Sitting here looking at the yachts in the harbor, each one worth millions more than the next I can’t help wondering how each owner made his money. Having studied the biography’s of hundreds of the world’s most interesting people I suspect that most of these fortunes were fueled by the power of a single great idea!

As I was traveling round France last month I used hotels.com, Vernere.com and Bookings.com to locate and book rooms. Often when no clear choice was available, I was drawn to the reader reviews to help make my decision. In reality this makes little sense, people’s opinions are so different even of the same experience. Nonetheless I read them and was no doubt more influenced by them, than I even know!

The same thing is true of buying a book on Amazon, people want social proof that the book will deliver as promised, if they are to part with their hard earned money. I’m proud of the quality of the reader’s comments I have got for my books Cunningly Clever Marketing, Cunningly Clever Selling and The Golf Marketing Bible. I am sure they help sales stay strong.

What are people saying about your club on Golf.com or your resort on hotels.com or the twenty closest variations?

Most people don’t know but it’s something you should check regularly because there are most likely one or two vocal people out there who could be damaging your online reputation, badly.

People do look at and read these comments; they provide the social proof that your offer is what you say it is. Very often, the negative comments about your business are unfair but that doesn’t make them any less harmful! They must be contracted with a response or with a stream of positive comments that relegates the negative ones to the dungeons of page ten!

A similar though different phenomenon of social proof occurred on in our nightly quest for a great meal, with a staggering choice of restaurants in every city, in France. In fact, in one part of Paris there were no less than 200 restaurants in a typical city block!

Which to choose?

Well generally not the one with no one in it! (There must be a reason or they don’t turn the food fast enough) Most of the time we choose busy but not full restaurants (why wait) because the fact that they were busy physiologically means they are good and in just about every case they were.

A further form of social proof are the positive comments others,(clients, staff, family and friends to start) MUST be ENCOURAGED to provide on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Fastpitch and MySpace to name just handful. If others are saying good things about you they must be true!

ACTION STEPS:

1. Check your online reputation monthly.
2. Solicit positive reviews from your customers.
3. Encourage positive feedback and brand extension on social media sites from customers, staff and friends.

Sitting here looking at the yachts in the harbor, each one worth millions more than the next I can’t help wondering how each owner made his money. Having studied the biography’s of hundreds of the world’s most interesting people I suspect that most of these fortunes were fueled by the power of a single great idea!

One of the interesting parts of being a marketing consultant is trying to get people to pay you for great ideas. For while people will gladly pay you for designing stuff, writing stuff or building websites few people truly understand the value of a great idea!

A single great idea can launch any business or turn any business around, but instead of searching for the great idea, most businesses (especially golf clubs) are resigned to looking only at cutting costs and incremental growth at best!

Where are most great ideas found?

1. A change in positioning, going up market, down market or better still finding a USP that no one in your market can touch.
   
   With the stroke of a pen, you would instantly have number one positioning, plenty of PR and an excess of potential members.
   
   In a similar move to attract red-blooded males, Battle Lake Golf Club in the heart of the Texas Bible Belt has “Birdie Girls” think Hooters! The difference they made to his business was, according to the owner, staggering!
   
   If either of these fine examples are a little too bold for your taste how about an ethnic play? Like the several courses that added Korean pages to their websites and put Kim chi on the menu to successfully attract a growing and affluent Asian population in several major cities!
   
   The Only Gay Golf Club In a Major City – it’s bold it’s audacious and in a place like San Francisco or Houston, Texas (strangely the second largest gay population in the USA) it would work!
2. Switch Media from say print to direct mail or web 1.0 to 2.0! Although I have built my success on the back of our Golf Marketing Commander websites, my most successful campaigns ever have come from direct mail. Few clubs try direct mail because it’s expensive and they have most likely done it in the past and failed, but they did it wrong.
   
