Homer Simpson is doing an impression of how I felt when hearing about a small business marketing campaign yesterday.  A client in the property lettings industry was talking about a competitor who has a TV advertising campaign to get landlords on board. 

I am horrified at the thought of TV advertising to get landlords.  They must be spending £25,000 or more for this campaign and have little hope of achieving much, if anything with it.  Here are at least 3 smarter things they could be doing that would cost them a fraction of what they have wasted on TV commercials…

1. Update their website and use Google Adwords to get some targetted traffic (their website is terrible, a complete waste of money)
2. Start a referral scheme for landlords and tenants to get leads almost for free
3. Get local mortgage brokers to introduce them to property investors

I could make the list a lot longer, but you get the point, I hope.  You need to make sure that any advertising you do will clearly target the right customer groups and will give a return on investment reasonably quickly.  If each landlord is worth roughly £3,000 per year in profits, a TV campaign will have to bring in 8 or 9 new landlords and keep them for a year before they even break even.  Horrific.  Enough to make Homer Simpson scream.

Business coaching is about helping you to see things through new eyes.  I'd love to get behind the eyes of my client's competitor to find out what's going on in his head…