Mike Hendrix (00:00)
Hi, I am Mike Hendrix from smbGOLF. And today my guest is Zack Enriquez from PAR6 Media. And this is the Tech Caddie podcast.

Zack, welcome to the show.

Zack Enriquez (00:25)
Thanks so much, Mike. Thank you for the invitation. I really appreciate it. And I can't wait for this conversation.

Mike Hendrix (00:30)
Well, I'm, I'm excited to have you on, really, think you're, you're a groundbreaker for us because we've never really had a marketing person, come on the pod. But what we're going to talk about today is how you should be leveraging AI, to, know, improve your marketing or, be on the map. And since AI is such a big topic, we have some AI clients, multiple AI clients.

it kind of makes sense to me that we would have this conversation. So you're the Social media manager, for Par 6 Media, introduce yourself to our, to our viewers, you know, take it, take it away. We'd love to learn more about you.

Zack Enriquez (01:09)
Thank you so much. Yeah. Hi guys. My name is Zack Enriquez Like Mike said, uh, Social Media Manager for Par 6 We are hands down the best marketing agency that exclusively works with golf courses and golf resorts. Um, a little bit of background about me. I've been in marketing or creating content my entire life. I started as a kid with my brothers and my neighbors in our basement making YouTube videos in 2006 before every kid under 14 wanted to be a YouTuber.

So I've loved the digital marketing world forever. It all came to a head for me during COVID. I started an Instagram account and a TikTok account and quickly amassed over 300,000 total followers. So my marketing experience truly has entirely come from doing experimenting, testing myself, and then applying that for clients.

It's because of all that I've experienced that I was able to find my way to par 6, now working in this incredible golf community that we all reside in. And I truly couldn't be happier in this space.

Mike Hendrix (02:13)
Well, it's a good intro because you clearly are aligned with small business owners. mean, that's the basis of the name of our company. smbGOLF stands for small medium business, but because you do, rather than you read or rather than you attend school, you do. And I think that that is a common thread you see among so many entrepreneurs.

is they just like to get their hands dirty and do the work and then learn along the way. Of course, in the golf space, especially for owner operators of golf courses, there's only so many hours in the day. And so I do think some of the marketing things can become a challenge. And I'm sure we'd love to help you pick up some customers through this podcast. But really why you're here,

is because of some of your content that I started picking up on LinkedIn. I think on your LinkedIn header, it says something like marketing with no bullshit or something to that effect if I have that right. And so you must think there's a lot of bullshit involved with marketing today.

Zack Enriquez (03:10)
Yeah, you're spot on.

100 % do. think especially when it comes to digital marketing, but perhaps it also comes down to traditional marketing where, and I think this is why maybe especially in golf, marketing isn't always necessarily taken seriously because the people like myself who are trying to educate GMs or head pros to take a next step, we don't talk about revenue.

We don't talk about profit. We don't talk about expenses. We talk about likes and comments and shares, and those are all great. Those are all indicators that I need as a marketer, but to, to your point, to, to a small business owner, that's, that's all fluff. so what my goal is specifically with my content on LinkedIn is trying to, to educate GMs course owners, head pros.

not just about how some of the different things that they can be doing over Social media, over email marketing, over SEO and web design can impact their marketing, but also their bottom line.

Mike Hendrix (04:21)
And you say, you also say on LinkedIn over 70,000 tee times sold in 2024. me about that. What, is that coming from?

Zack Enriquez (04:29)
Yeah, that's just our data. And that's not even all of the data for Par 6. That's just the clients that I work with. Cool. Yeah.

Mike Hendrix (04:37)
And so I love the fact that you're tracking data like that, right? And, and, so you must be then, when you're speaking with clients that you directly work for, that you directly represent, I'm assuming there's some kind of monthly cadence or something. And you're talking about some of those key metrics, obviously tee times sold as being one of

Zack Enriquez (04:55)
Yeah, yeah. I'll give you the secret sauce to the first five minutes of our monthly reporting meetings. You nailed the frequency right on the head. It's a quick executive summary to give clients the call it the story of the month at a very high level. the next slide is how did we do against our North star goal for most clients? That's a rounds booked target to some, it's more brand awareness. but yeah, it

all comes back to data. If we are not marketing without data, we're guessing.

Mike Hendrix (05:26)
And then not to get too in the weeds. If I'm a client of yours, I own a golf course. Let's say I own a golf course in Toledo, Ohio, and I'm a client of yours. Are you wired into my like point of sale reporting? Like I don't have to send you the stuff you're wired in, in a way that you can just access it and be prepared for these meetings.

