Millennials: 3 Simple Strategies to Engage Golf’s Holy Grail

Generation snowflake is hard to engage, not so much because of their lack of resiliency, but rather due to their uniqueness

There is a lot of buzz in golf right now that Topgolf has finally cracked golf’s millennial problem with the boozy mix of a driving range that meets an arcade-style bowling alley. But accordingly to the Pellucid Perspective, rounds in 2017 remain flat in the United States, and while Topgolf is creating a new golf market, this isn’t translating into golfers stepping foot on a traditional grass golf course.

So before you put all of your hopes on a Topgolf location opening nearby to your golf course that provides a spillover effect serving up millennials for your business, consider these three simple strategies you can deploy to engage this coveted market segment that represents the future of the sport:

1. Differentiate: Let millennials pay their age or per hole

To millennials golf has the perception of being expensive and rigid to the beginner golfer. As a golf course operator you need to dispel this perception. However before you start to message how your golf course is different to millenials (and why they should try it), you first need to modify your pricing strategy for this millennial segemnt.

Pay as you go is what customers know these days

Consider targeting some soft spots in your tee sheet that also jive with a millennials blurring 9 to 5 work schedule, and offer them the opportunity to play 18 holes for the price of their age. Furthermore, demonstrate the flexibility in your golf operation and block out specific time slots for millennials to pay on a per hole basis. It’s a model they know well from buying minutes on their telco provider and pretty much every other service they interface with these days.

2. Simplify: Let millennials book your course in the apps they know

Back in May, golfscape blogged about messaging apps providing a new channel to talk to your customers. This trend is an important one for course operators to embrace given their potential millennial customers might not even have the phone app to make calls on the first page of their homescreen. On top of that, its no guarantee they even like the idea of going to a website or app either to make a booking.

The missing phone app home screen of today’s millennial

You need to cater to their specific needs where they spend the majority of their day in high frequency message apps like What’s App, Line, Facebook Messenger, WeChat or SMS. With a simple plug n’ play integration powered by Smooch you can integrate all of these messaging channels with a shared email inbox.That way you can continue to communicate with customers through your preferred method and customers can do the same without forcing them to adopt your behavior.

3. Optimize: Let millennials invite new friends and get free golf

Millennials have been spoiled with new services that incentivize them to share apps with their friends and earn free credits. These attractive referral programs give early adopters and power users the ability to invite friends for a free one time offer, and upon activation, the the referring party receives the same value in credit. Uber, Airbnb, Deliveroo and others have doen so with great success.

Give 20, Get 20 is a simple referral program all Millennials will understand

Take a moment to consider how a similar referral program could be rolled out at your golf course with a handful of millenials in your current customer base that you can incentivize with free golf. Given golf is inherently social a huge opportunity exists here to take inventory that was going to perish anyways, and deploy it in a way that attractis new millennials.