Numbers don’t lie. During the month of June there were over 50,000 searches of the term “public golf courses" on the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN.com). This is a very important fact if you are a golf course operator and are in charge of developing and driving revenue to your facility. Unfortunately many course operators are not aware of or do not take advantage of this potential revenue source that is waiting to be tapped.

By using the industry standard that the average group of golfers is three players you can expand that number of 50,000 to 150,000 potential green fees out there just searching for the right course to play. Now if you calculate in an average green fee of $50.00 that means that the internet, on any given month is home to $6.5 million dollars in revenue. What makes this huge number even more attractive is that it is derived from a complete and perfect target market. Other forms of advertising such as magazines and newspapers that offer up huge circulation numbers to attract advertisers can not provide this level of targeting. For instance, you can run an ad in a metropolitan newspaper that may claim a circulation of over 500,000 but how many people are actually going to see your add. First you need to hope that the person reading the newspaper opens up the section where you add is located. Second if the person does open that section you need to hope that they turn to the right page. Third you need to hope that while they are looking at the page the person actually takes their eyes away from what they are reading to even look at your courses advertisement. The odds of your advertisement being seeing unfortunately are not in your favor, and to make matters worse for the advertiser who is to say that the person who does beat the odds and sees your ad is even a golfer. By using these traditional forms of advertising the golf course operator is hoping to distract the potential customer from what they are doing with an advertisement that they are not even looking for. Good Luck.

Search engine driven advertising on the other hand provides the exact opposite scenario. Of the 50,000 people who typed in the search term “public golf courses" it is fairly safe to assume that the majority of them are golfers or at the very least interested in golf. If your golf course is focusing a portion of your advertising budget to search engine marketing what offers even greater hope that you will realize a nice return on your advertising investment is that your potential customer is actually seeking out your ad, unlike those readers of magazines and newspapers who have to be distracted from what they are actually looking for. Very few people actually pick up the local newspaper when looking for a golf course to play, while golfers online are typing in search terms like “public golf courses" because that is exactly what they are looking for, public golf courses to play. Could you ask for a more targeted market? Golf Courses would all be better served if they would start to focus a greater chunk of their advertising budgets towards building a significant presence on the internet.