What Is Outbound Marketing? (And Why It Should Be Part of Your Real Estate Marketing Plan)
In marketing, there are two different ways that you can market your services to potential leads: inbound marketing and outbound marketing. We’ve already covered the importance of inbound marketing in another post, so this is strictly a guide to outbound marketing. Read it over to learn what this type of marketing is and how you can successfully incorporate it into your real estate marketing strategy.
What is outbound marketing?
Put simply, the term “outbound marketing” refers to any marketing efforts where you reach out to potential clients and offer them your services. It covers most of the traditional marketing efforts that real estate agents are taught to consider, such as print ads, cold calling, and leaving pop-by gifts.
Notably, this type of marketing is in direct contrast to inbound marketing, where the potential clients come to you after seeing some information that you put out into the world. Inbound marketing usually comes in the form of blog posts, social media campaigns, or an opt-in gift.
Why is oubound marketing important in real estate?
In truth, outbound and inbound marketing are both important parts of your marketing strategy. However, in this case, we’re choosing to focus on the outbound version and its value in generating leads.
As you might be able to guess, sending advertisements to a specific group of potential consumers can have tons of value when it comes to lead generation. Here, you are able to reach an audience who may not see your social media channels or blog post. You’re able to reach a consumer who may be more reliant on traditional methods of connecting, such as the mail or by telephone.
It also gives you the opportunity to craft the message that you would like to put out to your consumer base. With inbound marketing, you are more limited. In that case, your main concern is getting your content to rank well on Google or to go viral. With traditional marketing methods, you have a bit more freedom.
3 outbound marketing tips for real estate agents
Still, even though you have more freedom with outbound marketing techniques, that is not to say that anything goes, It’s still important to follow a strategy in order to achieve the best results. With that in mind, we’ve brought you three tips to follow as you begin to incorporate this type of marketing into your lead generation efforts.
1. Target your ideal audience.
First, you need to target your ideal audience. Otherwise, you severely cut down on your ability to see a positive result. For example, if you send out 100 postcards to people who have been thinking of selling their home, you are more likely to get a response than if you sent the same 100 postcards to people at random.
Luckily, these days, there are plenty of lead generation tools that are meant to help you research and connect with your ideal target market. While you want to do your research into each of these tools before investing in one, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to find something that fits your needs.
2. Offer something of value.
Next, once you have your list of recipients, the next step is to figure out what you can offer them. Typically, real estate mailers and cold calls come with an offer for a free comparative market analysis (CMA) or something similar.
While it’s ultimately up to you to decide what to offer, making the offer is key. It gives the people to whom you are marketing an incentive to get in contact with you. Ultimately, that contact is the most important step in nurturing a cold lead all the way to a new client.
3. Make sure your contact information is clear.
Lastly, this almost goes without saying, but you need to make sure that your contact information is clear. If you are sending a mailing, it needs to be printed clearly on the piece of paper. On the other hand, if you are making a cold call, make sure to mention how the lead will be able to reach you.
As mentioned above, the hardest part of outbound marketing is that consumers need to reach out to you in order for your marketing efforts to pay off. With that in mind, you are going to want to make sure that it is as easy for them to get in contact with you as possible.
The bottom line on outbound marketing in real estate
In today’s marketing landscape, there are many people who say that outbound marketing is on its way out. In their minds, inbound marketing and ranking on Google are the only surefire ways to generate leads. However, we respectfully disagree. When done right, there is still a place for outbound marketing in real estate. You just need to know how to handle it the right way. This guide will help you with that task.
