Most golf courses don't have a demand problem. Golfers want to play. They just need a reason to pick your course, at this time, instead of the one they always play.
I've run marketing for golf destinations like Golf Mesquite Nevada and Golf Summerlin, and for The Ranches Golf Club, which grew from 58 members to 700. The ideas below are the ones I keep coming back to. None of them are tricks. They're the basics, done consistently.
1. Show golfers what it feels like to play your course
Golfers choose courses with their eyes. A scorecard and three stock photos don't sell a round. Video of your signature holes, the view from the 7th tee and the patio at sunset does.
You don't need a movie. You need a library of short, honest clips:
- A 20–30 second tour of your best holes
- One clip per signature hole, shot at the best time of day
- Clubhouse, food and drink, and the practice facility
- Real golfers having a good time (with permission)
Those clips become your ads, your social posts and your website hero. One good shoot can feed months of marketing.
2. Treat your Google Business Profile like a second website
When someone searches "golf courses near me" or "golf in Salt Lake City," the map results show up before any website. Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a golfer sees.
Make sure it has:
- Accurate hours, including seasonal changes
- A direct link to your tee time booking page
- Fresh photos every month, not the same five from 2019
- Replies to every review, good and bad
This is free and it's one of the highest-return things a course can do.
3. Make booking a tee time stupidly easy
Every extra click costs you rounds. Your website should have a booking button visible on every page, on every phone, without scrolling. Rates should be easy to find. If a golfer has to hunt for how much it costs or when they can play, they'll book somewhere else.
Check your own site on your phone right now. Count the taps to book a Saturday morning round. If it's more than three, fix that before spending a dollar on ads.
4. Market the empty slots, not the full ones
Your Saturday 8am tee times sell themselves. The weekday afternoons and shoulder-season mornings don't.
Look at your tee sheet and find the patterns. Then aim specific offers at specific gaps:
- Twilight rates promoted to people who work nearby
- Weekday deals for retirees and shift workers
- Junior and family times in summer
- Stay-and-play packages with local hotels for destination courses
General "come play golf" ads are expensive. Ads that solve a specific gap are cheaper and easier to measure.
5. Run paid ads to golfers, not to everyone
Facebook and Instagram let you reach golfers within a set distance of your course, and Google Ads catches people already searching for a place to play. When I managed ad budgets for golf destinations, the money that worked hardest always had three things:
- Real video of the course, not stock footage
- A clear offer (a rate, a package, a date)
- Tracking that connected the ad to a booked round
If you can't tell which ads turned into rounds, you're guessing.
6. Build your email list and actually use it
Your best future customers are people who already played your course. Collect emails at booking and at the pro shop, then stay in touch:
- A short monthly email with course conditions, events and openings
- Birthday or anniversary offers
- "We miss you" emails to golfers who haven't been back in a season
- Early access to tournament and league sign-ups
Email is cheap and the people reading it already like you.
7. Treat membership as its own campaign
Selling memberships is a different job from selling tee times. It's a bigger decision, made over weeks, often with a spouse involved. At The Ranches, membership growth came from treating it like a real sales process:
- Open houses and member-for-a-day events
- Clear membership tiers with plain-English pricing
- Content that shows the community, not just the course
- Fast, personal follow-up on every inquiry
If a membership lead waits two days for a reply, it's gone.
8. Turn events into content and content into bookings
Tournaments, leagues, scrambles, junior camps and charity events are marketing gold. Film them. Post the highlights. Use the footage to promote the next one. Every event should feed the next round of marketing.
9. Partner with your local tourism and business community
Destination courses especially benefit from partnerships with hotels, tourism boards and local businesses. Shared packages, cross-promotion and co-op ad budgets can stretch your marketing dollars a long way. Some of the most effective campaigns I've run started as partnerships.
10. Plan for the season you're in
In Utah, winter changes everything. Courses that go quiet in November and reappear in April lose ground every year. Use the off-season to:
- Sell gift cards and early-bird memberships for the holidays
- Promote simulators, lessons or clubhouse events if you have them
- Shoot and edit content for spring
- Fix the website and booking flow before the rush
The courses that win spring are the ones that planned it in January.
Where to start
If you only do three things this month, do these:
- Fix your Google Business Profile and booking link
- Shoot a small library of real course video
- Pick your emptiest tee times and run one focused offer to fill them
If you want help building that into a full plan, that's what we do. We work with courses in Utah and beyond on video, ads, SEO and websites, all built around your tee sheet.