In-bound Motivated Seller Marketing: Why You Need It

Are your direct-mail home seller leads not motivated? Does your mail campaign produce as many “remove me from list” as people that want to sell their house?

Enter the concept of in-bound vs. out-bound marketing.

Out-bound marketing is when you push your message to create a response from a lead. In the “home investor” real estate game, out-bound marketing takes the shape of yellow letters, postcards, and other direct-mail pieces (though also includes door hangers, cold calling, bandit signs).

It should not be a surprise if you send a friendly hand-written yellow letter people call in to chat (with no serious interest in selling). It should not be a surprise when you repeatedly send unsolicited postcards the annoyed owner responds to get off your mailing list. This isn’t to say direct-mail is not profitable, it is, but recognize direct-mail is out-bound before applying common Key Performance Indicators (i.e. response rate, return on investment, cost/acquisition).

In-bound marketing is when the lead finds you. You create content that a person is interested in, they discover it, contact you, and you have your acquisition. Content is put out via websites, blogs, YouTube videos, social shares. For us real estate investors, the usual process is: (1) homeowner enters a query like “sell my house” in a search engine, (2) your content appears at the top of the search engine results page, (3) they click, enter your website, and fill out a form or give call. Easy to say, harder to do.

It should be obvious an average online lead that contacted you about selling their house, after typing in a query about selling their house, is motivated about selling their house. This doesn’t mean they will sell for pennies on the dollar, that it's a "home run" deal, but rather the lead has genuine interest in selling their property.

Did you skip testing an in-bound online marketing campaign? Take a look at the Google Keyword Planner. Complete the free Google Adwords sign-up for access. Here’s the 2017 Google search traffic volume for “sell my house fast” nationally:

Each market is unique. I imagine smaller, rural areas are less search traffic oriented. Major metropolitan areas more so. Here’s Google's search traffic in my market of South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County):

Customize the planner to your market. If there are thousands of searches per year on “sell my house fast” (as well as other top-notch motivated seller keywords), and you’ve opted out of online marketing, it may be time to re-consider.