Golf Marketing Tips: Social Networking Do's and Dont's

Golf associations and trade organizations are great places to meet individuals. Usually organizations have a common theme, and it is an understood implication that all members participate to improve themselves and their golf businesses and online golf marketing initiatives.

Whether it is a chamber of commerce or a trade association, members have common problems, issues and concerns. By sharing issues and resolutions, members can benefit by the experience of others. Many business owners participate in organizations, not only to network, but also to hopefully circumvent some of the pitfalls encountered by other small businesses--learning from others.

Golf Marketing Networking Tips.
Many trade organizations provide forums for networking. In some cases, these might be private online newsgroups, casual meetings, or even professional events with speakers. In order to take full advantage of these networking opportunities consider these tips.

Who You Know.
It is often not who you know, but who they know. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen someone put-off someone who is clearly a beginner only to learn that the "beginner" is the brother or friend of a contact they've been trying to meet for weeks.


Honesty.
Be honest. Pretending to be something that you are not, or implying you can deliver a product or service that is outside of your abilities, will foster an environment of distrust and potentially harm your reputation. Keep in mind that networking is viral? Vital? And if promises are not kept, word will spread. Establishing yourself and firm as an honest, reputable company and golf website.

Professional.
Keep conversations to strictly business subjects. In a business environment, it is important to focus on safe non-emotional topics. The last thing you want to do is alienate or offend a potential client because of an outspoken view on a controversial topic. There is a time and a place for everything and discussing political views or cultural issues is not a generally accepted business topic. Bearing that in mind, it is also important to be aware and sensitive to cultural differences. The Internet has opened doors to a global market and respecting cultural differences is critical to establishing strong business relationships in the global marketplace.

Socialize.
Now is not the time to be a wallflower. Whether you participate in social business events, or monitor trade forums, it is critical that you participate. Participation will help you distinguish yourself in your industry. Attempt to remember individual personal details and foster introductions among others in the industry.

Positive.
Stay positive. It sounds simple, but it will really impact how others view you. If you are constantly negative and pointing out the flaws in others, it will reflect on how others view you. Presenting the best and positive business experiences will enhance your image and golf website

Help.
Provide genuine assistance to others. Whether or not they are able to reciprocate, networking is viral? Vital. Helping others will establish you as a useful member of your business community and will endear you to others. If you are unable to help an individual, attempt to refer them to someone who can.


Research
A little research goes a long way. Be sure to research people and companies in your golf business community. Knowing their common goals and interests will build topics for discussions.

Acknowledging the need to connect with other golf marketers to grow and expand a business may seem like common sense. Cultivating business relationships and interact with other small businesses is often mutually beneficial and should not be underestimated.

Golf website Networking is about building relationships and mutual interaction benefiting both parties. Being proactive and following up, you can have a network of contacts that you will be able to access quickly when you need them. Whether by more traditional means, such as in person or over the Internet, personal networks are essential for furthering your business. Relationship networking is give and take, be sure to help others in your quest for help.

SEO Quick Tips for Your Golf Website

Here's a few tips to help your golf website rank higher on Google and help your golf marketing. Whether you're a newbie or an experienced webmaster, your golf business sales will rise significantly with highly targeted golf website traffic.

Organic search and paid traffic can be generated or increased by including your golf web site in the top golf directories, search engines, golf article directories, golf blogs and press releases. In order for the search engines to properly index your golf web site, the backend or code of your website needs to be built correctly by someone who knows what they are doing.

Make sure your golf website has meta-tags. Golf Websites that have too many missing links or data that has not been recently updated could give the google bot and other search engine robots a red flag indicating that your pages are old or not relevant anymore. If you have a self designed website, make sure you keep the directory structure simple and not too deep. The fewer directories you have to crawl will make the job much easier for the search engines bots.


Try to find out which pages visitors usually enter your golf web site through so you can include more initial information on your site's products and services. Analyze other useful information from reports about website visitors including their countries, browsers, languages, operating systems, IP addresses as well as number of repeated visitors. It is essential that you know where your website visitors are coming from. Use google analytics to analyze your website visitors. Google Analytics is a brilliant and free web traffic analyzation tool. It can give you detailed, business-oriented data about your site's visitors through a powerful web-based user interface. The more you know about your business website visitors the easier it will be to do SEO for that particular page or pages. Google Analytics is free to anyone who desires to know more about their website traffic or visitors.

