Golf Business Canada 38

Golf courses that have never participated in their local consumer golf show undoubtedly ask themselves the questions: Can we afford to exhibit in this year’s event? What are we going to promote? What should our booth space look like? Veteran golf show exhibitors regularly remark that it is their best annual investment. From generating new contacts and qualified leads to creatively retailing your product and generating revenue long before the first golfer arrives, promoting and marketing your products and services can set you up for a successful golf season well in advance of opening day.

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Case study #1: 9-hole operator runs with the big dogs on the show floor!Dennis and Joan Sobil have been the owners and operators at Blue Heron Golf Club in Lanark, Ontario since 2010. Blue Heron is a beautifully manicured and well maintained 9-hole course approxi-mately one hour southwest from down-town Ottawa. With reasonable rates and friendly staff that make you feel like “one of the family”, for all the right reasons they have a facility to be very proud about. However, they felt that their situation was very typical of a smaller scale operation with challenges such as limited time and resources, as well as sometimes feeling overshadowed by larger golf course operations in the area. They were looking for a strategy that would provide a good return on investment and expose their course to new golfers.

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Published quarterly and distributed to every golf course operator in Canada, Golf Business Canada is a

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the editorial team at ngcoa@ngcoa.ca.

Golf Business Canada

Golf Business Canada 40

FIRST TIME EXHIBITORSUntil 2015, Blue Heron Golf Club had never participated at the Ottawa-Gatineau GOLFEXPO. Things changed earlier this year thanks to a little encouragement and some creative and cooperative planning with some of the larger golf operations in the area, that resulted in Blue Heron making its debut appearance at the 2015 event. Trade show marketers stress the need to create a “wow factor” for the customer within your exhibit area such as creative graphics and displays, interactive demos and outstanding value propositions for the golfing consumer. Combine that with outstanding exhibit staff providing excellent customer service and you have a recipe for success. Dennis and Joan had developed a “6 Pack” show special packaged as a beer can which they retailed for $66 to both existing and new customers, which was very well received and ultimately paid for the cost of their exhibit space. Following the show, Joan estimated that approximately 98% of the show attendees who stopped by their booth had never heard of Blue Heron Golf Club prior to the weekend.

With a new POS/Tee Sheet system installed for 2015, they will be able to track their customers much better moving forward as well as measuring their new traffic as a result of participating in their first consumer golf show. What has been immediately measurable is their e-mail list growth which has increased over 30% with an open and click through rate well above industry standards.

FOUR LEGGED WOW FACTORBesides a creative display and a solid value proposition for golfers looking to visit their course, the key to their “wow factor” for the promotion of their Family Special may have been their four legged secret weapon … Chance. Dennis and Joan brought their dog and course mascot, Chance, with them to the show. Recognized as a service dog, Chance is an 8 year old Golden Retriever and was indeed a show stopper! Well, in this case, he was quite an effective consumer stopper with families and kids stopping by throughout the weekend. While the families visited their booth, Joan and Dennis had an opportunity to tell the Blue Heron Golf Club story first hand in a family-friendly environment. Chance proved to be a hit on the show floor and certainly earned a season full of dog treats for his sales and marketing efforts.

RETURN ON INVESTMENTBlue Heron Golf Club has seen value in exhibiting at this consumer golf show and their investment of time and resources continues to pay off in so many ways. With an increased database and one full year of experience behind them, the 2016 Ottawa-Gatineau GOLFEXPO will help them continue to tell the Blue Heron story, one golfer or dog-lover at a time.

Case study #2: $15,000 in sales, a month before the first golfers arrive!Situated 2 ½ hours west of Winni-peg and just ½ mile south of the historic Riding Mountain National Park, Poplar Ridge Golf Course is blessed with exceptional scenery and spectacular sunsets in an area of Manitoba that more than triples in population during the summer months. With so many outstanding golf and getaway options to choose from, Ryan Myers at Poplar Ridge Golf Course chose to exhibit at the Winnipeg GOLFEXPO to ensure a season of success at their golf course.

