Phil Scally is the owner, manager, superintendent and PGA head professional at Scally’s Golf Center in Moon Township, Pa., a 2012 GRAA Top 50 Stand Alone Range.
Phil Scally on the importance of using LivingSocial to lure in new customers:
Last spring I began to explore ways to try to increase business and exposure for my facility and I turned to LivingSocial for help. I’ve always heard about people who saw my facility while driving but never stopped to come in, and I hoped that using LivingSocial would reverse that trend. It has. Since last spring we’ve put three different offers onto the site, both in the spring and fall, focusing on times when the kids were in school and our business slows. We offered 50 percent off a half-basket of balls and a round at our nine-hole par-3 course, a total value of $13, which the customer could purchase for $6. Our second offer was for four players to play our pitch and putt golf course, which totals $24 normally but was available for $12. And finally, our third offer was for two players on our mini-golf course, a total cost of $12 that they could buy for $6.
Phil Scally on the business impact of using LivingSocial to lure in new customers:
The business impacts have been wide-reaching. The great thing about LivingSocial is that unlike coupons, as soon as the person presses “buy” on their screen, we get paid, whether they walk through our doors or not. Using LivingSocial’s online dashboard, a system that allows you view every data point imaginable for your offer (including demographics), we know that 1,100 people total so far have bought our offers, and roughly 440 people (or 40 percent) of them have never been here before. Of the aforementioned 1,100 people, between 50-60 percent actually walk through our doors, and 25 percent of those people will spend money on things other than what they bought on LivingSocial, such as food & beverage. In addition, LivingSocial allows our customers to give feedback, which can be crucially important to making our facility the best it can possibly be. Our business is heavily weather dependent, so making other correlations can be tough to come by. However, we do feel confident that we’ve seen increases in sales, lessons from both adults and juniors and food & beverage that are, in some way, attributable to LivingSocial. I want to also stress that the interface is really easy to use for even non-tech savvy people. So if you’re at a facility that may be in a similar situation to ours, this may be an opportunity you want to look at.
