Can Millennial Golf Participation Get Out Of the Rough?
A colleague was at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville watching the final two rounds of the PGA Championship. One thing that impressed him was seeing how multiple generations of a family were watching the tournament together. He said he saw many families where the grandparents and grandchildren were golfers. However, despite his positive impression, overall participation rates tell a different story: Golf just hasn’t really caught on with millennials. Among adults ages 18 to 34 in 2013, golfing was down 13 percent from its 2009 level. At the same time, this group’s participation in “active sports,” such as running, was up 29 percent. According to one analyst, millennials see golf as expensive and time consuming. Further, it doesn’t reflect the values of diversity and inclusion, which are important to many millennials. Retail shrinkage This lack of interest is having a ripple effect through the economy. Dick’s Sporting Goods has laid off more than 400 golf professionals and is shrinking the footprint of its golf departments. Sales are down at equipment manufacturers as well and some 160 courses closed down in 2013. These problems aren’t going unaddressed and I really like one approach that the PGA is taking: crowdsourcing the problem. The PGA established hackgolf.org to collect ideas how the sport can be improved. Visitors can input their ideas in 10 different categories, including “getting introduced to the game,” “playing your round,” and “golfing socially.” Crowdsourcing has proven its value in a wide range of other venues, perhaps it can do the same for golf. Golf participation peaked at 30 million in 2003. It’s probably worth noting that 2003 was about the same time Tiger Woods was reaching his apex in star power across popular culture. Today’s phenom, Rory McIlroy, who’s from Northern Ireland, probably doesn’t have the clout in the US to draw millions of new players into the game – especially after breaking off his engagement with Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. Half a round better than none The USGA is trying some marketing strategies that you and I would be likely to attempt when we see sales falling off: it’s discounting. To beat the high cost of a round of golf, as well as decrease the time commitment, the USGA has founded its Play 9 campaign that encourages golfers to play nine holes. This brings the typical cost – including cart – down to around $23, compared to $52 for 18 holes. While this is a traditional approach to revving up sales, the PGA isn’t adverse to pushing the envelope. It has even experimented with a 15-inch-hole to make putting much easier. The regulation 4.25-inch hole is rather famous for giving players – even pros – terminal cases of the yips. We’ll see if any of these ideas work. Sometimes lost business never returns. However, as millennials blow out their knees running and eventually get bored with yoga, perhaps they will naturally come back to golf – especially if it remains a great place to deepen relationships with business associates. Image: By Emi Yañez from Barcelona, Spain (| golf |) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia...
read moreShould Your Business Welcome Legally Carried Guns?
There are some social issues in our country that are just downright contentious and even after years of public debate, sides seem as polarized as ever. Most don’t impact the small business owner, but gun law is an area that some owners need to consider. State and local gun laws are changing rapidly right now and in many states it is fairly easy to obtain a concealed carry permit and when this is so, usually businesses have the option to prohibit guns in their establishments. Generally, this requires posting a sign at entrances. An informal survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal found that while larger chain restaurants tend to prohibit guns, there’s a trend among smaller restaurants to allow guns and even encourage them. You’ll find promotions like “Second Amendment Wednesday” and signs welcoming gun owners at restaurants in states with more liberal concealed carry permit laws. Some restaurants offer discounts to gun toters. Three points to consider There are three issues to consider when formulating your own policy. First, make sure you understand state and local laws in your area. Second, you need to consider the attitude of your customers. Third, you should consider the safety of your customers. (Listing this third does not imply it is any less important; however, there are some legal issues that may not be fully settled right now that you need to think about.) Getting on the right side of your local laws should not be a problem, whether you want to prohibit, encourage or just take a neutral attitude about the legal possession of guns at your business. Regarding the attitude of your customers, I need to say that I haven’t seen any boycotts organized by gun control groups against businesses that allow guns. However, I have seen some local businesses get into hot water with pro-gun patrons when they have banned guns. While the exposure may not be great, making a sudden move to ban guns could cause a local controversy. The owner of T-Bonz steakhouse in Augusta, Georgia got into trouble with a gun ban and had to walk it back. “I come up and see a sign on your door that says you don’t allow weapons, I’m going to honor your sign, but then I’m also not going to come into your establishment,” is how local resident Jennifer Seymour put it. After a social media dust up, T-Bonz overturned its own ban. Preventing self defense The safety issue is just beginning to get some attention. Here’s the thinking: If a state allows its residents to carry concealed weapons for their own protection, and your business prohibits them, are you then at risk if someone who would have been armed is attacked at your business? Businesses must take measures to help assure customer safety. That’s why we put out orange safety cones when the floor is wet. After a shooting outside of a Jackson, Mississippi convenience store that prohibits guns, David Butts, an attorney from Tupelo, said this: “…what about the situation where a customer, legally armed, either openly or with a concealed carry permit, disarms themselves to do business in the ‘no firearms’ business and is injured or killed by some gun-wielding thug intent on committing a crime? What does the owner’s duty of ‘reasonable care’ to protect...