SHOW SPECIAL Since their opening in 2009, Poplar Ridge has continued to impress golfers from far and wide while being one of a number of high quality golf courses within a 100 km area.

With the level of competition for golfers being so high in the western part of Manitoba, Poplar Ridge Golf Course designed their course for all skill abilities while placing a high emphasis on the overall customer experience - from a fully stocked pro shop to The Cook Shack, which is an open air pavilion adjacent to their expan-sive outdoor deck. To launch their golf season and to attract both returning and first time visitors, Ryan developed and marketed their show special and the result proved to be nearly over-whelming. Their offer of 10-game packages were sold during the weekend which resulted in a total of over $15,000 in sales in late March, a full four weeks before the golf course opened up for the season. Ryan indicated that a large part of their show success was effective pre-marketing and commun-ications to promote their exhibit location at the Winnipeg event as well as their limited time show special to those on their database.

THE BOTTOM LINE As their golf season unfolded, rounds played increased as well as the incremental revenues through golf cart and food and beverage sales thanks to the added traffic. Poplar Ridge Golf Course has seen a significant return on their golf show investment and their great start to the season has made a big difference to their bottom line.

Case study #3: show sales have doubled for three straight years!Le Versant Golf Centre is located just north of Montreal and features four diverse and spectacular 18-hole layouts including two championship courses, an 18-hole course and an 18-hole Par 3 course. It is nestled in the heart of the lower Laurentians, amid some of the Des Moulins most breathtaking scenery. From the perspective of Nadia Di Menna, General Manager of Le Versant Golf Centre, to ensure the launch of a successful golf season, the Montréal GOLFEXPO continues to provide an essential element of their pre-season marketing and promotional campaign. This event provides a complete preview of the upcoming golf season for golf enthusiasts young and old, as well as for the entire golf industry.

BOOTH DESIGN In a highly competitive marketplace, it is critical to ensure that your consumer golf show goals and objectives are clearly defined, as merely showing up and standing in your 10 x 10 space will not achieve or surpass your targets. When the Le Versant Golf Centre team began plan-ning out their presence for the Montreal event, the visual aspect of their booth was identified as being very important. The booth represents their company’s image and it is the first impres-sion visitors will have of the golf club. Key display components include pictures of the golf courses, their logo and large signage that clearly announce their promotions, which are all essential to decorate the exhibit booth. Equally important, is that it must be functional to serve visitors effectively. The size of the booth could matter, however a small booth can be just as effective depending on the number of employees in the booth and the golf packages offered. To ensure that their brand and image is reinforced, the team is dressed in uniform with golf shirts that match all aspects of their club branding.

Golf Business Canada 41

Blue Heron’s first experience as an exhibitor put them in front of potential new customers weeks before opening day.

Poplar Ridge’s weekend show special provided a competitive advantage on the show floor which they capitalized on in 2015.

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UNIQUE OFFERINGS The Montreal golf show provides a unique opportunity to solicit new customers with most show atten-dees looking to plan their golf season either with their regular group or with their family. Le Versant Golf Centre has found success in the past, by marketing a variety of different golf packages such as rounds of golf with carts, with or without dinner and/or lodging. Ultimately visitors are seeking opportunity buys and by offering a variety of options, the customer can choose what suits their needs for the upcoming season. Without question, the most important part of the equation for Le Versant Golf Centre is the unique show specials being offered, that are designed to captivate the visitor and benefit the exhibitor! They have been an exhibitor at the Montréal GOLFEXPO for the past 3 years and their show sales have doubled year over year since 2012. Combine that with added database contacts and a greater awareness about the facility, and the Versant Golf Centre team will be there in March 2016 with increased goals and targets for another successful show.