Google Analytics is also a powerful internet resource that allows golf website owners to track things like their page views, unique visitors, and entrance keywords. Google Analytics is a "cookie-based" (as opposed to a web analytics tool that analyzes log files). It will also help you become aware of the online golf marketing projects which are more cost effective.
For many companies Google Analytics is their primary resource guide. It is free and can quickly turn your online golf business into a profitable venture.

For more information about how to optimise your golf website and get in noticed on the web please contact Back9clicks.com - The Golf Marketing Professionals.

Email Golf Marketing

Retaining customers is very important for any golf marketing ambition. The more you stay in touch with them the more you will get to know about your golf business customers. The Internet has made it possible that you can give frequent visits to your customers through Emails. Email golf marketing is serving the purpose quite nicely and many companies are turning towards opt-in Email golf marketing for this.

As you know that a big share of the Internet users (more that 92%) are using the web only for checking the Emails. So web golf marketers have devised an interesting mode of advertising which is better known as Email advertising. Irrespective of your business size and advertising budget you can do the promotion of your product very easily. You can send promotional messages to the millions of Internet users all over the world for the sake of brand awareness. You can also get some list of those users who can be interested in your products and services. You can make opt-in list of your prospects and you can send promotional Emails exclusively to them.


This kind of customer list would be very beneficial for your business in the long run. They know about you, your companies and products. You can prepare such list by devoting some time and action. Since, these customers know you, so promotion becomes easy. In fact, Internet marketing professionals consider opt-in Email marketing as the best form of Email promotion. You can take help from an Email golf marketing company such as Back9clicks.com regarding that. The company can assist you so that your Email advertising campaign can become effective and and without any flaw. It is necessary that an promotional mail does not look like a Spam and the message subject line must be to the point. Your Email needs just a click as aim is to get noticed, which fulfills by it.

Some Emai golfl marketing providers can help you to extract lead emails with data. You can get the freshest email golf marketing leads. This is how you can generate leads and run an opt-in Email golf marketing campaign.

Contact Back9clicks to see how we can create an effective Email Campaign to get your golf business customers returning again and again.

GOLF SOCIAL NETWORKING

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #9: Golf Social Networking

What's the easiest way to generate word of mouth marketing about your golf website? Getting your golf business on the webs most popular social networks can be the fastest way to market your golf website.

Promotion: Sign up this week (before Oct 2) and we'll include one month of free management for your social networks
Fee: THB 10,000 (USD$300) for creation and one month management on 10 of the most popular social networks for golfers and golf businesses
Promotion Expiry: 2 Oct 2009

LIKE ARNIE - CONTENT IS KING

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #6: Golf Publishing

When was the last time your golf website was updated? How often do you add new content? Like Arnie, Content is King and we can help you publish search engine optimised content for your golf website.

Promotion: Purchase 10,000 word, keyword rich articles and we'll build you a blog to publish on for no charge AND make it look like your website!
Fee: THB 5,000 (USD$150)
Promotion Expiry: 2 Oct 2009

EVALUATE YOUR GOLF WEBSITE

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #5: Golf Website Analytics

Wondering why your golf website isn't allowing you more time on the golf course? Back9clicks can give you a report and analysis of where your golf website makes bogey and where it makes birdie.

Promotion: After your receive your Free report, we'll fix any problem areas for half price!
Fee: THB 5000-10,000 (USD$150-300)
Promotion Expiry: 2 Oct 2009

ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS TO GOLFERS

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #4: Golf Business Advertising

Get in front of one of advertisings most sought-after demographics. Advertise on one of our many golf websites for as little as THB 1,000 per month and see why online advertising is used by today's leading marketers. Please contact us for our list of publishers and your requirements.