   They had tried and failed with direct mail before but they had never tried Thunderbolt Marketing. This simple change in marketing approach had a massive impact on their business. It’s an approach we have had tremendous success with in selling all kinds of outings, vacations and even memberships but few clubs use the approach because it scares them! They don’t understand why it works so they avoid it!
   
   Get ahead by adopting web 2.0 and social media now. It will be ten years before the golf industry catches on!
   
   In the five years I used direct mail at Garland we produced over four million dollars in sales (More than seven million including onsite spend) from a mailing list that was never larger than 1148 people and at a total cost of less than $100,000 for all the campaigns.
3. Change Pricing- Few people ever consider going up in price, but going up and adding value is almost always more successful than discounting, yet few clubs ever try it! At one club we doubled the dues and added 198 members by throwing in a bunch of free gifts!
   
   Add a lifetime or VIP category to get big bucks up front, pay off debt or re-model. Last year I came up with a new pricing plan for my largest client that included one option 300% higher than his current membership options. The result – over one million dollars in additional membership income!
4. Change in Sales- The foundation for my first small fortune in the karate business was made on the day I bought my first marketing book! It went into overdrive the day I bought my first sales book and I never looked back!
   
   http://www.cunninglycleverselling.com/
   
   What you and your staff don’t know about selling is most likely killing your business! A single sales book or audio can easily increase your business by 25% or more!
5. Triple or Quadruple Your Prospect List
   
   There is NO quicker way to increase your business than to tap into the list of people you know at least play golf, in your area! If you can instantly grow your list from 500 to 5,000 that’s a massive leap. Even just getting another 50 people on your mailing list can be worth several thousand dollars a year!
   
   The better the offer the better the chances they start a relationship with you.
   
   We no longer sell lists but here are a few companies that do that we have heard good reports about data quality http://www.golfmarketingassociation.org/ list or you can try these guys http://www.golfclubservices.com/
   
   Buy, rent, trade or form alliances with other clubs or businesses to reach more prospects instantly!
6. Look Outside Your Industry. The next great idea will most likely be something that you adopt from another industry. All of my financial breakthroughs have come from looking outside my current industry.
   
   People in the golf industry all tend to do the same thing, always look to do things differently.
7. A Change of Staff. Sad to say but many clubs are held back by the outdated ideas of their manager or management company. It’s said now that if you do not double your business knowledge every five years you are falling behind. Few people come even close to doing that. One person who does is Bob Devitz, CEO of http://www.legendarygolfmanagement.com/ He is full of new ideas to invigorate your staff and we don’t even charge if we don’t increase your business!!
   
   Now that sounds like a great idea, pay for performance golf management why don’t all the management companies do that?
   
   Brainstorm the GREAT IDEA in your next staff meeting and let me know what you come up with!

Most people over complicate marketing with talk of image, brand, feel, look, style, and culture. These are all important, relevant factors if you are a multinational company and all are of little importance if you are not!

What is important is the simple fact that there are only three ways to grow your business.

1. Increase the number of clients. This is where most businesses focus their effort, although it’s very often the hardest of the three ways to increase income. Large growth in number of clients usually comes from a change in pricing or a change in marketing strategy. For example changing a client’s focus from direct sales to building a database of prospects, backed up with multiple follow up campaigns, always increases business significantly. www.cunninglyclever.com
   
   The amazing thing is that while you rack your brain to come up with a killer idea the chances are, the idea that will significantly increase your business will be simple and easy to copy from someone outside of your industry. You just have to do a little research.
2. Increase the average transaction value. How can you get customers to buy more of what you sell each time they call, visit, or click? If ten people stand at the counter to buy a widget for $15, the 80/20 rule says that if all were offered the chance to buy six widgets for, say, the price of five, two people would do it, increasing your transactional value by over 53%!
   