read moreWhat You Can Learn From the Facebook Buy Button
When talking about global economics, for years it has been said that “when the United States sneezes, the world gets pneumonia.” I don’t know if that is quite as true today as it was 10 years ago, but in the social medial world, Facebook is the “United States” and whenever it does something, the whole world notices with rapt attention, and that’s the way it has been recently with the announcement of its new “buy button.” Will it or won’t it be successful? That’s what most of the analysis focuses on. Right now, only a handful of big businesses will have the opportunity to try it out. For the overwhelming majority of small business owners, the important lessons to learn revolve around the “why” questions. If if is successful, why is it succeeding? If it fails, why is it failing? In either case, how can I use that information? The sales funnel Virtually every sales professional understands the sales funnel. You draw prospects into a series of interactions that lead to closing a sale. The length of the sales funnel depends on the product and the industry, and obviously the shorter the better—as long as sales aren’t lost. If the Facebook buy button generates good sales, then it represents perhaps the shortest sales funnel this side of the bells on an ice cream truck. The Facebook post that features the product and the buy button, by its very nature, will not contain very much information about the product itself. In other words, the seller doesn’t really have any space to create compelling content to get the buyer to respond to the call to action. Therefore, if these succeed, their success must in large part rest on the ability of Facebook and the seller to identify the precise audience segment primed to make the purchase. Revenue share or paid placement? However, there is one caveat to this: If Facebook implements a revenue sharing model, even moderate success could keep it alive. It would just need to do better than the gift card selling program that Facebook is shutting down to make way for the buy button. If the buy button is successful, it underscores the importance of streamlining the online buying procedure. In that case Internet retailers would be wise to reexamine their procedures and cut out any extraneous steps required before the purchase is actually complete. Success would also reinforce the importance of mobile devices in the e-commerce world. Facebook has recently made tremendous inroads into the mobile world and this would be reflected in its buy-button beta. If it does well, you can assume much of its success is coming from mobile buyers. Do you need to be there too? If the Facebook experiment doesn’t do so well, then it tells us that Facebook’s analytics, demographics and segmentations aren’t where they need to be. But again, if it’s a no-risk revenue share proposition, then maybe we don’t care. It would depend on the cut Facebook wants. We’ll be watching… I suggest we all keep an eye on what kinds of sellers Facebook selects during this rollout. You know full well that they will be targeting the sellers who they believe have the highest probability of success. If you see any of your competitors, or related businesses included in...