FULL STEAM AHEAD “With well over $1.6 million dollars retailed annually on the show floor, our exhibitors continually strive to meet and exceed the golfing consumer needs when they are developing their marketing and promotional strategies for the event,” stated Mark Fraser, Manager of the Montréal GOLFEXPO. To support their marketing strategies even further, Le Versant Golf Centre organizes a new activity every year that captures the visitors’ interest and motivates them to discover their promotions. Visitors are also invited to partici-pate in a contest by answering a few questions using the help of electronic tablets. All of the promo-tions and the contest are advertised in the FORE! Show guide. The consumer golf show team in Mont-real offers all the necessary services and amenities that ensure a successful event such as internet access, telephone lines, decorator service, turnkey booths, and more.

Case study #4: new owners doubled their membership in one year!A new ownership group at New Brunswick’s Hillsborough Golf Club had a strong desire to interact with their clients face to face while offering affordable products and services to as many people as possible, and that made the exhib-iting decision easy for the team.

Norm and Donna Huffman along with Jason and Tanya Pugh, had recently purchased the Hillsborough Golf Club in February of 2015 and were looking to rejuvenate a club that had had a series of owners and an on-again, off-again relationship with its members and green fee players over the past 19 years.

GOLFER INTERACTION They had a plan going into the season but wanted to make sure it was kick-started in the right manner. Atlantic Canada GOLFEXPO provided the perfect vehicle for them to be successful. Their plan all along was to be ‘hands-on’ owners and thus be given the chance to speak to nearly 4,000 golfers personally in just one week-end was right up their alley, or should we say fairway. Having attended various golf shows over the years and as a consumer ready to take advantage of ‘deals’, the Hillsborough team wanted to make sure that they were set up to offer products to their customers at the show. They retailed memberships, packages of green fees, 2-for-1 cards and tournament packages all at exclusive

Le Versant continued to creatively market a wide variety of golf packages in 2015 which resulted in sales doubling for the third consecutive year.

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golf show rates. The golf season typically arrives late in Atlantic Canada but it is never too early to try and attract people to your course.

BIG RESULTSThe Atlantic Canada GolfExpo also created an opportunity for Hills-borough Golf Club to give away a free round of golf to anybody who attended the show which turned out to be a huge success. Every business wants customers coming through their door and so they jumped at that opportunity while making a promise to themselves that once they had a customer, they would make sure the customer wanted to return. Hillsborough Golf Club success-fully leveraged their participation in this consumer golf show to give their customers a snapshot of what they would get when they came to the course and restaurant in the coming season. That small invest-ment of time and money gave them a great start to a season that has seen more than double their membership totals from the previ-ous year, along with huge increases in green fee traffic!

Golf Business Canada

2016 Canadian Consumer Golf ShowsVancouver Golf Show February 13-14 www.vancouvergolfshow.com

Edmonton Golf Show March 5-6 www.albertagolfshows.com

Calgary Golf Show March 19-20, www.albertagolfshows.com

Winnipeg GOLFEXPO March 10-13 www.golfexpos.ca

London Golf Show March 12-13 www.londongolfshow.ca

Toronto Golf & Travel Show February 19-21 www.torontogolfshow.com

Ottawa-Gatineau GOLFEXPO March 4-5 www.golfexpos.ca

Montréal GOLFEXPO March 11-13 www.golfexpos.ca

Quebec GOLFEXPO April 8-9 www.golfexpos.ca

Atlantic GOLFEXPO April 2-3 www.golfexpos.ca

AHEAD OF THE GAME Consider the fact that exhibiting at a consumer golf show is merely one element of an overall sales and marketing strategy. If leveraged successfully and in concert with the rest of your efforts, it can provide you with a unique and valuable opportunity to be face to face with your customers and more importantly, your potential customers. Effective consumer golf show exhibiting requires a lot of good planning, a great value proposition for show attendees, sound team-work and execution and a strong desire to tell your story. Take advantage of exhibiting at your local consumer golf show and never be afraid to “run with the big dogs.”

Golf Business Canada 44

As new Owner/Operators at Hillsborough, their net result as exhibitors saw them more than double their membership with added green fee revenue in 2015.

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