Zack Enriquez (05:46)
Yeah, so it's client preference. Some clients want us to be in there and have access to everything. Others prefer to control that information. So at the moment, we are we're taking the clients lead from that perspective. But one way or another, we get the data.

Mike Hendrix (06:00)
Yeah. Great. Great. Okay. So when we talk about shares and clicks and likes and those things, you know, maybe they feel a little fluffier. It's hard to understand them or understand the importance of them. I, I understand that. But as you started to talk about leveraging AI for the benefit of your brand, the benefit of your awareness. And when I say your, I'm referring to the golf course business.

When you started to talk about AI for the benefit of your golf course business, I thought you came at it from a really interesting approach. And I guess part of the reason it resonated with me, I'm like so many other people. I was doing some of the things that you were talking about from my own business. And so I thought, we're like minded. And this would be an interesting conversation to have, but share with people. I think in the notes, I might, if it's okay with you, I might copy and paste a little bit of your LinkedIn.

just so people can kind of understand this in really specific detail, but share the angle that you're talking about when it comes to AI for golf course operators. It is not by the way you should go to chat GPT on your phone and do it. It's not about that exactly. So share with people your angle for AI and building your golf course brand.

Zack Enriquez (07:15)
Yeah, to provide a little bit of backstory, this whole experiment, let's call it, didn't come from me as a marketer. It came from me as a golfer. So I live, call it roughly an hour and a half away from my friends. We're in that, you know, late twenties, early thirties range where y'all just sort of slowly start to drift apart. But thanks to technology, we're able to stay in contact. And golf is often

the reunion that we get to have once a month, maybe twice a month. In wanting to keep up with that, ChatGPT has become a really powerful tool for me because unlike Google, where I can search for golf courses, ChatGPT can get so much more granular. So I am often now going on to ChatGPT and saying, provide me with the top five most underrated golf courses between location A and location B.

Mike Hendrix (08:05)
So that level of detail, you, you'll, you'll put that into GPT. Yeah.

Zack Enriquez (08:09)
100

% and it spits out courses that look beautiful, are super interesting that I've never heard of that are 30 minutes away from me that I never would have found otherwise.

Mike Hendrix (08:19)
Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting you say that, early, early days at golf. Now we would talk to operators about the value of being on our marketplace to add exposure. And we would say to them, we promise you there are golfers that live within 10 miles of your golf course. And they've never heard of you before. Like that does exist. And you just said that without me ever prompting you on that story, you didn't know that we used to make that be one of our sales tactics GolfNow.

And you just said it too, 20 years later from when we were saying it back then. So it is a fact. I know it's really hard for operators to believe, you know, your family has owned this golf course for 60 years. There's no one that lives within 20 miles here that doesn't know about us. Well, you're wrong. mean, there's thousands of people that live within 20 miles of you. They've never heard of you. So, and, some of them are golfers, by the way.

Zack Enriquez (09:17)
Absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, just to double down on your point, guys, I first spoke to Mike 15 minutes ago, other than maybe two or three LinkedIn messages back and forth.

Mike Hendrix (09:27)
That's right. That's right. So you go, you use chat GPT. let's just give some more context. Are you using it on your phone? I'm assuming.

Zack Enriquez (09:36)
I'm more of a desktop guy, but I have it on my

Mike Hendrix (09:38)
Okay. Okay. So you use chat GPT and essentially you're trying to find cool places to golf. and so you're writing the, you you're asking these questions that will inspire chat GPT to hopefully find you something unique and new. Yeah.

Zack Enriquez (09:53)
100 % because think about it. I chose the word underrated because I'm looking for a place that doesn't get the same buzz as maybe some of more popular courses around. Underrated often also comes with a bit of a value play. So for me and my friends who are a price conscious right now, know, having just bought houses, kids on the way, we are, that's important to us, but you can change that prompt to say, you know, golf courses in an area.

for beginners. You can say that will challenge 10 handicaps or below. Like you can really filter what these prompts are to find the perfect course for you and your favorite playing partner.

Mike Hendrix (10:34)
Okay. So just for context for our golf course operators, owners, operators, you're, you're going to chat GPT. You're using it in a similar way that people would use Google today to search for things. but of course now the question is, like for the owner operator, just stick with us here. So, so Zack is asking this question. Now the real part of this conversation is about how do I make sure that my golf course

Is one of the courses that chat GPT will consider or will serve back as the answer. So, so Zack go.

Zack Enriquez (11:08)
So in our early findings so far, we are finding that courses who have content that is relevant, reputable, and regionally consistent matter to AI. That's what AI is training itself, at least from a golf perspective, to seek out, locate, and then source for people looking for courses in their area. What that means is courses with very clear, descriptive,

content that's tagged on their websites, courses who have reviews with this.

