How one country club made the leap in implementing a further comprehensive marketing strategy and tripled the number of new memberships in a single year. In this case study, we will expand upon how we performed a 337% increase from our target membership goal in just 10 months.

Summary

The Club at Colony Creek is a private golf course and country club that has maintained an excellent reputation. Amenities for those who hold memberships have access to its 18-hole golf course, welcoming atmosphere, engaging social events, and the best food in Victoria. The staff here pride themselves on providing customers of every generation with enjoyable and fun-filled experiences.

“The Club” has been a consistent market leader in their facilities and is known for hosting a number of the largest “Crossroads” region (Victoria County and each adjacent county) golf tournaments over the years. However, following the economic downturn of 2008, they faced the same debacle many private clubs faced: a decline in membership. This put pressure on ownership and management forcing them to get creative to produce revenue from alternative sources such as social events.

The Club at Colony Creek responded to this obstacle by partnering with Building Brands Marketing in 2021 to take a proactive approach. Working together towards increasing membership and event revenue, The Club at Colony Creek desired a complete rebranding, implemented a search strategy, and utilized storytelling to raise additional awareness of their facility. These efforts helped to leverage targeted content across social media and lead nurturing to convert more consumers into the sales funnel. Application of these tactics with full force ultimately resulted in record-breaking growth of membership for The Club and numbers continue to remain on the increase.

Buildling Brands is Data Driven. They have consistently just blown every problem we had out of the water. For us, it has been a great relationship and we are looking forward to continuing that relationship for many many years.

Robbie Burge, Co-Owner

How We Did It

Targeted Audience Segments

As The Club’s marketing strategy evolved, BBM and The Club developed content which targets two distinct audiences:

• Prospective members—Speaking to the next generation of club members who are digitally savvy, expecting answers to their questions to be discoverable online as they navigate the consumer journey.
• Event hosts and planners (Weddings, Corporate Outings, Business Organizations, etc.)—Speaking to event-related audience segments that would be potential event prospects through targeted messaging depending on the segment.

Defined Strategy & Budget

We first had to put together a comprehensive marketing strategy with a defined budget clearly defining our KPIs, with the most critical being 40 new members per year. Needing to develop a strategy that not only would recruit new members but retain existing members, it was determined brainstorming a campaign message and a fitting tagline were to be made a priority.

A New Website

We all agreed the website was outdated and built on a subpar platform that wasn’t conducive to membership engagement. The first step began with building a new website that matched the brand perception we wanted to create for The Club at Colony Creek at theclubatcolonycreek.com.

This website was built to convert prospective members, allowing them full capability to schedule tours or book events, all the while letting existing members easily continue following daily specials or club events. This effectively showcased the facility, fully illustrating its unique value propositions without one ever needing to physically step foot on the facilities. This increased our likelihood to convert a prospect entering from one of our top-of-the-funnel tactics we would later deploy.

Using Video & Photography To Tell Stories

The course is a beautiful course. The members make The Club a place everyone wants to be. Our team knew these were two stories that needed to be told:

1) The facilities needed to be showcased and bragged on with commentation from their top-notch Golf Pro to their award-winning Chef who operates one of the most consistent dining facilities in the Crossroads region. Drone video and photo remarkably captured the course facilities while our cinematic equipment allowed for an embodied viewing experience of events and other related on-ground footage.
2) Stories provided by golf and social members recognizable by the community who had been active within the The Club for extended periods of time helped to demonstrate the many benefits, incentives, and rewards reaped by having continued their membership program.

A Search Strategy

We needed an effective, detail-oriented search strategy which would better capture prospects already searching for our services. Terms provided such as “golf course near me” or “event venue near me” helped to develop a cognizant and practical Google/Bing Pay-Per-Click campaign. We were able to bid on target keywords to gain more qualified traffic to our website that was now built to convert. In addition to this, we optimized our Google My Business profile to have stronger ranking in the Local 3 Pack, obtaining more organic search traffic in our region.

Utilizing Social Media Advertising for Prospecting & Retargeting

Not only did we want to use social media to build awareness and gain new prospects for membership and events, but we showcased some of the stories we put together through our production strategies in order to retarget individuals in the prospect pipeline to drive them through the funnel to convert.

The Traditional Layer

In a market like Victoria, Texas, it was important we continued to deploy a layered marketing approach that utilized a traditional marketing layer to build brand awareness and stay top-of-mind among the Crossroads community. We utilized a digital billboard rotation in order to increase awareness and member engagement through event promotions.

The End Result

At end of 2021, we added 134 new members in that year when our target KPI was 40 new members within that year, by end of the year. We outperformed our target membership number by 337%. Since beginning with The Club we have grown the total membership to date to 480 members and counting.

Set For The Future

Private clubs today are aware more now than ever that their digital footprint and strong online presence is the dominant driving force behind channeling success in day-to-day operations and reaching revenue objectives. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, The Club at Colony Creek’s website and inbound marketing strategies will continue to play an ever-important role in increasing prominence around golf tournaments, booking new events, securing new social memberships, and uniting golf members to gather to play the game they love, ultimately growing golf memberships. Building Brands Marketing is excited to be a valued partner, guiding and collaborating together with The Club to continue these successes.

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