Learn to develop strategies to market recreation facilities or services.
The course shows you how to do things such as:
- Develop marketing and promotions to maintain or increase business;
- Manage the delivery of a service to ensure customer satisfaction;
- Monitor a membership database to ensure return business and manage complaints.
Lesson Structure
There are 10 lessons in this course:
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Introduction to Marketing
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Marketing Strategy
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Media Promotions
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Promotional Materials
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Complaints
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Managing Membership Levels
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Sponsorship & Fundraising
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Managing Events
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Managing Promotional Activities
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Delivering a market sensitive recreation service.
Aims
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Provide a basis for developing specific marketing related skills which will be developed throughout this course.
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Develop marketing strategies.
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Develop skills in dealing with the media to promote an organisation or service.
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Coordinate the production of different promotional materials.
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Coordinate the distribution of promotional materials.
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Deal with client complaints in a recreation enterprise.
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Monitor membership base to ensure retention of membership.
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Initiate and manage relationships with sponsors.
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Explain alternative methods of raising funds for a recreation event or service.
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Manage special events.
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Coordinate activities designed to increase public awareness of an organisation.
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Deliver approval for different promotional activities.
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Manage delivery of a service by a recreation, sport or fitness organisation.
What You Will Do
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Visit retail outlets to observe the marketing used for a chosen recreational product.
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Conduct a market survey, of a properly selected sample of customers, using a designed survey form, and obtaining at least 20 responses.
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Develop a marketing plan, based on market survey results.
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Develop a promotional campaign for a chosen recreational product of service.
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Write two press releases, for recreation products or services, which you are familiar with.
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Plan the distribution of this press release.
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Contact different publications which advertise recreation services or products, and obtain information about how to advertise.
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Interview the management of a recreation facility (or people responsible for marketing).
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Investigate complaints within an organisation/enterprise in the recreation industry.
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Investigate the way membership is managed in two different recreation enterprises.
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Survey the membership of a recreation, fitness or sporting club, to determine attitudes towards services provided.
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Interview a sample of members and leaders/staff from one of each of the following types of organisations; to determine reasons why people join these different types of recreation organisations.
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Contact your local government authority, and determine any legal requirements which relate to fundraising for non profit community recreation organisations, in your locality.
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Investigate the market strategies for 2 different types of special events, in your locality.
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Conduct research to determine different publications which may be relevant to the sports, recreation and leisure industries.
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Interview staff or clients of a recreation facility/enterprise with the aim of developing procedures to implement improved services for a specified facility.
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Go shopping. Take notice of how different sales staff communicate with you. Note the techniques that use (verbal and non-verbal), and how effective they are.
Demand for Services Needs Nurturing
In the 19th century, people worked longer hours, and the idea of having entertainment in the home (eg. TV, computer games) was not even considered by most people. If a recreation service was offered, it probably had little competition; and may not have needed much selling to attract a viable clientele.
Today, we are spoiled for choice. Everyone has access to lots of options for filling their leisure time; and most peopled have more leisure time to fill. All of this means that leisure services need to be sold if they are to attract clientele, generate income and remain viable.
Emotional Appeal
Psychology is often applied to marketing to understand how human emotions can be influenced. The ethics may be questionable, if you try to sell something by manipulating someones emotions. The reality though is that others are competing for your client's money, time and commitment. If those others are appealing to people's emotions and you are not; your marketing task may be all that harder (if not impossible).
It may well be that sometimes, the only way of surviving in the modern context is to embrace this approach to marketing.
A lot of research has gone into trying to understand how our emotions affect our buying behaviour. Whilst we may like to think that we make our purchases on rational decisions, the truth is our decision making is largely driven by emotions. This is what produces our (possibly irrational) brand loyalty, as discussed previously. Emotions can affect our buying behaviour in many ways. Here are some examples:
- Feelings of inadequacy or a desire for fitting into a particular social group may motivate a purchase.
- Feelings of sadness or depression may promote purchasing of comforts such as chocolate, take away food and movies, or a spending spree of new outfits and haircuts to “make yourself feel better”.
- Feeling happy might motivate you to buy flowers, or gifts for other people.
- Feeling stressed or rushed might result in you making a spontaneous purchase of something you don’t really need/want.
Why Study this Course?
This course provides a unique opportunity for upgrading your skills in Marketing, within the context of the leisure industry. It is a valuable professional development course for anyone already working as a manager in the leisure industry; and a great opportunity for others to improve their skills, career and business prospects.