read moreSee the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
August. Often called the dog days of summer. A fairly ordinary month. Vacation winds down, kids go back to school. Summer is ending but fall is still a little way off. But this August is extraordinary. A good portion of genius and certainly excellence in any endeavor is to be able to recognize the extraordinary within the ordinary. While everyone else sleepwalks through life, those who strive for excellence notice the details. They see things that never catch the eye of the masses. Claude Monet took the pedestrian field of haystacks and turned them into 25 works of art that today adorn the walls of the world’s greatest museums. How many people walked by those haystacks every day and never gave them a second thought, never noticed how the light reflected off them at different times of the day, never even saw the different patterns created by their shadows? This August is extraordinary. In a world of beige boxes, Steve Jobs saw that the ordinary desktop PC had extraordinary potential with merely the addition of color. The blueberry iMac was born. How many millions of designers walked by dull PCs every day and never recognized the potential they had when they were given a fresh coat of paint? Being able to see the extraordinary within the ordinary is the key to creativity and creativity is the key to setting your small business above the rest. Let the others keep walking past the beige computers and haystacks as they stare at their feet and take no notice of their surroundings. You need to notice the details. Are there qualities in your employees that you overlook? Notice them and develop them. Are their other applications for your product? Is there an area where your customers or clients are underserved? You’re probably ushering your small business through the dog days of summer, completely unaware of how this August is extraordinary. It’s so extraordinary in fact, that another August like this one won’t come our way again for 823 years. That qualifies as extraordinary in anyone’s book. Have you figured it out yet? August 2014 has five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays. Be honest, would you have noticed that had I not told you? But now you know. Take the idea and make your August an extraordinary month in the history of your business. Image: Claude Monet [Public domain], via Wikimedia...
read moreMillennials and Trade Shows: Like Water and Oil?
It’s a self-canceling activity: A businessperson wandering the aisles of a trade show, eyes fixed on a glowing 4-inch screen and thumbing the “keyboard” of a smartphone. This little image leads us to a discussion of two sides of an important issue concerning Millennials, Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers and trade shows: Millennials and Gen-Xers need to appreciate the importance of events such as trade shows and develop the personal skills required to make them valuable to business, and Trade show organizers and exhibitors need to develop strategies that attract younger generations of professionals and strengthen their messages. I don’t have hard figures, but I suspect that trade show attendance by Millennials and Gen-Xers isn’t at the same rate as it has been for Baby Boomers. I say this because I sense quite a lot of action addressing my second point above—planners are going out of their way trying to attract this younger crowd. Social skills status update Younger professionals are extraordinarily adept at the “social” skills as long as the word “social” is followed by the word “media.” I think they need to see trade shows as the original social media or as social media “with skin on.” Ann Pigoni recently wrote that there are some Baby Boomer skills that Millennials need to pick up on, including the art of small talk, and it’s the art of small talk that often serves one well in the trade show environment. Small talk in the virtual world hinges on the ability to decipher cryptic text message abbreviations; in the real world, it’s the ability to engage people of all ages from many walks of life in interesting conversation that lays the foundation for building a relationship. Baby Boomers are expert in this skill and often less proficient at electronic communications. Many younger businesspeople rely on electronic communications because that is where they feel more comfortable. Professionals who can master effective communication through both channels will have a distinct advantage in the marketplace. #Keeptalking For trade show organizers and exhibitors, it’s critical to bring their infrastructure and their appeal into the digital age. Handing out brochures may be less important than being able to quickly download product information, or join a Twitter conversation on a hot topic. Before and after trade show appearances, continuing the conversation in the social media is smart. Remember how you used to make all of those followup calls after trade shows? Today, social media is an important adjunct to that effort. For many companies, it’s common to have invested in the standard trade show stand regalia 10 years ago and continue to drag it out, year after year. If that describes you, it’s probably time for a complete redesign. Hire a Millennial to help you with the redesign! Trade shows go back to the Middle Ages and I’m confident they will continue to be important through the Digital Age, Information Age, New Media Age and beyond, and I’m excited to see how young leaders will transform them to meet changing needs and attitudes. Image: “CeBIT 2000 exhibition hall.” Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia...
read more