For golf resorts and destinations looking to attract golf travellers from specific countries, there are now more ways than ever to target customers directly. Golf venues in Spain and Portugal, for example, have long relied on tour operators based in target markets in northern and central Europe, including the UK, Scandinavia, Germany and the Benelux countries. With Geo-Targeting, as part of a wider digital marketing strategy, golf destinations can now target those customer directly, driving measurable, high-yielding business. Here’s how:
What is Geo-Target Marketing?
Geo-Targeting is the delivery of personalised advertising content within a defined geographic boundary, aimed at prospective clients who meet a specified criterion. This enables golf resorts to offer relevant content in prospective clients’ native language, during specific time periods, driving higher visibility, increased website traffic, and greater accessibility from target markets to your resort all-year round.
Geo-Targeting has become widely accessible on platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Whether a high or low advertisement spend budget, Geo-Targeting enables highly targeted lead generation, driving meaningful engagement and lucrative ROI.
The Benefits of Geo-Targeting to Golf Resorts and Destinations?
1. Increases the Quality of Traffic to your Website: Geo-Targeting enables campaigns to run in a specific location, at a specific time where your prospects are in abundance, resulting in higher levels of targeted traffic to your website and greater campaign ROI.
2. All-Year-Round Marketing of Seasonal Products and Services: Golf is a seasonal sport in most countries. Geo-Targeting enables resorts to reach prospective golfers during their off-season and during key holiday periods, influencing decisions to travel.
3. Target Specific Demographics: Is there a specific membership category you’ve quota for? Have you been host venue to a major tournament? Geo-Targeted campaigns enable you to reach highly specific demographics (age, gender, occupation, affluence, geographic location) to ensure relevant lead generation in-line with your resort’s USP (Unique Selling Point).
4. Target Specific Countries and Native Languages: The combination of Geo-Targeted paid search campaigns in the language your prospects speak, translated online content and increased marketing activity within key local holiday periods will pay dividends. Resorts should expect to benefit from higher customer visibility, increased website traffic and more targeted accessibility from key markets to your resorts.
5. Lower Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Costs: PPC campaigns can be expensive for resorts with a smaller budget. Geo-Targeting is an efficient way to run highly targeted ads with a much more effective ROI.
Creating a Geo-Target Campaign – Top Tips for Golf Resorts:
Step 1: Define Your Audience
The first step of Geo-Targeting is gaining an understanding of your audience. Begin by identifying the sources of traffic to your website from different locations.
Head over to Google Analytics, head to Audience, click on Geo, and then Location. You’ll see a list of countries where your website traffic is generated from, which can be broken down by region and city by clicking on the result of each country. These results will help curate a highly targeted ad for an engaged audience relevant to your golf resort.
Step 2: Focus on Specific Locations
Once you have data insights about your traffic location, it’s time to focus on tailoring your strategy by location. For those countries you receive high volumes of traffic, you can create tailored deals and offers to drive conversion rates from that location. For those key target markets with lower volumes of traffic, this is your opportunity to adopt a different strategy to increase traffic from that location to achieve key objectives (for example, stay & play golf breaks, real estate sales or overseas memberships).
Step 3: Set Campaign Objectives
Without clear objectives, it will be difficult to create a succinct marketing strategy. Be clear on the desired outcomes, whether it be green fee, membership, real estate focused, or a combination of the three within key markets. Specific objectives will help measure the success of your campaign.
Step 4: Optimise Website Content
Most consumers search in their native language, making a tailored approach vital. Make sure your website’s content is optimised for visitors from different locations by translating online content and creating ads in the native language of your target audience. This should help translate into higher customer visibility, increased website traffic and more targeted accessibility from key markets to your resorts.
Let’s discuss how your golf resort can maximise revenues from key target markets in 2023 & 2024. – Josh@thevenandigroup.com