of embracing and implementing change.

What if finding your ideal golf club was like online dating? You get matched with the club that's right for you based on location, commonalities, and shared interests. It's a concept the online service Golf Life Navigators is based on, and the site has revolutionized the way members are conducting their search. In this episode of Crushing Club Marketing, we talk with Golf Life Navigators Co-Founder and CEO Jason Becker, who shares valuable insight from the service's matching process and how it can help club marketers position themselves to potential members.

The sales cycle in the private club industry can be a long one. It might even take years from the time a prospective member expresses interest to the time they finally become a member. Because of this, it can be a challenge for club marketers to manage, organize, and engage with contacts — all of which are crucial if you want to increase and maintain membership. In today's Crushing Club Marketing episode, we chat with John-Erik Pszenny, a customer relationship management (CRM) expert at HubSpot. He explains how marketers can use CRM tools to save and store both important relationship information and transcripts from conversations you're having with everyone, from prospect to member.

Feeling like you're always one step behind in your marketing efforts? If you're a club marketer, you're probably nodding your head. It's a perpetual feeling on this side of the club world, as marketing trends continue to evolve at a much faster pace than most can keep up with. But before you feel overwhelmed by the thought of adding more hiccups to your current marketing plan, keep in mind that there's one thing that will always remain the same when it comes to marketing — the story behind your club. And there's no better way to showcase your story than through video. The ways we consume video have changed tremendously over the past decade with the rise of hosting sites like YouTube, social media and other digital platforms, which means the power of video as a marketing tool has grown exponentially. This is a trend this week's Crushing Club Marketing guest Jason Hsaio predicted when he started the web-based video creation service Animoto roughly 10 years ago.

Connecting with your target audience is essentially the purpose of marketing. The challenge is, relating to an audience that continues to evolve. From baby boomers, millennials and rising Gen Z-ers, your marketing tactics need to continually embrace generation change to be successful in relating your message to the right crowd. This is a hot topic and the focus of our podcast conversation with Karen Hinds, the CEO and Founder of Workplace Success Group, a firm that focuses on the next generation of leaders. Though she doesn't work in club marketing specifically, her expertise in engaging multi-generations is well-aligned with a very present challenge for private clubs — how to address an aging membership and appeal to the "younger" generation.

The road to sustainability for private clubs is one that requires vision and discipline, according to Professional Club Marketing Association Founder, Rick Coyne. And the good news is that clubs that navigated the turbulent waters of the financial meltdown in 2008 are now on the way back. "Vision without action is a daydream, action without vision is a nightmare," he says "And I think we've lived in the nightmare for a number of years. Now, we're seeing some visionary folks who see what it takes to be successful in the industry." Coyne is also CEO of ClubMark, a golf management and consulting company based in Dallas, TX. He believes the club industry has endured three distinct life cycles over the past 100 years, with meteoric growth over the last two and a half to three decades. Some of that growth led to overbuilding and, as we know, an alarming rate of closings beginning in the early 2000's. Much of Coyne's work these days focuses on helping clubs become relevant again in a dynamic and changing market. "If we're not relevant to the people we are trying to attract or whom we have as our existing members, we will cease to exist," he says. "Relevance is the key." And while relevance may be the key to attracting and retaining members, Coyne also sites a lack of structure in how clubs create an operationally healthy organization that is the backbone of a healthy club. His 8-step Enterprise Solution Model is a step-by-step diagram that breaks down the necessary elements of a well-run organization. In this episode, Rick and I break down his model to better understand how clubs can create an organization that's built to endure and solve complicated challenges.

Columbine Country Club just outside of Denver Colorado has experienced exponential growth over the last three years due to what Director of Sales and Marketing Leader, Robert Cuillard says is a "sales culture" at the club. After a 7-year decline, Columbine has a new clubhouse and a full membership. What's more, Cuillard, who started with the club in 2015, also has an annual marketing budget in excess of $400,000 - a number not often associated with private clubs. He's accomplished this by taking 11 percent of all new member initiation fees and earmarking that for marketing, an aggressive play that has worked well for Cuillard in his years at Columbine and in previous positions.

Earlier this year, Facebook changed its algorithm to eliminate spammy content and reward content that is actually interesting to people. In this episode, Shanna Bright of Private Clubs Online shares the reasoning behind the changes and how club marketers can create posts that will still be seen.

Look around online and it's hard not to see video - in your social media feeds and on websites and yet it's not enough to produce one video and post it on your club website. Video is a strategic digital marketing tool and it's critical you have a strategic vision for your video assets. Not only does it help to know what you want to produce, but also how you're going to produce your video so you can turn your project into a cost-effective tool that can be used in multiple places on various digital platforms. In this podcast, Ed Heil shares his insight on the types of video to produce to bolster your online marketing efforts and tips for maximizing your video budget.