Karl Gross, the 2011 Georgia PGA Junior Golf Leader or the Year, is the PGA head professional at The Creek at Hard Labor in Social Circle, Ga.

To encourage repeat business, we give all participants in our outings a “Come Back and Play” coupon. The coupon is valid for one month from the outing date and has special rates during weekdays and weekends. The idea came from shopping at a Kohl’s department store.  They give customers a coupon for 20-30 percent off of a future purchase within set dates. We thought that would be a good idea and began doing the same at our facility, offering a $9 discount off green fees. It is a value-added item to all tournament players and builds loyalty. We use colored card stock so the coupons can only be used once.  It also allows us to easily track how many repeat customers each outing generates.

30-40 percent of distributed coupons are redeemed, which is a good number since promotion cost is minimal. It helps the bottom line in all areas, such as merchandise sales, equipment sales, and food & beverage, and has increased our outing participation. It has also increased our foot traffic by roughly 10 percent. We are also experiencing an increase in rounds played by 7 percent over last year. That additional traffic has helped to make up the difference in discounts with the increase in rounds played and additional food & beverage and merchandise sales. In addition, as a public facility that offers memberships, it has help to expose our facility to a wider group of people. As a result, monthly and quarterly memberships have increased by 18 percent.