social media Archives - Little Voice Communications Ltd

Little Voice has designed a number of golf club websites now, and the challenges they face are quite unique.

Golf club websites have to satisfy a number of audiences, including:

current members
potential members
visitors

and, in the case of Prestonfield Golf Club in Edinburgh, they were also keen to attract sponsors and advertisers.

The solution for Prestonfield was to produce a site full of information that potential members and visitors would find useful, combined with the facility to provide fresh, up to date content for their membership. Moreover, it was vital that the up to date content was actually pushed to the membership, rather than having them always have to make the effort to come and find it on the website.

Several committee members and staff at Prestonfield have access to the website to post news. As soon as they add news to the website, it is immediately also published on Facebook and twitter. Additionally, on a weekly basis, this news is automatically gathered and emailed to the membership based on their pre-defined preferences and without the need for any further intervention on anyone’s part. Members can chose to receive weekly summaries of ladies news or gents’ news and a general summary of club news also goes out once a week. In the future, junior news and course news weekly summaries may also be produced in this automated fashion. The club can receive statistics on how many people open these weekly emails and any links that they clicked within the newsletter. This lets them see which particular news items are popular and how engaged their membership audience is.

All in all, the website, news and social media features are extremely useful tools for a club that sees membership engagement as a top priority.

Additionally space is available for advertisers who may wish to reach an audience of over 9000 visitors a month in peak season and the club has just started to seek some income generation via website adverts.

Finally the club is starting to see some success from marketing special deals to visitors by utilising the website, social media and their intelligence-led email messaging facility.

Check out the Prestonfiled Golf Club website here.

Would these tools work well for your golf club? Why not contact us to find out more.

The growth in internet marketing has only increased the dilemma facing business in terms of how to spend their limited marketing budgets.

More and more customers are accessing information about suppliers via PCs, Laptops, iPads and smart phones. Fewer and fewer customers will go to the yellow pages or pick up leaflets. I wonder how many yellow pages directories go straight from doorstep to recycling bin? Mine certainly does.

Printed newspapers, with dwindling sales, are now having to adapt or die as their readership turns to the web for news and information. The likes of Amazon Kindle has completely changed the publishing landscape and readers grab books and magazines from their store with the minimum of effort. Night time readers don’t even have to get out of bed to select a new book to read – it all happens wirelessly, downloaded in seconds.

With web marketing it is perfectly possible to pull people towards your goods and services without any additional cost, barring time and effort.

And therein lies the second dilemma for businesses. Precious time must be dedicated to build up that web presence. Regular blogging, newsletters, social media, adding your company to the best directories, Google places and the likes all take time. Time which, traditionally, graphic designers, printers, leaflet distributors and snail mail carriers took off your hands by producing and delivering your printed marketing material for you.

I believe the best marketing mix for the modern business world includes both offline and online activities.

A company that spends that little extra to produce quality business cards, as opposed to the free, or very inexpensive ones promoted by certain online printers will stand out from the crowd. Printed material is tactile, thus introducing the touch sense to the prospective buyer’s overall impression of you as a business.

A well targeted direct mailing campaign can still reap rewards – banners, posters, vehicle graphics, glossy brochures and even printed letterheads still have their place. However these can’t eclipse or replace a quality and easily found web presence.

With the same limited time and budget constraints as before, businesses have to be absolutely clear where their marketing budget will be spent and how to measure its success. Then they must commit wholeheartedly to ensuring that the decisions they make result in success. This may mean paying for the help of social media and search engine experts in much the same way as businesses paid for graphic design, print and postage in the past.

Clearcad has teamed up with business growth and customer development strategists Neontics to offer you a variety of solutions including consultancy, CRM, web design, authoring, web hosting, Search Engine Optimisation, print design and analytical tools. We would be happy to meet with you to look at the options you have for developing both an online and offline marketing plan.