Promotion: Buy 3 months, get an additional 3 months FREE.
Fee: Dependent on ad size and site traffic THB 1,000-THB 10,000
Promotion Expiry: 2 Oct 2009

STAY IN TOUCH WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #3: Golf Business Email Marketing

Are you taking care of your existing customers? Our golf newsletter designs make birdie with our clients. See how our email marketing can boost your website traffic and increase your sales. For some our golf business client samples, CLICK HERE.

Promotion: Free Newsletter Design, 3 months FREE with purchase of 3 broadcasts.
Fee: THB 10,000 (USD$300)
Promotion Expiry: Purchase prior to 2 Oct 2009

TAKE YOUR GOLF WEBSITE TO THE TOP!

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #2: Take Your Golf Website To the Top of Google!

Have a great website but nobody can find it? Over 75% of our golf website clients rank on the first page of google for their associated keywords. Let our SEO Pro's work their magic for you and get your golf website ranked highly across all three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing). We'll work on creating an effective, results oriented SEO plan for your golf website.

Special Promotion: THB 10,000-20,000 per month (USD$300-$600). Buy 3 months, get one free
Promotion Expiry: Friday 2nd October

Inquire about our Golf Website SEO Plans

GIVE YOUR GOLF WEBSITE A NEW LOOK

Octobers Golf Marketing Back 9 Offers - #1: Golf Website Specials:

Need a golf website or want to give your existing website a fresh new look optimised for Google? For this week only, pay half price on our web design services including 2 years hosting for free and 3 months unlimited changes. This includes up to 50 pages and 1-2 week completion time.

Cost: THB 20,000 (USD$600)

Contact The Golf Marketing Professionals Now!

Webinar: The 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design with Tim Ash

Find out if your golf website is committing one of the 7 deadly sins in this Google webmaster tools video

Moving to a CMS

How does moving to a CMS (Content Management System) affect your google ranking? In this golf marketing video Googles Webmaster Tools professionals explains best practices when moving your golf website over to a CMS.

Geographic Location

How does geographic location affect your golf marketing plans? Find out in another Google webmaster tools video and get more info from back9clicks.com - the Golf Marketing Pro's

Golf Marketing Tips: Googles Webmaster Tips

What's more important in your golf marketing campaigns and golf websites - Content or Links? Googles Webmaster Tools video exlains...

Why Golf Marketing

Many people are daunted by effective golf web design, site optimization, internet golf marketing, seo, etc. How can you blame them? There are so many so called "experts" out there spouting off the latest internet tripe. With just a little research, you soon discover that these experts are usually hawking some business opportunity or selling software. So, we're going to divest the entire process of it's mysticism and make it as plain as possible.


Here's what you'll need to market your golf business effectively on the internet. The first thing you'll need is a great golf website. This is not the area where you want to play it cheap. Do not design your own website! Unless you're a graphic designer, you're probably not as artistic as you think that you are. Hire a good golf web design company such as Back9clicks who specialise in building and optimizing golf websites. The first contact that many prospective customers may have with your business are your marketing materials such as your golf web site. A well designed golf web site should educate, instill confidence and trust in potential customers and above all is A SALES OR CLOSING TOOL. This can not be emphasized enough. It should not merely be a pretty online brochure. It's purpose to either directly or indirectly close business for you. Period.

Make sure you check around on the internet and observe your competitors golf websites before deciding on the design of your site. A good design company will help you with this. Study the design elements and features of the most successful companies in your industry. Do searches to determine which of their sites get top rankings in the search engines. Also, look for opportunities to innovate to make your website even better than theirs. Make it clear what you want from your website to your web design company.


After your site is constructed, the next thing that you need is for your site to be optimized. Site optimization consists of selecting the right keywords and then imbedding those meta keywords and phrases in the pages and links of your site, installing site maps, doing link exchanges, installing robots and analytics, tying in blogs and article directories, posting articles, and more. This makes your website search engine friendly and helps to get you higher rankings in the search results. Make sure your design company is experienced at this. Some designers are just so eager to get the business that they'll claim to know more than what they actually do. Do not bypass the site optimization step and just try to submit your site to the search engines. All that will happen is that no one will ever be able to find it.

