So, I was talking to my wife the other day about a mutual friend (Doug Buenz) who’s a Real Estate agent. In our discussion, she mentioned that he publishes an article in our hometown rag (The Pleasanton Weekly) every couple of weeks that starts in the newspaper, but finishes in his blog. My response was, "no flippin’ way, you mean he integrated outbound marketing (the newspaper ad) with inbound marketing (the blog posting)." My wife responded with, "ah yea, sure." With that, I immediately grabbed the newspaper, to check out what he had done.
What I found was a actually an ad, that read like an article, that pertained to an interesting and timely topic. This ad/article clearly stood out amongst the sea of other Real Estate ads that merely had pictures of current listings with the usual "lovely 4 bedroom home with 3 bathrooms....bla, bla, bla...." Like my wife had mentioned, the article started in the newspaper, to get the readers interest, but pointed the user to his blog to get the rest of the article. With that, I called Doug and met him for coffee to get the inside scoop on what he had done.
When I met with Doug, he said in addition to the add in the newspaper, he also leverages direct mail, e-mail and other forms outbound marketing to successfully drive people to his blog. Once on his blog, the reader can complete the article they started (via the outbound marketing channel) as well as discover other interesting articles, news and resources pertaining to the Real Estate industry. And of course, if the reader is in the market to purchase or sell a home or if the reader know's someone who's in the market to do so, Doug has all of his contact information available on his blog as well as a link to his website and a referral/share link that the reader can use to share Doug's contact information and blog/website with others.
So as Doug and I were wrapping up our conversation I asked him what he thought about the future of outbound marketing. Like me, he believed that outbound marketing (by itself) may be on the decline but intelligently integrating outbound and inbound marketing is definitely a winning combination.
If you want to see more examples of Doug's innovative use of inbound and outbound marketing or if you're looking to buy or sell a home in the Tri-Valley Area, check out Doug's blog at http://www.680homes.com/blog/ or his website at http://680homes.com.
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