Mike Hendrix (11:40)
want to, I love, I love to get into the blocking and tackling. let's go. So relevant. mean, obviously we understand the definition of relevant, but what does relevant mean when you say it in this context? Give me an example of what do I have to do to be relevant? Zack in this context.

Zack Enriquez (11:57)
Yeah, I think being very, very specific about the copy on your website and adding descriptions to the photos. I think that's the biggest thing that operators can do. That's low hanging fruit.

Mike Hendrix (12:09)
Are we talking alt descriptions in the backend of the photo? Yep. Okay. And so for, for, especially for my Ohio golf course owners, we can do a breakout session on that and I can show you what, what that, what Zack means about that. Okay. So, so descriptions of, of photos and then this, said copy, mean the text on the website. You want it to be descriptive if you will, I would think.

Zack Enriquez (12:13)
That's right.

Mike Hendrix (12:34)
on some level, I could use ChatGPT to help me be better with ChatGPT results. In other words, I could go to ChatGPT and I could say, here's this copy on this specific page of my website. Help me make it more relevant, reputable, and have regional awareness. I could literally do that with ChatGPT and then it would rewrite the copy form.

Zack Enriquez (12:58)
And that's the game changer, right? Because you can ultimately come to the same result with Google, but ChatGPT will literally teach you how to use ChatGPT to accomplish your goal. Google will help you find that information, but it's not going to teach you itself.

Mike Hendrix (13:12)
Right. Right. And so, uh, and, and, and it's not just chat GPT. I think we, we know that when people use Google today, I just did a podcast yesterday and we were talking, I don't know if you're aware of this thing called Reserve with Google and it's taking, it's, getting a lot of traction in golf because they're actually making tee times specific tee times findable now through Reserve with Google. It's a whole big thing.

Um, but in that, in that conversation yesterday, I was having, we were talking about the fact that Google's not going to go away. Google's already figured out that they need to include AI results in their search results. And so I think you referred to that as spotlight and that we're seeing at the top of the page in Google results.

Zack Enriquez (13:59)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Like you said, Google isn't going anywhere. It's still going to be a major player. And the more places that operators can make themselves known, the better.

Mike Hendrix (14:10)
And Google has their own AI engine Gemini. And so I think all the things that are showing up in Spotlight are really coming from Gemini, if you will. But talk about how that Spotlight thing is really what you're focused on. That's what you personally are focused on when you're trying to help these operators win through search. It's really what's getting into that Spotlight piece, I believe.

Zack Enriquez (14:34)
Yeah, yeah, I think down the road, ChatGPT specifically will become more relevant as people understand just the convenience that can be gained through ChatGPT. But for now, Google stays as the main player that people lean on when they're trying to find new information, like the golf course that they want to play next. From that perspective, you

The first thing I would recommend every operator do is optimize their Google business profile. Most own it. Few actually go through and optimize it. Now that involves making sure that reviews are there. Hours are updated. You have SEO rich descriptions for your business. And that's going to be the first thing that tells Google you are a trustworthy business to show to an audience.

Mike Hendrix (15:19)
So I'm a huge believer in that in the data that we aggregate on golf courses. And we have something that we provide for the Ohio operators called the golf course data center, showing whether your profile is verified or not verified is one of the key data points we provide on every golf course in North America. We could go right into HubSpot right now. And I could tell you every single golf course in North America.

Is their profile verified or not verified? And that is just another word for, you own your business profile? And so it's a key piece to what you're doing. But then to your point, the search engines and then let's call it AI engines are, they know that that data is kind of verified via the Google company. And so they are paying attention to hours. They are paying attention to how long people are in your parking lot.

They are paying attention to the amenities that you offer. There's something in the Google business profile called subtypes. They're paying a lot of attention to subtypes because you could be a, your, type your Google type could be public golf course, but your subtypes could include indoor golf, could include driving range, a whole bunch of subtypes play a factor into that as well. So I think you and I are very aligned on the.

on the Google business profile. It's super important. How important is it to have fresh and updated pictures on that profile?

Zack Enriquez (16:45)
think it's super important. I mean, I'm biased as a marketer believing in having updated photos, but

All of the Google backend aside, if someone just searches for your course and they see that you don't have any updated content since 2020, 2021, they're probably going to wonder if you're still in business, let alone Google sourcing your course for them.

Mike Hendrix (17:14)
Even the copyright at the bottom of the page, right? How about all the copyrights that still today say 20, 22 or something?

