At Geekly Media, we cannot overstate the importance of a good marketing plan for the success of your property management business. You’re familiar with the basic idea. A competent property management marketing strategy will convince a potential client that they want your service or persuade them to choose you over a competitor.
We’ve come a long way from the days where advertising was limited to television and radio spots and print ads in newspapers and magazines. While these methods still have a place in the marketing world, concepts and techniques have evolved considerably over the years—and it’s essential to understand how to combine newer concepts and traditional methods to find success.
An effective, integrated marketing plan can mate up the best aspects of inbound and outbound marketing strategies to reach a wider base of potential clients. More leads mean more clients—and more clients mean success for your property management business.
Inbound and Outbound Marketing: What’s the Difference?
Outbound marketing is also known as “interruption marketing.” An outbound marketing strategy relies on communication or information flowing from you to your audience. You are initiating the conversation and relying on your messages to “interrupt” what an audience is doing effectively enough to generate interest in your service. Outbound marketing comes in several recognizable forms. You see outbound marketing in:
- Print media advertising
- Telemarketing and cold-calling
- Email spam
- Direct mail circulars
- Television and radio advertisements
- Ads on social media platforms and search engines
Outbound marketing is the act of pushing your message to an audience.
This type of marketing strategy can be useful when you are looking for quick results—and it can be a little easier to analyze cost-effectiveness. However, this type of marketing is widespread, and your messages must compete within a crowded information environment to have an impact on your audience. An average American can be exposed to upwards of 2,000 marketing “interruptions” per day, so relying on this form of marketing alone can limit your success. Inbound marketing, by contrast, seeks to reverse the information flow—and the relationship between the client and the business. This type of marketing represents an effort to draw customers to you and your services through a variety of methods.
Inbound marketing accomplishes this in a few ways:
- Content marketing attracts potential customers by creating and sharing free content with a targeted audience.
- Social media marketing uses social media platforms to promote services among an audience in an interactive way.
- Search engine optimization improves the visibility of a website or content in search engine results, increasing the chance that an audience will find and interact with that content.
Inbound marketing is the act of pulling an audience to your message.
Fundamentally, both of these concepts are complementary: you can drastically improve your property management marketing strategy by achieving the right balance of “push” and “pull.” How do you bring these two concepts together?
Merging Your Marketing Strategies
It’s important to remember that while each strategy can be used on its own, they combine together to produce even more powerful content. Inbound marketing is great at creating positive engagement with potential clients; a robust outbound marketing effort can make your service a household name. If you can effectively combine the two, you can achieve a marketing strategy for your property management business that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Take your property management business: say you place an ad using Google Adwords. You’ve designed it well, and it’s eye-catching. You’re generating some awareness of your business this way. Your most likely consumers won’t stop there, however: they’ll dig a little and do research online before picking up the phone or sending an email.
Let’s assume that you’ve done well at creating some meaningful content for visitors to take in, and you can direct leads to an article about winterizing your rental property. If you’ve timed your outbound marketing correctly, you’ve gone beyond generating brand awareness—you’ve positioned yourself as a partner in their problem-solving process. Now, these leads may return for more useful information or even reach out with a commitment. While outbound marketing can be an effective lure, inbound marketing can provide your hook.
How Can You Combine Them?
It should be clear by now that inbound and outbound marketing are effective compliments to each other. But if you’ve relied for years on only one method—or are new to property management marketing altogether—you may need some examples to get started.
- Link your outbound and inbound efforts by reaching out to people that download or access guides on your website.
- Follow up with “thank yous” to people who respond to your outbound marketing efforts in person (such as at conferences or trade shows).
- Complement your outbound email marketing with social media campaigns. Engage with your audience and send invitations this way.
- Use social media to collect information about competing companies. Try to gain an advantage with your target market.
- Analyze visitors to your website and use this information to generate potential leads or targets for your outbound marketing efforts.
- Pair paid ads with a strong inbound marketing framework to turn leads into repeat clients.
Remember that inbound marketing can be extremely cost-effective.Pairing inbound and outbound techniques can stretch your advertising dollars and make your marketing efforts more useful to your audience. You’ve taken the first steps here today—why not go further? Let Geekly Media help you combine these two powerful marketing techniques to enhance your property management marketing. Get in touch with us today! We'd love to learn more about the unique challenges your property management company is facing—and how we can help you overcome them.
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