QUESTION:
How can a small independent club afford to do the marketing necessary to compete with the larger clubs, or even the chains?
ANSWER:
This is a question heard quite often. The small, or independently owned club should start, not by looking at the larger club as competition, but rather as another type of business altogether. The large club or chain will, in many instances, be selling bricks, mortar, cloth, and steel, while you, as a smaller club, should be selling relationships and human contact.
Your marketing effort should focus on starting the relationship with your members. Since you may not have a lot of money to throw at mass marketing you must use low-cost methods of getting that first touch. Once the relationship is started, then you must intensely nurture it. Since you don’t have the huge budget, you must compensate with other currencies by using a combination of creativity, human effort, and time. (Much of that, of course, would be the time of the owner, manager, or person helping with marketing and sales.)
The Shoestring Approach
By relying more on human resources than on high-cost mass marketing you can personalize better, and become more targeted. Following is a list of six of my favorite shoestring marketing tools.
1. Yard Signs: politicians and real estate agents love them – why not clubs?
2. A-Frame Announcement Boards: perfect for sidewalks and malls.
3. Auto Window Cards: business cardsized “ads” to place on driver-side car window above the door handle.
4. Presentations: build relationships and speak to local groups and organizations.
5. Free ink and airtime PR Opportunities: listen to the local radio and TV talk shows, and search through your newspaper and red-circle opportunities to get free stories, press releases and dates printed and on the air.
6. Personal, handwritten invitations with follow-up calls.
You are probably getting the idea by now. Shoestring marketing is the ability to identify and take advantage of low-cost, one-time cost, or free methods of getting your message out to the public, as well as building your brand. Every market has a truckload of shoestring opportunities. The key to success here is to build those shoestring marketing opportunities into your marketing plan, and then have the discipline to execute them as regular part of your job.
Mike Chaet, Ph.D “Clubdoc” is the Founder and President of CMS International. For a free booklet entitled 101 Marketing Tips, info on his seminars, or just to say hi! Email Clubdoc at: clubdoc@cms-clubweb.com.
