The Courses That Win Aren’t Doing More. They’re Doing Less Better.

MORNING ROUND: Issue #001

Here’s Where We’re At

April arrived. The season is opening, the calendars are filling, and I’m watching a lot of courses scramble to do everything at once.

New promo. New platform. New idea every Monday.

Here’s what we’ve learned: the courses that win aren’t doing more. They’re doing less — but doing it with discipline. The best marketing programs we’ve ever built had no more than five things on the list, not fifty. Pick your plays. Run them. Repeat.

It may seem boring, but relentless “boring” execution wins every time.

What We Saw

Chambers Bay had a reputation problem — except the problem wasn’t their reputation.

Everyone knew the name. 2015 US Open. Stunning Pacific Northwest layout. A course on every serious golfer’s bucket list. The problem? That reputation wasn’t converting at it’s fullest potential.

We weren’t there to make them famous. They already were. We were there to build a demand strategy that matched the right audience to the right message — and created a clear, trackable path from awareness to booking.

The result was measurable revenue lift with clear attribution. Fame isn’t a marketing strategy. Conversion is. Conversion wins every time.

→ [Read the full Chambers Bay breakdown here]

Steal This

Patagonia has never run a “buy our jackets” campaign. They run a worldview. Their “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad — telling customers to consume less — is one of the most studied pieces of marketing in the last 20 years.

• The takeaway: Your course has a story that isn’t about golf. Find it. The courses who lead with identity outperform the ones who lead with price every single time.
• What it was: A full-page NYT ad actively discouraging a purchase
• Why it worked: It made their values undeniable — and their audience trusted them completely because of it

Run This

Three things. All tied to revenue. All executable this week.

• Audit your homepage CTA(s). You probably have three or four of them. Pick one, at most two. Kill the rest. Confused visitors don’t book — they leave.
• Name your shoulder season goal. Not “more rounds.” How many more? At what rate? What would 400 more rounds in October be worth? If you can’t answer that, your marketing has no target.
• Pull your booking-engine click rate. From social, from your homepage, from your email. If you don’t know this number, you don’t know if your marketing is working. Start there.

What’s On The Course

What was published this month — in case you missed it.

Your Golf Course Has No Personality. And That’s Costing You.

The Cocktail Party exercise we use with every new client. If you can’t describe your course like a person at a cocktail party, your marketing has no voice. Most courses can’t. Here’s how to fix it.

Quick Tap-ins

• Most golf marketing debates start with the wrong question.
• Our data says golfers want deals. But not the way you think.
• “We’ve got a lot of followers, we’re getting a lot of likes.”

Killer Content From The Web
(Steal these ideas)

That’s the Round

Have a great week!

— Colby & the Par Six Team