   Simple, but most customers rarely receive the offer. While the person is standing in front of them, daily-fee golf clubs sell one round instead of five. Shoe stores don’t add socks or polish to a sale. Hotels sell that night’s stay in the summer without trying to sell a return stay in the fall, and so it goes. There’s no cost other than the few moments of time to make the offer:
   
   Mr. and Mrs. Jones, have you ever had the pleasure of being up here in Vermont when the leaves are changing? It’s stunningly beautiful. Our fall packages just came out this week but they sell out very fast. Shall I go ahead and reserve yours while you are here today?
   
   Most companies can increase transactional value astonishingly quickly with 15 minutes of sales training a day!!! See CunninglyCleverSelling.com
3. Increase the frequency of repurchase(or the length of time they stay as a customer). How do you get the customer to buy more often to get more residual value out of each client? Recently I helped a software company massively increase its income by simply changing to a residual pricing model. Instead of charging $4,000 plus a small annual fee for maintenance, they now charge a set up fee of $1,500 and a $400 a month license fee. Since their average customer stays seven to ten years, you do the math! A simple change of marketing strategy that turned a struggling business into an extremely profitable enterprise.
   
   Of course in an ideal scenario you do all three and enjoy exponential growth by increasing your number of clients, increasing the transactional value and increasing the frequency of purchase!

Make this the topic of your next staff meeting and see how many ideas you can come up with!

There are a thousand things you can do in the name of marketing. Focus on exploring these three, in detail, first!

     Every time I come to Monaco I marvel at the wealth. Two room apartments that start at three million. Boats worth more than a city block and it’s the only place in the world where you’ll see a traffic jam comprised entirely of Ferraris Bentleys and Lamborghinis. Every time I come here I think, “Where does all this wealth come from?” It’s a question I which I have done a vast amount of research.

     In Felix Dennis’s book (one of Britain’s richest men) entitled, How to Get Rich Quickly, he states getting rich quickly is in fact easy! You just have to focus on making money!

     My friend and bestselling author Brian Tracy also ranks focus highly on his list of the traits it takes to get rich.

     The key of course is not just focus but focus on the right things.

1. You can’t make money without a large and targeted database of well-qualified prospects. If you do not accomplish this first, you are doomed to failure.
    
2. You can’t make money with out a solid USP Unique Selling Proposition, to attract these prospects to your door.
    
3. You can’t make money without an irresistible offer to get them to take the first step towards doing business with you. 
   (See http://www.cunninglyclevermarketingbook.com or the
   http://www.golfmarketingbible.com/ for detailed strategies to the above three points)
   
4. You can’t make money without a solid sales system to convert leads to money. Almost NO ONE in the golf business actually has a written sales system & training to back it up (See http://www.cunninglycleverselling.com/)
    
5. And you can’t keep making money without a decent follow up and communications system to encourage repeat buying! (http://www.legendaryloyalty.com/)

     Do these five things well and the rest will take care of it’s self, YOU WILL MAKE MORE MONEY! It does not matter weather you are selling memberships, vacations, golf lesson, green fees, range balls or equipment!

     Notice I didn’t talk about quality, service, course conditions, product superiority, brand or image, although they could be part of your USP. The fact of the matter is in the hundreds of books I have read on business and personal success a company succeeding on quality, superiority or service is the exception not the rule!

     Very often the clearly superior product makes far less money than a lesser product where the focus is on the five sales and marketing traits I mention above.

     Something to think about!

     Just enjoyed a wonderful ten days of golf in France, although my golf was far from wonderful! France is much like the UK in that its well behind the times in terms of marketing the game. No one took my e-mail or address, not even when we bought a Normandy golf pass! Nor did they ask for it at any hotel either. But there is much we could learn from the French that would improve our operations state side or heaven forbid in the UK.

1. While the food at most clubs in the US is average and plain bad at most UK clubs the lunches we had in France, at every club were nothing short of spectacular! Why does food have to be so average at most clubs?
   
2. The French were unbelievably friendly at every turn; everyone from members to staff alike greeted us with a polite “Bonjour”. You are made to feel VERY welcome by everyone, even when they know you are a tourist and you butcher their language.
   