Zack Enriquez (17:21)
That's 100 % right. I see that somebody hasn't updated their copyright since 2022, I'm probably not going to do business

Mike Hendrix (17:28)
with them. Yep. I agree. So, okay. So in the Google business profile, we talked about hours and pictures, but I know reviews are massive. And so it's not just that Google search or Google crawlers are looking at reviews. It's that the AI is looking at reviews because I believe, maybe none of us really know, but I believe that they have decided that reviews are genuine. It's a genuine look at the golf course or the

Really, we're talking about small businesses in general. so the reviews are critical. So talk, talk more about that.

Zack Enriquez (18:03)
Yeah, think reviews in 2025 are digital word of mouth. I think outside of me recommending a place to a close family or friend, reviews that anybody can go and find are probably the most powerful piece of marketing that a golf course can do. I think what's really underutilized from that perspective is asking for reviews.

I don't see that being done nearly enough. And I think it can be really powerful. I don't think that operators necessarily understand that, you know, your, your members or if you're public, your, your regulars, they will happily leave you glowing reviews, most likely full of valuable text that AI can, can crawl and populate. But you gotta ask for it because otherwise

somebody enjoys a round of golf, they go home, they sit on the couch, they watch hockey or football, and they don't think about it. But even something as small as asking can really make a difference, not just for the review rating that's on Google, but the quality of reviews as well.

Mike Hendrix (19:10)
Yeah. so yesterday we did a podcast. We've been off for a while because I have been so busy with this. we built a brand new website for the Ohio golf course owners association and ultimately had to separate from the developer. originally hired to do that. And so I took on some of the work myself. So I've been a little underwater and so the podcast has kind of gotten behind, we, filmed one yesterday, you're today.

Monday we do one and it is specific to a company that helps golf courses with reviews. So I'm glad that we're kind of putting these together because they're going to, they're going to work well together in one of your LinkedIn posts. You talked about the importance of reviews, websites, and just as a side note, I think we all got to a place in golf where we're like, yeah, you gotta have a website, but we stopped thinking it was really important. I think this whole AI thing has now made your website once again.

really important. Like you really should go back, shop your website as a, as if you were a golfer and ask yourself, am I putting my best foot forward here? Has, you know, is the template I'm using from GolfNow, the same template I was using six years ago, like, is it not time for a refresh? So anyway, web reviews, websites, local listings, now local listings, I think

Is partly your Google business profile, but maybe you mean more than just that for local listings.

Zack Enriquez (20:31)
I 100 % mean more than just that. think, you know, local listings can be anything from a blog post on a regional bloggers website to working with, you know, your local municipality to have a page on their website. Anything that ties you to the township, city or county that you live in. I think it's

one of the most important things that you can do as an operator if you really, really want to focus on your local market.

Mike Hendrix (21:03)
Very cool. That's a great takeaway there. And, and I mean, does it also include like Yelp or you think, no, no, no, not, these like general consumer listing sites. Like you want them to go deeper and like go leverage, like you said, the local municipality for a page or something like that.

Zack Enriquez (21:19)
Yeah, I don't think Yelp hurts. But I think, you know, if you're on, if you're a advertised page on cityofblank.com, I think from a callback from the three things that AI is looking for, I think from a reputation perspective, that is a highly reputable piece of content.

Mike Hendrix (21:38)
Agreed. Yep. That's good. Okay. And then you, and then the fourth thing you listed, it's a blog posts and more. and so I understand what you're saying about like, yeah, you should try to get your content rolled into other golf bloggers and more. Does that mean like, and like, I know you might be in Elyria, Ohio, but you still got to try to find an influencer or something like that, that you can start to

get your content crossing over with. Is that what you're meaning there? What are you thinking more specifically blog posts and more?

Zack Enriquez (22:10)
Yeah,

no, that's spot on. That's exactly what I'm thinking of. think if we want to push into the and more a little bit further, don't limit yourself to golf influencers. know, a lot of... How many clubs do you work with right now, Mike, that aren't trying to get more people in the door for F &B? Right. So I think there's value in finding food bloggers as well. You can find people like...

Mike Hendrix (22:27)
Sure. Right.

Zack Enriquez (22:34)
family bloggers. If you have a really up-to-date fun driving range experience, maybe you have a par three course attached and showcase how your golf course can be not just, you know, for the diehard golfers, but it's a great family, you know, Saturday spot as well.

Mike Hendrix (22:53)
Yup. and then, you know, you did, you don't really specifically call out Social media in this little, in this small list. I'm sure you're going to say something like, it doesn't hurt, but like, it critical or it's not critical when we're talking specifically about improving your brand through the AI engines? Okay.

