Mobile marketing has so many uses that it is hard to know where to start. Restaurants, bars, clubs, car dealers, movie theaters, and many, many more have already started taking advantage of mobile marketing and how it can drive traffic to your site and customers through your doors. No other marketing medium gives advertisers the opportunity to communicate one-on-one with their customers and consumers. All you need to do is give them incentive to opt in to your database, and that’s easy.

When it comes to golf courses, the opportunities are endless. If you are the owner or manager of a golf course and you integrate mobile marketing into your overall marketing strategy, you WILL fill more tee times, you WILL get more people to the driving range, and you WILL sell more merchandise in your pro shop. Using mobile marketing, you will be able to build and maintain lasting relationships with your customers, and this customer loyalty will both reward you personally as well as your bottom line.

The first thing you can do, along with building up your SMS database, which we will get to here in a minute, is design a mobile website. This website will not only give vital info about your course such as location, contact info, etc., but it can also map out the entire course for golfers. Each hole will show up individually on their phones while they are golfing and give them information such as length of the hole, what par is, the hole number, and can even recommend the type of club to use for each shot!

So how do you build up your SMS database?

• Promote your campaign on your website.
• Promote in your clubhouse and pro shop with signs and posters.
• Put your campaign opt-in information on your scorecards and golf carts.
• Use your Facebook page, Twitter page, or any other form of social media to alert people of your campaign and give opt-in information.
• Promote through an email blast.
• Use existing print and online ads and simply add your campaign and opt-in information.

Most of these are very cheap to use, and a lot of them are completely FREE. But all of them are great places to get people to opt-in to your mobile marketing campaign. But that’s just the location. How are you supposed to make them WANT to opt-in?

• You can form a mobile club and put this message on your signs and posters, “Join ABC Country Club’s Mobile Club and receive daily and weekly specials via text message! Text GOLF to 12345 to join today!”
• Offer a starter special that reads like this, “Text GOLF to 12345 and save $10 on your round of golf today!”
• You can also offer a prize giveaway along the lines of, “Enter the ABC Country Club Driver Giveaway and win a Calloway driver. Text GOLF to 12345 to enter now!”

Whatever you do, you just want to give the consumer incentive to join your database. Sometimes, simply explaining to the customer what the program is will be enough because of the simplicity and ease it takes to get deals. Everyone likes cheap stuff and everyone LOVES free stuff. Let them know that this is what they’ll be getting and they will most likely want to opt-in.

Of course, once they are opted-in to your service, you can send them almost anything you’d like. As long as you don’t bombard them with messages and are providing them with engaging content and value in each text, you will be golden.

On any given day you can send out a text to everyone in your subscription database and offer anything you’d like. Maybe on a day where tee times aren’t filling up and business is slow, you can send out a text that reads, “Come in to ABC Country Club between 10AM and 3PM today and get $15 off a round of golf! Present this text to receive your discount.” Or you could offer contests with prizes, “Come up to ABC Country Club today and participate in our Long Drive Contest between 1-2PM. Person with the longest drive wins a brand new Callowat driver!”

So you can see the flexibility of SMS mobile marketing allows for golf course owners and managers to get creative. Whatever you think will entice people to come to the course when they normally wouldn’t is business you wouldn’t have had otherwise. So why are you waiting? Don’t lay up, go for the green with mobile marketing and hit a hole in one with your bottom line!