3. The atmosphere even at higher end clubs is much more low key. There are people in jeans, people in T-shirts, and people on cell phones although they generally move to a quiet corner. It’s a much less stuffy atmosphere. Which may be why I noticed so many younger women, children and families playing than I ever see in the US!
   
4. Every club had a great, grass range and in most places a dedicated chipping area as well. There were definitely more people taking lessons than I ever see in the US or UK. Every single time I hit balls there were lessons going on. More lessons can only help everyone enjoy the game more. Market lessons for all you are worth, it’s a major key in growing the game and indeed keeping people involved in the game. See How to make $150,000 a Year or More Manual and DVD. Talking of which, many thanks to noted French, Golf Instructor, Claude Brousseau, at the Golf Court (short) Academy for his excellent lesson, which resulted in me hitting my driver like a champ instead of a chump! And my one and only good round of the trip!
   http://www.golfcourt.fr/ 
   
5. Play was fast, it never took more than four hours and in many cases it was closer to three, NICE!
   
6. Some Cunningly Clever Marketing. Prior to visiting the US Cemetery, (Very moving) we played Omaha Beach, which is actually no were near Omaha beach, in fact it’s several miles away in a different town. The brochure had a picture of a great looking hole on a cliff, which as it turned out was the only hole on the ocean. The rest was totally parkland. Now don’t get me wrong, this was a fine and beautiful course I would recommend you play if in the area, but there is no doubt either that we would NOT have chosen it originally without the name or the cliff top picture.
   
   The course that Bills it’s self as Grandville, “Mont San Michelle” was a great links that’s a must play, even though it’s 30 miles from the famous Mount!

Au Revoir,

Andrew Wood

     I have been experimenting a lot recently with open rates. After all, what good is going to the effort of collecting 10,000 emails if only 300 people read them?

1. Subject lines are critical

   For example, the first of our loyalty program eblasts contained the promise of entertainment in the headline.
   

2. The Funniest Golf Video Ever(You can see a sample by signing up here free http://www.legendaryloyalty.com/ e-mail will come in your in box)
   This resulted in open rates 200-300% higher than a normal, but boring specials e-blast. Open rates live and die on the subject line, so make yours Legendary!
   
3. Make Your Content Viral Friendly Entertaining, engaging content like we include in every Loyalty Program blast will get passed around at astonishingly higher rates! More pass around means more traffic and it comes with the healthy endorsement of a friend, who thinks this is worth reading!
   The second reason that the open rates were high is because the content was entertaining. The e-mail got opened more than once and got passed around to thousands of additional people as readers shared it with their friends. You simply don’t get that type of response from the typical canned, generic looking golf offers, most web companies provide.
   

    

4. You Must Test e-mails in a Spam Filter First

   All out bound e-mails should be run through a spam filter first to check if it will pass. While by no means foolproof, if it fails because you are using SPAM trigger words like FREE you can change them to friendly words like complimentary.
   

5. Ask Your Reader To Help

   One of the simplest ways to increase your open rates is to ask your reader to add you to their preferred e-mail lists so your e-mail does not get stuck in their spam folder. But it doesn’t end there, you should also end each e-mail by asking them to pass it along to a friend. Just the suggestion dramatically increases pass around rates and therefore open rates.
   

6. Always Change Your Approach to Keep It FRESH!
   
   Variety is the spice of life, YET the typical club sends the same type of e-mails week after week, which quickly turns people off. You have to keep readers on their toes by mixing it up so they open your e-mail just to see what you are doing this week!

   That’s why our Legendary Loyalty program is such a winner, no two weeks are the same. It’s a great mix of videos, audios, contests, pdf downloads, anecdotes about famous players, jokes and much more. All aimed at increasing open rates, driving traffic, building database and You could do all this on your own, but at $99 a month why bother? http://www.legendaryloyalty.com/
   

If you saw the year to date participation figures in Golf Business Magazine recently you should have cause for alarm! Yes, I know the winter was bad, the economy is bad and discounting is hurting everyone but that’s not the real reason the golf business is in the toilet!

