Outbound Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: What's the Difference?

Disclaimer: PropStream does not offer legal advice. This article is for educational purposes only. We recommend consulting an attorney before engaging in outbound or inbound marketing.

Strong marketing can be the engine that drives your real estate business. The more leads you bring in, the more sales and profit you can generate. 

However, there are two main types of marketing: outbound and inbound.

In this article, we’ll explain the difference between inbound and outbound marketing, how you can use PropStream to do both, and best practices to ensure your marketing efforts are effective.

Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing in Simple Terms

Outbound and inbound marketing are distinguished by who makes initial contact.

While outbound methods involve you proactively reaching out to leads through cold calls, emails, or physical mail, inbound methods involve attracting prospects through valuable content, search engine optimization (SEO), and other online tools so that they contact you.

In real estate, both types of marketing serve unique purposes: Outbound methods drive immediate contact to fill your sales pipeline, and inbound methods help build long-term relationships with prospects so that you stay top of mind when they’re ready to transact.

By leveraging both marketing methods, you can build and sustain a lasting book of business.

Outbound Marketing: Direct Outreach That Drives Fast Results

If you’re short on leads or time, outbound marketing is a great place to focus. It can help you reach motivated sellers, buyers, or investors quickly. 

Here are some common outbound marketing methods to try:

• Cold calling. This means calling prospects over the phone to pitch your services. A dedicated dialer like BatchDialer can help you qualify and call multiple leads at a time. 

• Direct mail. This means sending physical letters or postcards in the mail. For example, PropStream lets you start and manage direct mail campaigns directly within the platform. 
• Email campaigns. This means sending emails to leads at scale. With PropStream, you can skip trace homeowners’ contact information to start custom email campaigns.

The main benefits of investing in these outbound marketing methods are threefold: 

• Instant conversations. Instead of waiting for leads to come to you, you can proactively strike up conversations with them.

• Quick pipeline growth. When you consistently invest in outbound marketing, you can often grow your sales pipeline faster than you could otherwise. 
• More control. Outbound marketing gives you more control over how many leads and what type of leads you target. 

Pro Tip: Build targeted Lead Lists for your outbound marketing campaigns with PropStream. For example, you can filter leads by motivation, equity level, property status, and more.

Inbound Marketing: Building Trust and Attracting Leads Naturally

When you want to attract and retain clients, focus on inbound marketing. It’s all about getting leads to come to you through valuable, educational content.

Some common inbound marketing methods include: 

• Quality content. Whether it’s a blog article or social media post, quality content that ranks high on search engines and social media algorithms can attract leads to you.

• Regular newsletters. A steady newsletter or email nurturing can position you as an expert and authority in your space. 
• Lead magnets. A high-converting landing page, home valuation tool, or other free resource can draw in leads who then become interested in your services. 

Each of these inbound strategies can help you:

• Build long-term credibility. Trust takes time, but investing in inbound marketing can help you build a strong reputation. 
• Generate warm leads. These are leads who are already familiar with you and your brand. As a result, they tend to be easier to convert than cold leads.
• Boost retention and referrals. Customers who regularly consume your inbound marketing content are more likely to stay customers and refer their friends and family.

Pro Tip: PropStream includes a custom Landing Page Builder for capturing leads that visit your website. It also allows you to enrich those inbound leads with detailed property and owner insights. Before responding, review key information, such as ownership history, equity, mortgage details, and comps, to personalize your outreach and increase your chances of closing the deal.

Outbound vs. Inbound: When and Why to Use Each

Now that you know how outbound and inbound marketing differ, here’s when to use each:

Use outbound marketing when you need deals fast or want to fill your sales pipeline. It’s the quickest way to drive new business. 

Meanwhile, use inbound marketing to generate a steady stream of leads over time and establish brand authority in your market. This is the best way to stay top of mind among prospects.

That said, the best marketers adopt both approaches. 

After all, outbound marketing often establishes initial contact and puts you on the map, while inbound marketing nurtures those leads until they’re ready to convert. 

For the best results, you must combine outbound and inbound marketing.

How PropStream Unifies Both Strategies

Fortunately, PropStream allows you to manage both your outbound and inbound efforts on a single platform.

For example, you can use PropStream to find motivated sellers and buyers, skip trace their contact information, and start a postcard or email marketing campaign. 

At the same time, PropStream offers nationwide housing data to support your inbound lead enrichment. It also has a built-in landing page builder to help you convert leads visiting your website. 

All the while, PropStream’s real-time property data enables you to keep your lead lists up to date and highly targeted, and its automated workflows help keep your communication consistent across both marketing channels. 

In short, PropStream can be a one-stop shop for all your inbound and outbound marketing needs.

4 Tips for Lasting Marketing Success

Trying different marketing strategies is one thing. Finding what works best is another. Here are our four best practices for making the most of your marketing efforts:

• Start outbound to generate quick wins and then add inbound to build credibility.
• Track results from both strategies to see which produces the most qualified leads.
• Reinvest outbound success into inbound growth for sustainable marketing.
• Leverage PropStream’s marketing tools to maintain consistency and measure ROI.

Ultimately, whether you invest in more inbound or outbound marketing, PropStream is there to help you out. 

 Build targeted campaigns, track results, and convert more leads with real-time property data.
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