Zack Enriquez (23:13)
not critical.

For business, generally speaking, Social media is super powerful. I don't believe it's powerful for Google Spotlight or a ChatGPT sourced answer specifically because when you are say like in incognito mode on Chrome, you can't get onto Instagram, you can't get onto LinkedIn, you can't get onto TikTok. So without an account, which obviously Google and ChatGPT don't have, all that content is locked away anyways.

Mike Hendrix (23:41)
Got it. Okay. Makes that makes makes a ton of sense. Now you did you, you, put those four things under this heading or header of, it meaning, meaning the AI engines, it, it looks at patterns. give me, if you can just give me a few words on like, can you translate patterns for me? Like what, in this context, what do you mean by patterns?

Zack Enriquez (24:04)
I think the more that people use similar language and your business is sourced because of it, the more your business becomes associated with that word. So, so my word underrated when I was doing my prompts and chat GPT, if more people are searching for underrated courses in the Stratford Waterloo area where I am, the more those courses are shown from those searches.

it becomes a bit of a snowball effect where they become the de facto answer, very similar to how traditional ranking on Google works.

Mike Hendrix (24:40)
It does make sense to me because yes, if I was writing a review, I'm going to go play a place called Black Diamond on Sunday with a couple of my kids. Black Diamond is in Millersburg, Ohio, big Amish country. As you can imagine, not a ton of people know about Black Diamond golf course.

incredibly underrated. If I was going to write a review, I'm going to probably use the word underrated. And now that you're saying this, it makes sense to me that they probably have at least 20 reviews where someone wrote underrated. And so that becomes a pattern. I think I understand where you come

Zack Enriquez (25:17)
Yeah, and it's not necessarily I don't want I don't want operators to feel like they need to get incredibly focused on like a single word in that meeting like the word underrated doesn't really matter. It's the sentiment behind the word so underrated from a pattern perspective will then you know, if sourced enough get linked to words like in gem get linked to words like value and and the more of those like or peripheral words

AI can associate with a course the more that course is going to be shown.

Mike Hendrix (25:50)
Love it. you talk about including natural FAQs on your website. Tell people, think I know tell people what you mean by natural FAQs.

Zack Enriquez (26:00)
the

Mike Hendrix (26:00)
Natural frequently asked questions.

Zack Enriquez (26:05)
Yeah, yeah, I they're all templated now. And I don't think that FAQs are oftentimes actually true to the questions that golfers have. ⁓ So I think this is another place for reviews or even to just, you know, have a conversation with your golf shop staff. What are the questions that are coming through the phones every single week?

Mike Hendrix (26:16)
Mm-hmm.

Zack Enriquez (26:31)
That's what needs to be on your FAQ, not the, you know, the HubSpot Academy blog post that says what should be on your FAQ. I think the FAQ needs to be very specific to an individual business. I'll go one step further. I've never seen this in golf. I've seen this in some tech websites, but having a senior member of leadership or the face of the business do a video for FAQ.

I think that's a really interesting way to not just build familiarity, but build a level of trust with whoever is on that website. Because sure, we can read an FAQ and we'll take that at face value. if we have a question and we get to look in someone's eyes as they're telling us the answer, I think that's significantly more.

Mike Hendrix (27:15)
Yeah. And so I get it. mean, a real FAQs or natural FAQs in the business of golf could include, do you allow fivesomes? Everyone knows you allow foursomes and threesomes. But do you allow, and that might be for many golf courses, an uncomfortable question that they get over the phone, but you're saying, but if that's what people are really asking, we should address it. We should, we should.

write the text around that and make it easy for people to find and again easy for the crawlers to find.

Zack Enriquez (27:47)
Yeah, and another one for a quick example to hit this point home. My wife is not a golfer. I still want to spend time with her. She loves being outside. But at least in the courses near me, none of them talk about ride alongs. I would probably make a course within 20 minutes my home course if it meant my wife could ride along in the cart with me without playing.

Right. But it's just not something that the golf courses talk about probably because they don't want to talk about it. But that just means you're pushing people away from from not knowing.

Mike Hendrix (28:19)
Yeah, because you can't control what's in the mind of your customer, right? If it's in the mind, then you need to you need to address it. Another one. This actually came up on yesterday's podcast. But another one is, do you require tee times? They're actually especially like where you live and where I live, maybe not really close to like New Jersey or New York or Philadelphia. But if you get a little more rural, there's plenty of golf courses that actually don't require tee times.