The last component is actually internet marketing or promoting your site. One popular way is submitting your optimized website to the search engines. There are literally thousands to choose from. However, the majority of searches are done through: Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. A study conducted by Berrier Associates shows that of people who spend five or more hours a week online, they average an astounding 71% of their time searching for information. Other research shows that the most common method of finding a website is through search engines. Google powers over 70% of all searches and is the trendsetter for algorithm creation. Therefore, search engine marketing is of paramount importance.
Some search engines are free and others you pay for. A good SEO company can advise on which search engines work best for you.

By applying just these simple strategies, you will be well on your way to getting good results from your internet marketing.

Golf Marketing Tips

Golf business owners who have a golf website on the internet often on the traffic their content is generating to keep the site going. Traffic being generated to your content should always be unique to the information you are providing and should be of a quality that will keep traffic coming back to your golf website. The following will help you to generate traffic to your website.


Offering original and quality content on your golf website is the most important thing to remember and the most effective way to generate traffic to your golf website. You want to sell yourself as the best source online for the services or information you are providing while at the same time sticking out from all the rest on the internet who may be providing the same services or information you are and trying golf marketing to help them. You also want to show your golf visitors that you provide quality information or services they will not find anywhere else.

Providing helpful and useful information to your viewing audience is also important. The majority of people reading your golf marketing website are looking for a way to achieving a goal such as purchasing something or getting an immediate answer to a question they have. You need to make it clear immediately to your reader you can do all of the above and more. Back9clicks can help you with your golf marketing initiatives.


Poor grammar and spelling mistakes make your website look sloppy and unprofessional. Always proofread and spell check anything you have written before you add it to your website. A lot of golf marketing professionals are immediately turned off to websites that have spelling and grammar mistakes.

The last thing to always remember when trying to generate traffic to your golf website is to always be original. Never try to steal another authors work and pass it off as your own. It is unprofessional and if you are caught doing it online you're more likely to loose viewers immediately rather than gain them.

Golf Marketing Your Golf Website

If you and your golf business are new to the online golf marketing world, you will need all the help you can get to ensure that your endeavors prove successful. The web for golf marketers is cluttered with golf marketers, so you have to find ways to set yourself apart from the crowd in order to be successful. As far as golf marketing on the internet goes, everything is dependent on how you present your ideas. If you have a poorly constructed golf website landing page or golf website, the chances are great that visitors will quickly leave the page and simply move on to one of your competitor's sites. Golf Website design plays an important role in online marketing and therefore is highly advisable to hire a professional golf website designer to make your site work properly, load quickly and keep the visitors on the page.


If you are targeting a specific group of golfers who are located in a certain area, then you should optimize your golf website to appeal to that group of golfers. If you, for instance, are targeting real estate agents in the state of New York and are implementing a New York golf marketing campaign, your golf website should reflect this in some way. A good golf website designer such as Back9clicks.com will know how to optimize your golf website and will know the nature of your business so that they can design a suitable site that visitors can relate to and find appealing. It is a fact that attention span of a person searching for something online is very short.

Once a page is landed on, the average visitor spends just a few short seconds scanning the page in order to decide if they wish to stay. These seconds are vital and a poorly designed page will have the visitors clicking away as quickly as they arrived. The online golf marketing field is a highly competitive field. There are thousands of people just like you all around the world who are promoting the very same products that you are trying to sell. It is not only recommended, but it is in fact, absolutely necessary to make yourgolf landing pages, squeeze pages and websites not only look great but work well in order to compete.


Regardless of what you are promoting or selling in your golf marketing endeavors, be sure to always keep in mind that you must design your golf website so that it is user-friendly, effective and highly functional. When choosing a golf website design company, be sure to select one that has a proven track record. Ask for references and samples of their previous work.

Golf Marketing Google Webmaster Videos

Googles Webmaster experts discuss the importance of the position of keywords in the URL. Golf marketers can use the information in this video to optimize their URL's and gain higher positions in organic search


Visit www.back9clicks.com for more golf marketing tips

Googles Tips for Golf Marketing and Websites

If your golf website is not showing up in search results, take a look at this google webmaster tools video and take action to improve your online golf marketing immediately.

