When your primary objective is to sell more memberships the most common method is to go to market with a discount campaign. “No Joining Fee”, “First 6 months free” kind of messages. This is one way to get a quick uptake in membership, but it doesn’t do much for your long-term strategy. What about creating a membership that is so desired that you create a waiting list? Wouldn’t this give you a longer-term plan that would deliver you memberships now and long into the future. Can this be done? You bet it can.
STEP 1: Don’t discount
The first step in creating an exclusive style of membership is to move away from the discount model. Don’t under any circumstances offer discount promotions. Instead look to introduce value-add promotions. e.g. Become a Member today and receive six months worth of private lessons (value $720). Alternatively, don’t offer promotions at all. Instead have an evergreen campaign that focuses on benefits, quality and creates a sense of “I have to be there” ongoing.
STEP 2: Create a flagship event
If you have an annual event that you currently run, look to boosting this with some mega sponsorship and big names to attract a big audience. Make this event so fabulous that it books out every year and gets people talking about your Club. This is a time when you can showcase your venue as the place to be, and let people see for themselves why they should be a Member of your Club.
If you don’t currently have this event, then create one. Create an event that runs every year at a popular time of year when your venue is looking its best. Get a committee of champions to help you run this event and make it the best it can be.
Don’t forget to have a plan in place to capture leads at this flagship event. There’s no point having people come for that one time and then never hear from you again. It can be as simple as having a promotions person asking for email sign ups at a registration. Ideally you’ll be capturing them online as they book, but some of you might not be set up for that yet.
STEP 3: Have an opening time
When membership is open all year round there’s limited waiting time for people to come on board. They get instant gratification. When a membership is only open at certain times it creates an air of exclusivity around it. It makes the applicant feel like they’re on a special list. This doesn’t mean that you have to stop people coming to your Club during this waiting period. You could perhaps create an interim option so that they can participate in the Club in a certain capacity until their membership comes up for approval.
STEP 4: Nurture your lead
When you have a customer show interest in joining as a Member, it’s important that you wine and dine this person. I don’t mean literally wining and dining them, but nurturing them through regular contact and welcoming messaging. To achieve this, you need systems in place to capture email addresses and phone numbers when someone is at the early interest phase, and then you need a regular touchpoint campaign that leads them through a process to become a paying Member.
Talk to your lead as a valued Member of your community before they’ve even joined. Find out as much as you can about them so that you can talk to them in a way that they will feel like you know them. After all, one of the key reasons a person with join a Club is to have a sense of belonging. Give them that sense of belonging from the moment they contact you and you’ll stand a higher chance of converting these leads into paying Members.
STEP 5: Keep up the messaging
When you’re talking to your Members and talking about your Members, remind them through your use of language about the privilege it is to be a Member of your Club. Keep the words friendly, warm and welcoming, but also include adjectives like exclusive, privilege, limited, unique, honoured etc.
It’s not just through the messaging that you’ll get this point across. It’s also in the quality of the imagery that accompanies the messaging that this will be achieved. Make your website, your social media posts, and of course your venue consistent with beautiful imagery. People respond to beautiful things. It’s worth the effort.
STEP 6: Deliver on the promise
It’s not just about creating buzz around membership at your Club, you then need to deliver. A constant focus on excellent customer service, at every touch point should be at the forefront of your mind. Set the bar high, and exceed it. You need consistent improvement in all areas of your service so that the Members feel like they’ve achieved something exclusive, and will tell their friends about it too.
One of the best things you can do on a regular basis is put yourselves in the shoes of your customer. Pretend you are coming into contact with your Club for the very first time and walk yourself through the steps that customer would take. How does it feel? Is it user-friendly? Is there anything that could be done better?
I would recommend you do this process as a person looking for membership, someone who has just joined as a Member, and current Members. I did this recently for a Club and found that the location map didn’t work correctly so I would have got lost if I didn’t already know where I was going. This is not a great introduction to your venue for a new visitor. I’ve been to websites recently where the contact phone number was incorrect, and we’re just talking absolute basics. Unless you pretend you’re new to it, you’ll glance over these fundamentals without realising it.
Summary
Above all, think outside your normal square and look for new ways to grow your membership. It’s not enough to copy everyone else and hope for the best. You need to think about your product and what is truly unique about it. What are the things that make your Club the best place to be a Member? Is the coffee, the service, the view, the location, the Members, the quality of the golf course, or something else? Make sure that you know, and let everyone else know about it too.
This isn’t a quest that you can accomplish overnight, but if it’s something that you have in mind for your Club then start to put into practise some of these steps and you can create a membership that has people coming to you now and long into the future.
