Golf? Marketing? How does golf marketing work? I am seeing a large number of wannabes in the golf industry jumping on Twitter and Facebook to do nothing but posing stuff that is less than informational. I am sure these misguided business people feel what they are posting is being looked at by millions. I hate to inform them, but in fact their feeble efforts is being passed by or even blocked as SPAM.
What value does posting something nobody is reading have in the golf market? or any market for that matter?
I am sure these golf business people are asking themselves the same questions when it comes to how to use Twitter or Facebook as a marketing tool. The truth is, today, social media is how marketing is done online.
Golf: New to the Turf
In the golf market, the business people who are out meeting people online and putting forth some effort to let the consumers see and hear from the people who represent the product are more successful than the business person just posting a link back to their lame web-sites.
I know. There are internet marketers out there saying social media has no measurable profitability which should tell you how much they know. They insist to make any internet marketing worthwhile the focus has to be totally on pushing the product or service. This is easy to sell to golf business people because most business people in golf want to have a ‘hands off’ type of marketing of their products or services.
The typical golf business person feels all they need to do is open up a web-site featuring their products or services and then go out and do nothing but post on Twitter/Facebook hideous attempts to lure people to click on the link to their site.
Battle Heats Up
This battle between blind focus internet marketing and the more consumer savvy social media style of marketing in the social networking arena is starting to heat up as the internet marketers who live in 2005 style of internet marketing lose ground.
Stomach Churning
I recently sat in seminar with a client who wanted me to hear what is being told business people who are new to internet marketing. The seminar was on How Not to Waste Time Online. (That was not the real name of the seminar, but was the name I gave it since that is what the presenter used has her catch line the entire day.)
What was being told was the exact opposite of what is the core value of social media. The entire presentation was based on what works better offline than online. Statements were made like..
“Why do you want to make friends on Facebook? You have plenty of real Friends offline don’t you? You don’t need online Friends. Who are these people online anyway? What You need are customers. So instead of treating the people on Facebook as friends..treat then as a customer. If you are not selling them something you are just wasting your time.”
“The name of the game on Twitter is to get as many people, places or things to follow you. The more people you have follow you the larger the market you have created of people who are interested in reading everything you post. If they were not interested in what you post why would they be following you? Here is your chance to post nothing but information about your product and it is read by millions..but make sure to leave enough characters for a link to your site or you are literally you are wasting your time”
“The first thing to remember out here on the internet is if you want to be successful you cannot afford to get bogged down in frivolous conversation with people. If they are not asking a questions about your product or service you are wasting time..move on..delete them if they keep attempting to know you are attempting to find out your interests. If they are not buying something from you they are wasting your time.”
I think you can see where all the Spam is coming from now. This seminar went on for an entire day outlining how to plan a entire marketing campaign using Twitter and Facebook. Along with detailed instructions on only providing information on the product or service on the web-site and to only have a web-site that has a sign up for their newsletter before they can get details on the product or service.
There was an entire hour spent on the importance to not having any personal information or stating who was part for the business or company. Contact information on the web-site should be basic and keeping a focus on selling.
David and Goliath Marketing
There were also some huge put downs for people who promote Social Media as a way of marketing. The presenter concluded the Social Media portion of her lecture with graphically stating Social Media was a waste of time.
Once the seminar was over I had the opportunity, short as it was, to ask one of the principles of the seminar what their background was in the business. All three of the principles of the seminar came from Old School marketing and advertising firms with no business operations experience..all sales. Though these individuals were in their late 30’s or early 40’s they still had no understanding of how the internet has evolved with social networking nor of how spamming or scamming has taken its toll on the form of marketing they were promoting.
They were kind of lost in a time warp stuck in the 2000 to 2003 internet.
It really is too bad golf business people are adapting this old method of marketing their business. In most cases it is understandable that a traditional offline business like golf businesses would adopt offline tactics to promoting their business. It keeps them in their comfort zone.
However, things have changed and these old style ways of throwing something up on the internet and hoping Google is going to bring their swing training video, or golf fitness programs to the consumers attention are decaying rapidly.
Consumers are demanding to know who is running a business…who is it selling them a product…is this person for real…can I trust this person or business to be around long enough to complete the sale?
All of these questions have to be answered today before the product or service information will be looked at. I hope more golf business catch on to how to use social media. If not, then their golf business is going to take a big hit and that does not help golf.
Let me know how I can help.