Googles Duplicate Content Penalty Myth

Googles Greg Grothaus clarifies Googles duplicate content myth for golf marketing professionals.

Golf Marketing Segmentation Part 3

The resort categories can be divided, at minimum, into two segments - urban and non-urban. Each segment usually derives its demand from different sources. The urban resorts can be further subdivided into resorts that cater to the business market (corporate meetings, etc.) and the resorts that cater to the upscale non-business. The non-business customer is typically upscale and non-family.


The leisure resort is usually set in a tourist destination location and can be family and non-family oriented. Thus, the major demand source is typically tourist golfers.

Other marketing variations of the basic golf demand segments
The preceding table identifies 12 different types (market segments) of golf courses where the course demand comes from different sources. From these basic golf demand segments can come many marketing variations. A marketing variation is a different marketing technique, but not a different demand source for the course. The following outlines some of the more typical marketing variations:


Semi-private marketing concept
The semi-private course is more of a marketing segment than separate course demand type. The semi-private course typically competes in either the daily fee or private market segments. They typically serve the same clientele of local residents in the moderate income brackets. The semi-private courses with few auxiliary facilities such as tennis, swimming, restaurant, etc. typically compete in the daily fee market, while the semi-private with more facilities usually compete in the low to moderate range of the private market segment.

Co-purpose private/resort
The co-purpose private/resort is a concept of combining the urban resort with the local residence upscale country club market segment. Thus, the primary demanders for this type of facility is split, and any market study should consider both.

Conclusion
The value or feasibility of a golf course is grounded in the customers it serves. Thus, the central question of a golf course study is demand - and demand cannot be measured if the golf course product is not first identified. In other words, the market segment the course can serve must be known in order to estimate value, forecast feasibility, know where to target the marketing effort, or answer the question - Is this golf market oversupplied.

Golf Marketing Segmentation

Part 2 of Golf Marketing: Segmentation

High-end daily fee segment
The high-end daily fee courses are usually geared to the higher income local residence base as the primary market, as well as corporate outings or tourists. Also, this type of course is based on the premise that increased quality and service will draw from a larger area for the residential part of demand and attract the special outing market, tourist, etc. Many studies require consideration of both demand segments.


The primary market area of the residential base is usually constrained by the location of the competition and drive time. Typically, the golf market area for the high-end course is larger than that of the low- and mid-range. However, the residential base must be in close proximity, even though the trade area is larger. The lack of nearby residential base is the reason many high-end daily fee courses on the outskirts of the city are in trouble. Thus, key factors in this category are population density and incomes (segmented by affordability) and the location of the competition.

Private clubs-residence based
This segment is primarily based on population characteristics within close proximity to the club. In many urban settings, 80% of members may live within less than eight kilometres of the club. The population characteristics of age, family status, and, most importantly, affordability, become some of the key determinants. The demand determinants are analyzed in the 'private club triangle of demand' - golf, social and family entertainment. Higher-end clubs can also be a function of the business social implications as well as the residential social factors.

Private - specialty segment
Private courses can also serve a specialty market. Examples are the destination private course and super high-end county club.
The destination private course is usually in second home and tourist areas. The demand for these courses comes from the inflow of temporary residence or tourists. The numbers entering the market of these potential golf customers are identified and then analyzed for their demand characteristics, which is primarily income and age.
The super high-end country club has very limited members, and the fees are set significantly higher than the typical high-end club in the area. Many times, these are 'one-of-a-kind' clubs in a market area. These clubs usually target corporate clients, and, in some cases, are also destination type clubs. That is, most members come from out of town, thus some overlap with second home clubs is possible.


Public specialty course segment - the theme course
Theme courses are regulation courses with a specialty theme, such as Tour 18 in Dallas, which has holes designed similar to famous golf holes around the country. The theme courses usually target their primary market as corporate outings and tourist, and secondarily, the local market golfer who says, "I have to play that course at least one time." This type of local market customer is higher income and commonly travels a long distance to the course.
Resorts segment (golf course with lodging)

Golf Marketing Segmentation

Is the golf market oversupplied? Is this a question you have heard lately? My response to this question is - which golf market?