If that's the case, you probably should include that on your website. I will also say, even if you're the kind of course that doesn't require tee times, some high end, some that are maybe more like a par 65 or something like that. That doesn't mean your website should be like a Google biz website. You still should probably have a real website. That's easy for crawlers to crawl. doesn't mean you have to work with a technology company, but you probably should investigate.

you know, some kind of a website that GoDaddy would offer you or some kind of a website that, you could get through Wix, WordPress, et cetera. Um, so, so you are the Social media manager for Par 6 Media. Now I'm going to have to follow Par 6 Media. tell us a little more about Par 6. I, cause I, know, I don't know a lot about it. I don't, maybe you have customers in Ohio. Maybe, you don't, but tell us more about Par 6.

Zack Enriquez (29:42)
Yeah, Par 6 Golf Media. Like I mentioned, we are we are small but mighty and I would put us up against any marketing agency in the golf world. We are a full service digital shop. So everything from Social media, paid media, so ads through Google, through YouTube, through Facebook, Instagram, email marketing, not just necessarily helping set up a client's database, but also

doing the writing for them and helping them come up with promos and the strategy behind that. Web dev is what we offer as well. And then most recently we introduced this last year, brand identity and brand strategy workshops to give courses who don't necessarily know who they are as a business, foundation and a starting point.

Mike Hendrix (30:27)
love the workshop thing. Like the, takes me back to early days of Gary V, those workshops that the guys would come in and they would just beat up the company. And it might be with six other small business operators or something like that from different industries and just beat it up a lot and try to come out the other side of like, this is who we are. This is how we're going to tell our story. I assume the workshops are virtual or do you, are you able to do some in person?

Zack Enriquez (30:52)
So the workshops are the brainchild of our CEO, Kolby. And from what I understand, he's gone on site for all of them.

Mike Hendrix (31:01)
Got it. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. and, and I'm curious, I, I know you guys, at least in the past, maybe even currently you've done work for Chambers Bay. does make me think of Kemper sports, a management company. Do you have relationships with management companies or how does that work? If a golf course is using a management company today, how would you, you know, how do you guys kind of like, blend into that team? If you will.

Zack Enriquez (31:26)
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we try to be an extension of the team. We're not trying to be this third party that's coming in and ruffling feathers for the sake of ruffling feathers and changing things. We really want to be as collaborative as possible. Currently, we don't have any sort of active relationship with Kemper. We're very, very friendly with their team. And they've seen the work that we've done with Chambers and

They're very interested in it and they like the work that we've done. But, you know, it really comes down to during onboarding just, and this isn't even like a Chambers or Kemper specific thing. This is relevant to any client that we work with. We can't have too many cooks in the kitchen, especially with something like marketing. We try to keep it down to as focused of a group of

one, maybe two people, often it's the GM of the course that we're running things by, maybe a marketing manager if they have one. But the tighter we're able to keep that core group, it doesn't just necessarily help the quality of the work that we're able to do, it greatly helps the speed.

Mike Hendrix (32:28)
Yes, yes. And I do think the consistency matters, right? No one's going to get off brand if you really only have one cook in the kitchen, which I think is critical, frankly.

Zack Enriquez (32:38)
Yeah, yeah. mean, at Par 6, we have a dedicated person for each of the, you know, Social media ads, email. And outside of that, two, three people, depending on the client, we're really just trying to work with the GM. Because like you said, that just helps from a consistency perspective so, much.

Mike Hendrix (32:59)
Yeah. So we did, you know, we did talk about Google business profile. Is that a service that you, that you provide? I actually know it's, it's hard to get control of the Google business profile. If you're a third party that can be challenging at times. Have you managed the Google profile or business profile for golf courses?

Zack Enriquez (33:16)
courses?

A little bit. It's not not something that courses are often very interested in. But hopefully after a conversation like this, it helps educate operators on why something like that is, you know, a rock that they should turn over and see what's on the other side.

Mike Hendrix (33:31)
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but, like, if, if someone comes to me for advice, I'm saying your Google business profile, like critical, right? Like you have to know what the reviews are that are coming in. You should also know what's being said about you on golf pass and other sites. And you should be replying to every review that comes in, you know, best that you can. but if you're not buttoned up with your Google business profile, I think it's a miss.

I think it's a real miss. then again, with this new thing with Reserve with Google, you need to be with a tee sheet provider. that's at least working towards an integration with Reserve with Google or, or has one because I worry, you're going to get left out. ultimately Google will probably get to a place where if you're not offering tee times through your Google, Google business profile,

I believe you'll start to fall back in search results because it's not as going to be as easy to engage with your profile as, as competing golf courses.

Zack Enriquez (34:31)
Yeah, I would lean towards agreeing and it'll be really, really interesting over the next, call it 24 months to see what happens.

