In today’s economy, with shifting private club demographics, clubs can no longer ignore the importance of marketing to their current membership and potential members. Whether you are one of the estimated 75 percent of clubs who don’t have a marketing plan, it is hard to ignore the need for a strategy to effectively communicate your club’s culture, services and value to your members and your potential pool of members.
It is no surprise that nonprofit, private clubs shy away from the words “brand marketing,” perhaps because it is unfamiliar ground. One might argue that private clubs are membership-based and have traditionally not had the need to “sell” themselves, because clubs have been the center of their members’ social circle. However, as times have changed, these social circles have become fragmented by the increasing number of alternative sources of activities that require time management for members and their families. Club members are experiencing a far wider-ranging social circle than just those within their club.
If your club has a significant percentage of members who also belong to other clubs, then you also have to compete with these clubs for the same members’ time, dollars and loyalty. In a burgeoning trend, private clubs are also under intense and continuous competition from public accommodations such as luxury resorts, increasingly bent on catering to the same target audience—our members. These resorts often mimic club lifestyle for a fraction of the price, in some cases, and with no long-term commitment.
How does a club respond to this? By marketing and reinforcing the social bonding of the club environment through its activities that involve the membership. The reason most members come to the club, even on a casual basis, is to enjoy the camaraderie of fellow members. Nothing beats gathering with your friends in a beautiful setting, engaging in great conversation, a hard fought game of gin rummy, or a leisurely sail around the bay on a beautiful day. The level of fellowship, programming, atmosphere and quality of service are the most important reasons to join a private club.
Few clubs are lucky enough to find it unnecessary to market to its membership. In fact, it is more important now than ever to engage in a personal, thoughtful and thorough marketing campaign which informs and, more importantly, engages. Because each club is unique, each marketing plan also should be unique to the club and specifically formulated to effectively communicate and entice its members.
Marketing within a private club environment is an exclusive experience in niche marketing that endeavors to bring its members together in pursuit of social bonding at the club. Marketing is not necessarily just what you do to an already captive audience when you want to sell them something; club marketing begins before a member even becomes a member. Marketing begins as a first impression. The reputation of the club, its members, and the club’s traditions are what sets the tone of any marketing campaign. The branded identity of the club sets the expectation for the members’ experience, both from membership interaction and quality of the club’s services.
So how does one market to an already familiar customer while enforcing its brand to them? The answer is that clubs should treat their members as if they are the club’s most familiar customer, while ensuring the members are being impressed like a first-time visitor.
Members should be treated with the utmost in personalized service. Ways to offer personalized service include addressing the member by name, knowing the member’s preferences, and anticipating member needs before the member even realizes that they have a need. Members should be treated like first-time visitors, in that their every visit should create a lasting impression from entering the club’s gate to departing the club’s property. Marketing is a delicate balance of impressing a member every time and surpassing yesterday’s bar.
What does impressing a member have to do with club marketing? The unique dynamic in private clubs is that members have a financial stake in the product or service the club is proffering for consumption. Having a sense of pride in the quality of the club’s offerings drives the member to buy more, have brand loyalty, and to share this great new product with their friends through the sponsorship and introduction of new members. This brand loyalty translates to more frequent usage of the club and more spending from each member, as they not only use the club themselves but also host their families and friends.
Personalization also goes hand in hand with making a member feel like they are where they belong. Personalizing letters and other communications is one way to express attention to detail, but it is also a way to establish a familiarity a member may not find at a public venue or luxury resort environment.
Private clubs have a unique insight in members’ preferences and habits, on which clubs can capitalize when it comes to building club brand loyalty (i.e., a member’s favorite drink, the member’s favorite table, or the specific brand of golf balls they prefer to play). Clubs should track these preferences to create targeted marketing efforts aimed specifically toward members’ preferences. For instance, if point-of-sale data indicates a large number of members show preference toward a particular vineyard, promote a wine-pairing dinner event with that vineyard and specifically target those interested members to the event.
Branding your marketing campaign is about expressing the club’s identity—its look, its atmosphere, its people, and its traditions. Branding is something that most businesses in the corporate community spend a great deal of time, money and resources on getting right—and many will say that it is the cornerstone of their success. Branding is a source of the promise to your members. It is what evokes the emotional connection that the club has for the member. Branding not only establishes identity, but it also allows organizations to establish a premium for their goods, without much challenge, based on the customer’s belief that they get a higher quality product or service with a brand name. Clubs with established brand marketing that strikes the right chord with their membership can expect to be more successful at persuading members to buy their product, event or offering—even at a premium price.
As times change, so do private club members. Changes in private club demographics can mean younger new members, members who choose to have families later in life, and older members who are more active and retiring later. The shift in these demographics can greatly affect club programming to include offerings that are more diverse and cater to many different audiences. At the same time, the advent of the Internet and digital mobile devices have all greatly quickened the pace at which these tech-savvy club members expect their information, accessed in a more convenient fashion. With all of the different demands on a member’s time and the changing face of private club members, clubs now have to change their mindsets to compete not only with each other and alternate public venues, but also have to reinforce the idea that the club is the member’s best entertainment option with greater value.
Now is the time to reflect upon how clubs are communicating and marketing their goods and services because the once fool-proof idea that members will always choose the club over other options is no longer the case. Most clubs now have the task of shifting from a passive approach to a proactive approach of establishing the club’s position in the marketplace. It has become necessary for marketing and branding of private clubs to increase in order to maintain the usage levels required to meet forecast dollars and satisfy a viable, lively club atmosphere. Suddenly, what most clubs have done very well in the past—the personalization of service to private club members—has to be stepped up a notch beyond just knowing someone’s name to knowing what they like, what they do, anticipating those needs and packaging them in a way that would make the member want to keep coming back for more. This is the challenge and the opportunity for clubs to continue a tradition of exemplary service and member loyalty.
Kirk Reese is general manager and chief operating officer at The Los Angeles Country Club and serves on NCA’s board of directors.