There is not one golf market for a country, a city, or even a neighbourhood - but there are many golf sub-markets. A golf sub-market has its own unique demand sources and competition. Thus, the sub-market should be identified before answering the question - is this golf market oversupplied. This article presents some basic understandings and definitions of golf sub-markets.

Golf sub-market defined
In this article, a golf sub-market is defined as a golf course designed and located to attract most of its customers (rounds/members) from a specifically defined social/economic group. The primary market is the area where these customers are located.


In order to understand how segmentation affects golf demand conclusions, we must first understand how it fits in the golf demand study process. The following outlines the steps in a formal golf course market/marketability study.1 The sequence of the study questions would be similar, in the commission of a formal study, or an informal assessment made by course management/owners. Segmentation is step #1 in the study process because it triggers the remainder of the process. Thus, a wrong conclusion of step #1 makes the remainder of the study meaningless.

Golf course market/marketability study process

1. What golf market segment(s) does the subject golf course have the ability to serve?
Some factors considered are:
* Course design and quality
* Facilities design and quality
* Legal
* Social/economic characteristics of the club and community
* Location - How the golf course fits into the community growth structure, and with competitive courses

2. What are the characteristics of the consumers for this golf market segment?
* Market area delineation
* Consumer profile of most likely users
* Type
* Tourist, second home residence, white collar executives, corporate outings, local residence, etc.
* Characteristics
* Income
* Age
* Social/family structure
* Employment categories (i.e., high tech, service, etc.)

3. What is the competition for this market segment?
* Current competitive courses
* Planned competitive courses

4. What is the future golf course demand for this market segment?
* Inferred methods
* Current market conditions
* General growth trends of city and subject sub-market
* Fundamental methods
* Actual current demand forecast methods
* Potential new demand forecast methods

5. What is the market condition for this market segment?
(Comparing supply with demand currently and for the future)

6. How much of this market segment can the subject golf property capture?
* Current capture analysis methods
* Competitive course rating methods

7. What are the financial implications to the property?
* Is it a good investment? (Investment value to individual or specific group)
* Is the property's value more than its cost? (Feasibility)
* Does this market segment produce a higher net income than another segment? (Highest and Best Use)
* What is the golf course's market value? (Appraisal)
* Can redirected management/ marketing increase income? (Management practices)

This article addresses the first step in the market/marketability analysis process - What are the golf market segments?


The evolving nature of golf market segmentation

For many years, the golf market had two different types of courses - low budget courses (usually owned and operated by municipalities), and private country clubs. The private country clubs provided higher quality design and course maintenance, with more facilities and better services than the public low budget courses. In the late 1970s, a trend was started called 'A Country Club for a Day,' which was the slogan for a new course type called daily fee. These courses were open to the public and provided high quality design and higher maintenance with better services than low budget and public courses. The high-end daily fee concept is now being embraced by municipalities as they compete directly, in many markets, with privately owned high-end daily fee courses. Thus, no longer is the municipal course classification limited to low budget golf courses.

These three categories - municipal, daily fee and private courses - have been the focus of demand studies and national data for the last 15 to 20 years. The reality is that the golf course market has evolved at an increasing rate over the last 20 years. There are many more market segments, and, in turn, different demand generators for each segment. Because of this, many groups are addressing the need to upgrade the method of analysis of golf markets.2

Parallels in the evolution of other real estate markets can be seen. An example is retail - a close relative to the golf experience product. The retail market in the United States started on the town square. The town square served the social and retail needs for residents within a one-day buggy ride, or train ride in the major cities. The rise of the automobile and corresponding suburban development changed the established town centre retailing. The first neighbourhood shopping centre was built in 1931 in Highland Park, just north of downtown Dallas.3 The neighbourhood shopping centre was based on daily convenience and served near-by residents. The 1950s saw the advent of the interstate highway system and suburbia, which spurred the introduction of the enclosed shopping mall. Because of the automobile and better highways, the mall could serve the needs of shoppers in a large trade area. Thus, the neighbourhood retail centre served one type of retail need and geographic area, and the mall served another. The 1970s saw the retail industry changing toward specialization, such as fashion malls. In the 1980s, such innovations as 'big box' retailers, outlet malls, entertainment based retail centres, etc. were evolving. The result was the differentiation of retail market segments by centre types.