Mike Hendrix (34:40)
Agreed. Agreed. how important, let's talk about, cause a lot of people ask me this question. How important is the quality of the image? Do you really need the, is it like, look, you got to drone your golf course twice a year or something like talk to us about how important those, those eye popping shots are.

Zack Enriquez (34:58)
think it's the most important thing.

Mike Hendrix (34:59)
Really more important than the copy. Yeah. And so how does someone and give us some, an idea on price if you can, how does an owner go about doing that? How does an owner go about saying like, we're going to have amazing stills, amazing video. Let's go execute. How do you do it?

Zack Enriquez (35:17)
Yeah. So like, let's, let's, like, let's take Par 6 out of this. cause anybody who takes action on this more than likely, aren't going to work with us. so let's first, the first thing I tell every operator to do, if they want to go about elevating their, marketing, you'd have to find a freelance photographer videographer. Ideally they specialize in golf. they don't have to, but ideally they do. And those rates,

or a shoot if they don't have to travel very far, you can get somebody on site for $1,000, which like, you know, might have a little bit of sticker shock associated to it. But you can for $1,000, you can walk away with anywhere between 500 to 1000 photos, you can get 100 clips of your course.

Mike Hendrix (36:07)
And it's five, look, it's five foursums at the end of the day, you're going to take, you know, five or so foursums, depending on your price point, you're to take five foursums that you sold on a Saturday and you're gonna say, look, we're just going to that's going towards imagery.

Zack Enriquez (36:19)
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. so, so yeah, get, find a, build a relationship with someone like that. And I think the value in, in finding someone local is they can keep coming back and they can start to learn the course. They can start to learn more about the people that call your course home. cause there's a lot of value in that. the, the place where operators often get stuck is after they have the content.

What do they do with it? It's great to have a library of a thousand photos and 250 videos, but most don't necessarily have experience with an editing software. They don't necessarily know the different export settings required for a Social media post versus a web image and that little things like that matter. This is where I recommend you also

partner with a freelance Social media manager of some sort. Somebody who can be a bit of a Swiss army knife marketer for you. They don't need to work on a full-time basis, but I think someone who can help you build out a strategy that you can then apply that content to, that's often the missing piece that I see when courses want to get involved in.

Mike Hendrix (37:33)
And if you can't find that Social media manager, go use chat GPT and ask it how to do it. It's going to have an answer that's much better than anything Google gave you in the past. It'll give you a detailed step by step. Here's how you're going to use these images now in Instagram, Facebook, X, what have you.

Zack Enriquez (37:52)
Yeah. And, and, little plug for myself, but I talk about this stuff all the time on LinkedIn, specifically how to use, imagery collected after a shoot, at least on Social, I think you should be posting 12 times a month. So that's three per week, roughly speaking, one video, two photos. one of those photos should be a beauty shot of the course. one of those photos should be of golfers on course.

and really focusing on that emotion and the experience that they're having. And most importantly, most importantly, operators, listen to me, listen to me for just 25 seconds. Your F &B promos live in your stories. Please don't put that on the main grid. The 50 % off fishing chip nights, they're not doing what you think they're doing. They're diluting your brand. They're not making it stronger. So please,

Any promotions at all, leave them on your stories. Don't put them on the page.

Mike Hendrix (38:46)
Good one. Good tip. if you can't find a golf specific, photographer, I'm guessing next best would be go look for a landscape photographer. A landscape photographer can probably figure out what you're looking for, for golf course shots, I'm guessing.

Zack Enriquez (39:01)
Yeah, Lance, I would either go, it depends the direction you want to go. Like if you are a course that really leans on its conditions and its aesthetic and you're just a beautiful property, landscape 100 % is the way to go. If you're a course that doesn't necessarily, you know, have the most interesting design, I think another direction that you can go is a sports photographer. Capturing that on course experience, it's tough.

just because of some of the nuances with golf and golfers. yeah, sports photographer is a really interesting angle as well.

Mike Hendrix (39:33)
Okay. And so, okay. So you're liking imagery really more than anything. You think that that's a number one. how often would you update it?

Zack Enriquez (39:41)
I don't think your average course needs to more than twice a season. ⁓ With our clients, we stay posting in the off season as well. So our standard is six sheets per year.

Mike Hendrix (39:49)
Okay.

wow, okay. And then, I don't know, for whatever reason, I got to pick between drone and handheld. What do you pick, know, in terms of like the photographer that I find, what are you recommending over the other?

Zack Enriquez (40:12)
whatever that photographer skill set is.

Mike Hendrix (40:14)
So don't ask him to get outside of his skill set. Stick with what he or she is good at.

