Marketing for Golf Courses Archives

At the end of the year, the 19th Hole Media team gets together to reflect on our successes and failures throughout the year. This meeting gives us an opportunity to fine-tune our direction and set new goals for the upcoming year. These are the Top 10 things we accomplished in 2015.

Top 10 of 2015

10. Share Your Passion Scholarships

Since starting the Share Your Passion Scholarships in 2012, we’ve awarded scholarships to 17 deserving students. We have kept in contact with many scholarship winners and are still inspired by them. They continue to work towards following their passions and helping better the lives of others. This year we awarded 3 Share Your Passion Scholarships and gave out our first Student of the Year Scholarship Award to one of the hardest working students at The Tutoring Solution.

9. TV Appearance

Zeb appeared on the Golf Life Video Channel for Fox Sports WEST. It was pretty darn cool to get on television.

8. Joined the Rotary Club

Zeb was inducted into the Chino Rotary Club by Melinda Robbins, Dale Bright, and Steven Bremer. The Chino Rotary Club has been serving the Chino Valley since 1925. San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman spoke and my wife, Cindy, mom, Annie, and dad, Larry were all in attendance.

7. Speaking Engagements

One of the things we enjoy most is educating others on growing their business. This year Zeb spoke with the San Bernardino County Workforce Investment Board, the Inland Empire Small Business Development Center, the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce, Baldy View ROP, Small Business Summit, the California Golf Course Owners Association and the Golf Inc. Summit.

Topics for Zeb’s Speaking Engagements were:

Internet Marketing Strategies
Marketing with Facebook
How to Turn Your Business Into a Social Business
Marketing with LinkedIn
Marketing with Twitter
Social Media for Golf Courses
Innovative Marketing Tactics for Public Courses

6. #GolfChat

At the beginning of this year Zeb started #GolfChat. #GolfChat is a Twitter chat which happens every Tuesday at 5PM PST where some of the greatest minds in the golf industry come together to talk golf. #GolfChat has grown drastically since the beginning of the year and is a trending topic on Twitter every Tuesday. We’ve met so many amazing and passionate people working to grow golf. A highlight of #GolfChat in 2015 was when professional golfer, Natalie Gulbis surprised #GolfChatters by giving away free tickets to the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay Golf Course.

5. Awards and Accolades

It’s always nice to be recognized for the hard work you do. This year we were extremely grateful to receive a few unexpected awards:

Top 9 Game Changers by Southland Golf Magazine
10 Most Innovative People in Golf Marketing by Golf Inc. Magazine
Top 100 Podcasts that Will Make You Smarter, Better and Wiser by Inc. Magazine
Silent Partner of the Year by the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce

4. Southern California Charity Golf Classic

We hosted the 1st Annual Southern California Charity Golf Classic to raise money for several worthy charities on July 17 at Los Serranos Country Club.

With help from many in our community, the tournament helped raise $7,597.81 for charity.

We distributed the money to several charities including: Bark for Life, Boys Republic, California Scholastic Press Association, Chino Rotary, Corona Firefighters Benevolent Fund, House of Ruth, The Let It Be Foundation, Salvation Army, Share Your Passion Scholarship, and the Wounded Warrior Project.

We had such a great time with this, we’re planning on running it again in 2016!

3. Chairman of the Board at the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce

On July 27, Zeb was installed as Chairman of the Board for the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Becoming the Chairman of the Board has given Zeb an opportunity to help make local business owners more successful.

During his term of office, he set five goals to work towards in 2015/2016:

connect and work with other local business-related organizations
collaborate more with organizations that work to educate business owners
encourage and promote the involvement of young business owners in our community
enhance our use of technology
focus more on giving back

2. Lacey Gets Married

In August this year Lacey got married to Ryan Bernholtz at a fun wedding in Santa Ana, CA.

In June, Lacey’s twin brother, Rocky married Megan Hutchinson at a beautiful wedding in Corona, CA.

Truly a notable year for the Welborn Family and there was another addition to family this year…

#1. Birth of Sebastian Welborn-De La Torre

Sebastian Welborn-De La Torre was born on Friday, November 13th at 9:52pm in Ontario at 8 pounds, 9 ounces.

Sebastian is a happy, healthy, and super cute baby.

Zeb says it’s awesome being a dad.

Thank you all for everything! We hope you all have an amazing 2016.

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Jeremy White, CEO of Connect Golf

Marketing is, at its simplest, working out what people need and communicating that your product can serve them. Given the barrage of marketing messages, most people are switched off to traditional mediums, so it’s key to build the awareness first and that happens best in places where people are engaged. Mostly online communities. Only then might they switch on and start listening to what you’re saying.

You don’t need a college degree to figure it out. Common sense is all that’s needed and you’ve got that in bucketloads. Plus the courage to actually get out and give it a shot. No doubt there are plenty of history teachers and others who have a good idea to fill a niche, but they never have the guts to quit their jobs and carpe diem the heck out of their idea.

When I started building Connect Golf, I knew it needed to be attached to a community, but also knew communities were, understandably, suspicious of brands. It is also difficult to find communities without agendas. They exist, but it none represent the greater golfing demographic. The bigger social media platforms have some large communities when you look it on pure member numbers. However you can’t filter out the brands and individuals doing not-so-subtle self-promotion stuff or even the randoms posting pics of themselves on their latest golf holiday. Let me rephrase that, you can filter them, but you can’t be bothered. Most members aren’t even active and a post’s visibility is questionable to say the least.

It’s quite a coincidence, but true all the same, that I came to the view that a Twitter chat for golf was needed to solve most of the issues noted above – excepting the occasional and to be honest quite brilliant moderator stunts involving surprise female pro golfers and car brands (I’m a huge marketing cynic, but was happily tweeting with @lexus mentions). I realised that being a wannabe brand, doing it myself would probably lack credibility with participants, but the very next week I came across month 2 of #Golfchat. Problem solved!

Your role, experience, podcast, website, Twitter account etc. is based around the personal brand of Zeb Welborn, so while most people get that part of the exercise is to grow your own brand, they’re fine with that because they can see, hear and read the story behind it. Done for the right reasons and you’re building a no-nonsense community with golf at the core.

At the door to many online golf communities you have to read a heap of rules about what not to do on those platforms or forums, but with #GolfChat there’s none of that, yet people instinctively know how to behave. Yes we all want more business or more subscribers or more readers or more impressions or whatever, but the #GolfChatters generally understand that the way to build a brand via social media is to participate. Just participate and not sell. Pure and simple, we just talk golf and that’s cool from the perspective that we’re not in our usual sales mode. As John from @golfbloggercom would say, we’re just sitting at the #GolfChat bar and talking about the sport.

I’m usually your one paragraph email kinda guy who has a hard time not communicating a sense of rudeness due to brevity, but I look up here and have written a fricking novel about the things you’re doing right. I truly believe that what you’re doing is the best strategy to bring all the golf influencers together on a single platform for discussion.

Sincerely. Well done mate. Two thumbs up.

Jeremy White, CEO Connect Golf