Part Two tomorrow. To find about more about segmenting your golf market, visit www.back9clicks.com

World Golf Equipment Market

For Golf Equipment Businesses looking to gain some insight into their customers, this report could be useful, and at a cost of USD$3,950, is quite an investment for online retailers such as www.onlygolfthailand,.com - Thailand's premier golf shop for Thai and golf tourists.


This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Golf Equipment in US$ Millions. The market for Golf Equipment is analyzed by the following segments: Golf Clubs, Golf Balls, and Golf Gloves & Bags. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for North America, Japan, Europe and Rest of World. Annual forecasts are provided for each region for the period of 2006 through 2015. The report profiles 451 companies including many key and niche players worldwide such as Adams Golf, Inc., Aldila, Inc., Amer Sports Corporation, Bridgestone Golf, Inc., Callaway Golf Company, Carbite Golf Inc., Dixon Golf, Etonic Worldwide, Fortune Brands Inc., Graphite Design International Inc., Hippo Golf Company, Karsten Manufacturing Corporation, MacGregor Golf Company, Mizuno USA Inc., NIKE Inc., Nike Golf, Slazenger, SRI Sports Limited, Roger Cleveland Golf Company Inc., TaylorMade-adidas Golf, Ashworth Inc., and True Temper Sports Inc. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are mostly extracted from URL research and reported select online sources.

To market your golf company, visit Back9clicks.com

World Golf Village Golf Social Networking Golf Marketing

The Neighborhoods of World Golf Village recently launched a social media marketing program to reach homeowners and homebuyers online in the places where they spend time. Guided by mRELEVANCE’s social media expert Carol Flammer, the northeast Florida golf community has upgraded its blog and created pages on popular social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. To interact with the real estate community and serious shoppers they also embraced real estate sites Trulia and ActiveRain.

World Golf Village has already seen a fantastic response, with close to 250 Facebook fans within two weeks of launching its page. And best of all they can even attribute a recent sale to Facebook! How is that for social media ROI right out of the gate?

Golf Marketing: Site Maps

You may not be aware of how important a sitemap is to your golf website and online golf marketing, early on a sitemap was nothing more than a map or listing of links to navigate you through the site, especially if you had a site with dozens of pages.

Today I'm going to share some SEO Tips that might give you some insight on what a sitemap can do for your golf website and how to create one.

One of the main purposes for a sitemap is to make it easier for the search engine bots to crawl and find your site. These bots, by using the sitemap can easily find your site and read the contents, categorize, crawl and index regularly to keep the site in there database. So when someone goes to a search engine and types in a search criteria, the search engine will be able to quickly reference the data and display the best results possible.


Now I want to switch gears and talk about how to create a sitemap, and like I said before just a few years ago you could manually create this sitemap and post it as a page on your website, now you can automate this process and create an xml file and upload it to your website.


I'm going to use Google for my example, which by the way is a good one to use since they own over half the market. Here are a couple of sites that I use to generate sitemaps, xml-sitemaps.com or freesitemapgenerator.com there are dozens out there, just find one that you are comfortable with. All you do is goto one of these sites type in your URL and follow the instructions, just that simple. If you are using word press or something similar, check the plugins to see if they offer a sitemap plugin, I know from experience that word press does offer this. Once the sitemap is created you either copy and paste some code into your site and or upload a file to the server and your done.

I have a couple of new golf sites that I have just recently put on the web and these practices worked great, I would not have a website without a sitemap, its almost a requirement in today's SEO practices. Hope you got some good SEO Tips out of this and hope you well on your site creation.

Get your golf website to the top of google!

Bing SEO Tips

Microsoft's new Bing search engine will change the way we all have to approach SEO. With the introduction of Bing, gone are those days when you have to submit your site to search engines or get links from various sources just to be indexed on the search engines.