Zack Enriquez (40:19)
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you you found this photographer and you chose to work with them because of the portfolio that they either sent you or you found on their website. The more you ask that photographer to go outside of that portfolio, the less you'll be satisfied with their work and it's not their fault.

Mike Hendrix (40:36)
Got it. Right. Right. Okay. That's a good one. So we have the imagery, we understand the texts that we should be developing. Obviously, then you got to build a site, right? And I think you guys build sites for golf courses. Okay. And are you building it all in code? Or are you generally working from like WordPress Elementor? Like how do you guys typically doing that?

Zack Enriquez (40:50)
We do.

Yeah, it comes down to a price point thing. There's opportunity for templated websites for courses that are a bit more price conscious. But a site like Chambers Bay, for example, that I think went live two, three weeks ago, we built that one all from scratch.

Mike Hendrix (41:16)
Cool. Okay. So we'll put stills up of the chamber site in this pod and we'll encourage everybody to go check out that URL. Is it chambersbay.com or what is it? Do we know? It's a great question.

Zack Enriquez (41:28)
if check chambersbegolf.com.

Mike Hendrix (41:31)
Chambers

Bay golf.com. Very good. and we'll go look at that work and, and, and enjoy that. I'm sure. But again, to recap, there are some things that you should do like in the next seven days, right? Of let's make sure you get your stuff optimized for artificial and to optimize for chat. GPT optimized for Gemini.

optimized for, Claude, get your stuff optimized for that. What is stuff? Well, it turns out stuff is Google business profile, your website, perhaps blog posts that you can get out there that

that obviously are about you and, you know, include information about your golf course. Get just have another look at all that. It isn't now just about SEO. And I can't imagine, Zack, that if I improve this stuff for AI, it's also not going to help SEO. It is going to help your SEO as well. But get that stuff optimized, understanding there's a whole new set of crawlers out there.

that are looking for information that is relevant, reputable, regionally relevant, I guess is another way to say regional.

Zack Enriquez (42:46)
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. listen, this matters. It's not going away as much as we think AI might be a bubble. This is real. This is happening right now. The sooner you get on it, the sooner you get to reap the rewards.

Mike Hendrix (43:01)
That's, that's awesome. Okay. Zack, how do we follow you? know you're big on LinkedIn. Give people if you would like, what's the easiest way to find you on LinkedIn.

Zack Enriquez (43:09)
LinkedIn, Zack Enriquez, as far as I know, I'm one of maybe three to five people talking about golf marketing on the site. So you'll find me very easily. If you're looking for ways to fill your tee sheet with Social media, email marketing, web design, ads through Google, Meta services, Facebook, Instagram, you're going to learn a lot, I promise. And also I will never try to sell you anything.

Mike Hendrix (43:36)
Wow. Pretty good. You think of all the Social platforms out there when it comes to golf course owner operators, you think LinkedIn is number one?

Zack Enriquez (43:45)
To reach a golf course owner operator. Absolutely.

Mike Hendrix (43:48)
Yeah, I do too.

Zack Enriquez (43:49)
Yeah. I've tested Instagram and Tik Tok and you can get more followers. You can get more views on your content, but the, the caliber of people that are on LinkedIn and the way that you can talk specifically to your target market is still unrivaled.

Mike Hendrix (44:10)
Yeah. And again, this is just, this is for the B2B guys that watch this pod. What we're saying is if, you could only have one great platform and you should be great at it, it really does need to be LinkedIn.

Zack Enriquez (44:22)
Yeah, yeah, it's just the nature of the beast on LinkedIn where everything else is Instagram, TikTok, for example, they'll source content for you based off of your existing interests. LinkedIn is going to be sourcing content for people based off of what their network is interested in. So if you are somebody who has a golf startup right now and doesn't have many connections in the space, all it takes is one reputable

GM to like and comment on your post, suddenly their entire network is seeing it as well.

Mike Hendrix (44:52)
Yep. Agreed. Okay. Great. Well, listen, thanks for coming on the Tech Caddie podcast. It's Zack Enriquez from Par 6 Media Social media manager. and I hope we stay in touch. I'm like I said, I'm a big follow of yours now. I love your content. I'm, know, I'm drawn to you because I'm learning from you, right? And you don't get a chance to learn from, from a ton of people. And so I'm learning from you. I've got

think between yesterday and today, have seven page of Zack Enriquez notes now. So I'm going to keep following it and keep listening. And I appreciate your time and coming on the podcast.

Zack Enriquez (45:27)
Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you, Mike, and to speak with your audience. I hope it's not going to be the last time.

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