Today I went to 10 random golf websites, not one had a blog, not one was Tweeting and only one had a Facebook page.

So I kept surfing, eventually, after another 15 minutes I did find a couple of clubs that had all three. None had been updated recently thereby missing the whole point of the social media revolution. For that’s what it is my friends a revolution, people today, (under 40) just don’t get information the same way we did!

Even my own clients often give up blogging and tweeting before they really start. Too busy, no immediate feedback, not that type of club, take your pick of excuses…

Then of course you have the big management companies, who are simply scared of social media! What if people bad mouth a course or insult a staff member? What, no control, no way! All tweets will go to corporate first to make sure the spelling is correct, blogging will be done from a central location and in corporate speak only!

But the golf industry’s general disregard for social media is only a small part of a MUCH bigger problem.

I just came out with a killer loyalty program. Open rates and pass around on our first e-mail where staggering, in some case 300-400% higher than normal. Can you really afford to IGNORE those kinds of numbers? I hope not, go ahead and sign up now its $99 a month and all you have to do is send me a picture and a logo… That’s it, you’re done, a years worth of contests, downloads, data building campaigns, viral campaigns and entertainment for your customers, DONE!

http://www.LegendaryLoyalty.com

BUY NOW, cancel any time… reap the rewards forever!

The time it takes to play is a problem; a big problem that most owners agree has to be tackled… Personally I have rarely, in thirty years, seen a ranger demand the group behind be allowed to go through or heaven forbid they actually throw someone of the course, for playing quicker than wounded snail!

We could talk about sales training, I frequently do. It’s something they do in just about every industry, especially industries that compete with us like professional sports (entertainment) but I have NEVER, been to a club where a professional sales system was in place (other than a couple I put in) or where sales training of any kind was even considered.

Because no club actually invests time or effort in sales training the industry as a whole is sadly lacking in professional sales people. The very people we need to grow memberships, book events and sell tee times. But even this is just another symptom in a far bigger problem.

I know people are busy. I know they are short staffed, I know money is tight and I know it’s hard out there but the real reason golf is in the hole is apathy. There I said it.

APATHY

Apathy to change, apathy to marketing, apathy to sales training, apathy to social media and apathy to new technology or even new ideas!

If we want to grow golf again the industry has to be:

More open to change
More open to adopting new technology
More open to marketing aggressively
More open to professional sales
More proactive in fixing problems like slow play
Less up tight about typos in an e-mail and more
proactive in providing entertainment for our
customers!

Think I’m wrong? Then go ahead and flail me in the discussion forum here (best place) or e-me, all responses will be posted!

The term Unique Selling Proposition (USP) was first described more than 50 years ago, in the classic book by Rosser Reeves, Reality in Advertising. While given much lip service, the concept of USP is seldom understood or executed well. Reeves said that your USP must meet three criteria to be complete and powerful

It must say to your consumer; Buy this and you will receive this specific benefit.

Your USP must be one that your competition does not, or cannot, offer.

It must be strong enough to attract new customers to you.

Your USP is the foundation for your marketing and advertising efforts. It is your unique advantage you use to sell your business. Your USP should be so strong and memorable that it will both distinguish you from your competitors and attract new business. It should also be memorable enough to generate word of mouth to drive referrals.

Most businesses don’t have a USP and therefore they don’t ever build a strong marketing program on a secure foundation. Instead they bounce from idea to idea without a consistent theme! In fact, I’ve had new clients who have proudly showed me the twenty different ads they had run over the last five years – each touting something different! This approach wastes lots of time, lots of money, and a great deal of effort!

What comes to mind when you hear Domino’s Pizza?

