Tools and Tech Ideas to Improve Your Golf Shop Sales & Engagement

Written by Ken Morton Jr., VP of Retail and Marketing at Haggin Oaks Golf Complex in Sacramento, CA

One of the great challenges of golf retail today isn’t finding good merchandise. Golf shop buyers and merchandisers are surrounded by great products. The challenge is finding new ways to make customers notice those products, interact with them, talk about them and ultimately buy them.

That was really the premise behind collecting this unique group of tools- there are an incredible number of relatively simple technologies, display ideas and marketing tools available today that can help golf retailers create a better experience without necessarily undertaking a major shop renovation or adding another person to the marketing department.

Here are a few ideas that seem particularly applicable to AGM members.

Turn Personalization Into an Experience

Personalization continues to be one of retail’s biggest opportunities because it gives the customer something they can’t easily get from every online retailer.

Make Your Displays Do Something

Golf shops traditionally rely on fixtures, mannequins, signage and vendor graphics. Those remain important, but today’s technology gives merchandisers some fascinating new ways to create movement.

Lenticular posters, for example, can display images that appear to change as customers walk past them. That makes a static sign feel interactive and provides an interesting way to show multiple products, colors or messages in the same physical space.

Turn Your Screens Into Selling Tools

Many golf shops already have televisions. The question is whether those televisions are actually helping sell merchandise.

Multi-screen digital signage systems such as EyeCatch Networks allow retailers to centrally manage digital content across screens, including retail messaging, wayfinding, promotions and product storytelling.

Imagine coordinating the screen above your footwear wall with the shoes directly beneath it. Instead of ESPN playing silently in the background, customers could see a 30-second video explaining the technology in the newest shoe, followed by a fitting message and then a promotion inviting them to try it on.

The merchandise and the marketing suddenly become part of the same presentation.

Don’t Forget the Little Details

Not every improvement needs a screen, artificial intelligence or a power cord.

Something as simple as custom hang tags can dramatically change how merchandise is perceived. Instead of relying entirely on the manufacturer’s presentation, a golf shop can add its own branding, product story, staff recommendation, local connection or even a thank-you message to selected merchandise. Custom labels and tags can help create a more cohesive, upscale presentation throughout the shop.

This is especially valuable with logo merchandise and private-label products. Customers shouldn’t feel like they are simply purchasing another shirt. They should feel like they are buying something that came specifically from your club, resort or golf facility.

Make Footwear Fitting Part of the Sale

Footwear is another category where technology can transform the shopping experience.

Volumental’s 3-D foot scanning technology captures measurements including foot length, width and arch height and can use that information to recommend appropriate sizes and styles. The technology is already licensed by golf footwear brands including Adidas, FootJoy and Mizuno.

For a merchandiser, the bigger lesson is that fitting creates a reason to purchase from the golf shop rather than simply ordering the same shoe online.

Whenever possible, ask: What service can we wrap around this product that makes buying it from us better?

Turn Your Staff Into Content Creators

Golf shops are filled with experts, but too often customers never see that expertise unless they happen to walk through the door.

New tools make capturing that knowledge remarkably easy.

A DJI Mini 4 drone, for example, can provide stabilized 4K aerial footage that can be used for everything from tournament coverage and golf-hole flyovers to showcasing a new retail display or promoting an outdoor tent sale. The presentation estimates an investment of roughly $550, making professional-looking aerial content surprisingly accessible.

Even more intriguing are Oakley Meta AI glasses, which allow employees to capture hands-free, first-person video. Imagine seeing a new shipment arrive through the eyes of your buyer, watching your merchandiser build a new display, or following a sales associate as they explain the features of a new footwear collection. That content can then be repurposed into Reels, TikToks, Shorts, blogs, training materials and customer education.

The goal isn’t necessarily polished advertising. In many cases, the most interesting content is simply letting customers see what happens behind the counter.

Use AI to Make Content Creation Easier

Most golf operations don’t suffer from a lack of things to talk about. They suffer from a lack of time to turn those things into content.

That’s where some of today’s AI tools become interesting.

Remini, for example, can enhance imperfect or lower-resolution photography and turn it into cleaner imagery for social media and marketing materials.

Seedance takes the concept further by generating video from text prompts and static product images, potentially giving retailers another way to create promotional video without a traditional production crew.

These tools don’t replace creativity. They simply reduce some of the friction between having an idea and actually publishing it.

Make Your Website Sell the Way Your Best Employee Does

Think about what happens when a customer walks into your shop and says, “I need a gift for my husband,” or “I’m looking for a new golf shoe but don’t know which one.”

A great salesperson begins asking questions.

Your website can increasingly do the same thing.

Tools such as Digioh allow retailers to build guided-selling quizzes, targeted pop-ups, lead-generation forms and personalized offers based on customer behavior. Those quizzes can help customers navigate products while simultaneously collecting useful information for future email or SMS marketing.

That opens up all kinds of golf-specific possibilities:

• “Find Your Perfect Golf Shoe”
• “Which Rain Jacket Is Right for You?”
• “Find the Perfect Member-Guest Gift”
• “What’s Your Golf Style?”
• “Which Golf Ball Fits Your Game?”

Instead of asking customers to navigate 500 products, help them narrow the decision to five.

Make Your Customers Part of Your Marketing

One of the most interesting marketing concepts is creating an experience customers want to share themselves.

ReelGOLF, for example, uses cameras positioned around Par 3 holes to capture golfers’ shots. Players scan a QR code, hit their shot and can receive video shortly afterward. That creates opportunities for closest-to-the-pin contests and other promotions while simultaneously giving golfers something they can share with friends and on social media.

That’s powerful because your customer becomes part of your marketing department.

Golf shops can apply that same philosophy inside the store. Create a great photo location. Build an oversized logo. Celebrate a major tournament. Create a putting challenge. Install an unusual display. Give customers a reason to pull their phone out of their pocket.

The Best Tool Is the One You’ll Actually Use

The temptation with new technology is to chase every shiny object. That’s not the point.

A $2,000 engraver that sits unused in the back room isn’t innovative. A $50 display idea that causes customers to stop, smile, take a picture and pick up a product might be.

For golf shop buyers and merchandisers, the bigger opportunity is to begin looking at every buying and merchandising decision through a slightly different lens:

Can we make this more interactive? Can we personalize it? Can we demonstrate it? Can we create content around it? Can we make it easier to understand? Can we make it something customers want to share?

Great merchandising has always been about more than putting merchandise on fixtures.

Today, we have more tools than ever to turn a golf shop from a place where golfers simply buy things into a place where golfers discover things, experience things and remember things.

And when we can accomplish that, we aren’t just competing with another golf shop or an online retailer.

We’re giving the customer another reason to come back through our doors.

To join a merchandiser community and gain weekly educational opportunities and resources, sign up to become a member of the AGM.