With the release of Bing, the first thing that online marketers want to inquire is to how to get their websites on the top of the results page of the search engine. Here are some SEO tips for Bing, which will help golf marketers to get noticed on Bing.

To make it to the top of Bing, make sure to have a title that correlates to the subject at hand. You must also link out. Many marketers do not favor linking out because they fear that their page rank will be lowered, especially with Google.

Try to add more and more text. In most search engines, the amount of text on the page usually is not usually a huge factor. However, Bing really likes pages with at least 350 words of text.

Bing appears to put a lot of stock into how long ago a domain was registered. For golf marketers, this means that you may look to purchase older domains if you want to get on good position in Bing.

Try using only the well-formed HTML codes in your web pages. You should always ensure to close all the paired tags and should see that all links open the correct webpage. For information on validating your HTML code, you can see either HTTP Conditional Get test tool or HTTP Compression or W3C Markup Validation Service. If your website contains broken link then MSNBot might not be able to index your website effectively, thereby preventing people from reaching all of your web pages. To find more information on finding broken links on your website you can see the Help topic for the Webmaster Center's Crawl Issues tool.


If you have moved a web page then you must set up the webpage's original URL to redirect people to the new webpage. Also, indicate whether the move is permanent or temporary.

You have to make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your website and is not on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your website. For more information on this, you can see Control which web pages on your website are indexed.

You should use a Robots.txt file or tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your website. You can use the Robots.txt file to prevent web crawlers from crawling specific files and folders.

Keep all your URLs static and simple. URLs that are complicated or that change frequently are difficult to index as link destinations. In addition, a URL that does not change is easy for people to remember and bookmark. That makes your webpage a more likely link destination from other websites.

Golf marketers should watch for malicious software. Watch out for the links to web pages on your website that lead to malware on third-party websites or contains malicious content, such as a maliciously corrupted document or image file, or a harmful JavaScript or ActiveX control, will be disabled and highlighted as Malware in Bing results web pages.

In the end, it is very important to get more links to your site in terms of quantity as well as quality and to make sure that your website's content matches that with your keywords.

Golf Marketing: Sponsorship

There is a change in the air where golf and golf sponsorship is concerned. There was a time when finding golf sponsors was a back burning task but today, it is almost a walk in the park. Today, golfers are considered to be a part of an enticing marketing demographic. In fact, according to a report by the National Golf Foundation, there have been plenty of surprises in the last decade or so. The average household income for golfers in 2006-07 was $68,209 vis-à-vis an average of $51,855 in 1998. Now that is quite a development because most of their earnings depend on sponsorship available.

There are amateur golfers and professional golfers, the latter being the more devoted ones. Professional golfers play a minimum of 25 rounds a year and hence are able to rake in more money reaching an average of almost $70,254 per household. This is apart from the time they spend on the greens!


We can clearly notice a market shift as golfers have become more appealing to advertisers and marketers more so because the sand is shifting i.e.: the game is growing in popularity especially with the high influx of younger players and of course, it has a special appeal for affluent males who would love to make this a perfect marketing opportunity.

There are several other sports that are favored by the affluent and the corporate but as of now golf is reigning supreme. Let's take a comparison: In the US, there are 3 million sailing aficionados and they earn $75,000 or more in a year and then there are 8.3 million skiers whose incomes fall in the same tax bracket. When we come to golf, we find an astonishing 17.3 million golfers in the same tax bracket and this is based on a study by Mendelsohn Affluent. Today, golfers have outnumbered even sprinters and tennis players especially in the income segment.

But the truth is that money is not the primary reason why golfing demographic is special. Golf has rapidly climbed the popularity charts in general. Around 26.4 million enthusiasts played Golf in 1999, which is almost 8.7% more than the number of golfers in 1994. In 2007 the numbers are far higher and there are more younger and eager players joining in the ranks of Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. So competition is also becoming stiffer by the day. In fact, there is a sharp increase in the number of junior golfers (12- 17 years of age) and it has grown by almost 19.5% since 1994 and today has reached the 2 million mark.

For more about Golf Marketing visit www.back9clicks.com