“Domino’s delivers in 30 minutes or less.”  That was their unique selling proposition and it fueled one of the most rapid business success stories ever. Domino’s wasn’t really selling pizza, what they were selling was fast delivery.  There are hundreds of different chains around the country that sell pizza.  But when you think of Domino’s, you think: Domino’s delivers in 30 minutes or less. You might be interested to know that those ads haven’t run in over two decades, since a driver was killed trying to get his pizza delivered on time! Yet the 30-minutes-or-less perception remains!

The same is true in the shipping business. There’s UPS, there’s the US Postal Service, Airborne Express, and a host of other services that claim to get your package delivered directly to your customer, across the country, overnight.  But when you absolutely, positively must have it there overnight, whom would you use?  If you said the Post Office, move to the back of the class! (They lose 100,000 packages a day!)

If you absolutely, positively must have it there overnight, the only company to use is FedEx. That perception has survived even through their name change from Federal Express. They have a legendary reputation for fast and reliable delivery and practically own the word “overnight.” You must do the same–own a concept in your market that defines what your business is all about. This will attract people to you like a magnet!

What benefit or word does your business want to own in the minds of your customer?

Had a great time in the UK and Dublin what did you think of the seminar?

From The Legend’s Laptop
Currently Located in London, UK
WWW.LegendaryMarketing.Com         

Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Volcanoes!

Dear Reader:
  
Hectic week, started by flying to New York on Monday so I could get a Virgin Upper Class Flight to London, as there were no seats available from Orlando, now that’s brand loyalty!

Two GREAT seminars for the UK, PGA at the Belfry; then the fun, or should I say the Volcano, started!

My flight to Dublin was cancelled (as were all flights in Europe) and for the majority of people I suspect that’s where it would have ended. A quick phone call to the client, “Sorry but I can’t make it, no flights, I’m sure you understand, would love to be there…” I can’t say I didn’t consider it, because I did, but…

Two cab rides, three trains, stood in line for 2 hours, with 800 people, to get an overnight ferry ticket. Three and a half bumpy hours latter plus a half hour car ride from the port to the venue and I arrived about an hour before I was due to speak. Once on stage I think I gave a pretty solid 8 hour performance considering I hadn’t slept for over two full days!

The whole episode and the equally challenging journey back to the UK, reminded me a lot of my early days in the USA. The fact is there is almost always a way, economy, competition or volcanoes be damned!

The real question is whether or not you, your staff your management has the commitment to take the action, very often far different action than you are comfortable with to get the job done!

Even in this economy we have lots of success stories, clubs whose play and income are up substantially. Usually it’s the ones who think outside the box, who are actively engaged in the sales and marketing effort and who interact with us like partners instead of vendors. Clubs that plan ahead for months not days! Clubs that focus on timely execution rather than sending every e-mail to committee for review! Clubs that have a systematic follow up for every sales lead and engage in on going sales training and customize their marketing message to meet the needs of unique groups!

Here are two new ways we have come up with to help you rise to the challenging times, close more sales and keep customers loyal in the face of discounts!

Two Massive Upgrades For Marketing Commander

1. Marketing Commander now offers seamless integration to Salesforce the world’s leading CRM. The ability to follow up on every lead and run reports on the status of any inquiry has never been easier. Every lead from you Marketing Commander website dumps into Salesforce for orchestrated followed up and a significant increase in sales!

2. New Legendary Loyalty System – You do not buy loyalty by discounts you buy it by personal interaction. This new program is unlike ANY in the golf industry and is in final testing stages. The program triggers customized communication with players based on personal preferences increasing, brand awareness, website traffic and sales! Look for it soon…

          Demo Marketing Commander Here

          Visit http://www.cunninglyclevergolfoperator.com you have questions it has answers!
 
          Order Cunningly Clever Selling at Press THIS WEEK due in soon!

Regards,

Andrew Wood
Marketing Legend

P.S. Make sure you are following Cunningly Clever on Twitter lots of short ideas, inspiration and updates…