Are Paid Social Ads Right for Your Golf Course Marketing?

Spoiler alert: Yes! Paid social ads are a great fit for any golf course’s marketing. In fact, social advertising is something every local business SHOULD be doing, but many don’t know how and can’t afford to hire agencies to do it for them.

That applies to golf course operators, who must concentrate on providing the best experience to golfers and do the operations and maintenance tasks that require full-time attention. We know how overwhelming the world of social media advertising can be, but we’ve got your back with a few super easy ways to get your course’s name out there!

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Hitching your golf cart to social media

Before we get into the value and advantages of social ads, let’s review for a moment why your golf course should have a general social media presence. Social ads are a subset of social media marketing, and if you don’t have a social media presence, you can’t even place ads. Social media will help you connect with the average golfer—whose head is down both on the golf swing and that ubiquitous smartphone.

If you haven’t already, you need to get in on that action. Hitching your golf marketing to the star of social media can open paths of communication to your golfers. Want to instantly broadcast details on your golf club competitions and the winners? How about course conditions and upcoming events? Connecting with your customers on social media creates a fast-broadcast tool to keep your golfers informed, entertained, and enthusiastic.

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Navigating paid social advertising

Once you’re ready to go on social media, you can get ready to put some inexpensive advertisements out onto the platform.

You’ll likely need some assistance in starting and maintaining your ad campaign, but the bottom line is that your golf course can post a paid ad that targets people who have shown an interest in golf, and who live within a certain zip code or radius. Or, if local golfers aren’t your intended market, you can send it across the country as part of your chamber of commerce business and tourist attraction goals.

With social advertising, you create and deploy clickable ads that can show up on platforms like other companies’ websites, social media sites, and email campaigns.


Making the most of social advertising

Social ads stimulate more inbound traffic.

Just as blogs reach out to those who use or are looking for your website, social ads reach further outside your loyal band of golfers.

For every social media profile added to your marketing mix, you have another gateway to your website. The audience you’ll reach depends on the social media strategy you choose and how well-designed and well-placed your ads are.

Social ads are far less expensive, but you have to know the territory.

Social media networks are free to use, and in one sense they are free advertising. Paid ads are an additional outreach at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. Nevertheless, online advertising can be a complicated venture.

Google, for example, runs pay-per-click ads with laser-like focus driving traffic to advertisers’ landing pages. The advertisers’ cost-per-click computation employs an arcane process known as an ad auction. The ad auction is an algorithm that helps chooses which ads and in what order the Google results page will display when someone does a keyword search.

Social ads let you measure how well your ad campaign is doing.

Social ad marketers can measure campaign performance. They can count the ad clicks, see how often your golf course is mentioned on social media and relate those analytics to your website performance. With those tools, you can refine your social ad campaign strategy quickly at a low cost.

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Applying this to your business

We get it—the world of social media and paid social advertising is an intimidating one. With new tools at your fingertips comes a whole new set of skills for you or your team to learn. But with time and effort, you can make social advertising work for you and bring in new customers, new revenue, and new experiences to your course.


If you’re still unsure if you’re ready to take on paid social ads, foreUP Marketing Services might be the tool for you. Our paid advertising management is just one component in our wide array of marketing services for golf course managers.

If you’re interested in learning more about how our hands-on marketing services can help your course specifically, request a demo and see how our skilled marketers can get your course’s advertisements up and running.