Just take a moment to picture your typical, run-of-the-mill Home Value ad.

You’ve got your landing page or capture page, which takes in your lead’s home address, name, phone number and email address.

This is a standard Kunversion sell page.

Get that contact info!

Once the lead enters that information, they’re given an instant quote of their home’s value (exactly what they came to you for).

Instant gratification home valuation

After that, you might expect an email sequence to be sent out to that lead with the goal of trying to set an appointment, while still delivering useful and relevant content in the interim.

All sounds pretty standard, right?

Well, if you’re selling real estate, you probably already know this sequence is a bit… dated.

And even after reading all about the 4 pillars of Inbound Marketing, you still might not be sure of what you’re getting yourself into with this new “inbound thing”.

But here’s the good news: what you’re doing now is not that far off.

The 4 pillars on Inbound are: Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight. Let’s take a look at what each piece looks like in the typical home value ad.

Attract: This is the offer itself – you’re attracting your customer to a lead capture page with the promise of delivering them a home value quote. They came to you because they wanted a quote, and you deliver on that promise. Simple!

Convert: Once your visitor converts into a lead by leaving their contact info, the email sequence and phone calls are all designed to convert that lead into a paying customer.

Close: After all that hard work finding the perfect home for your buyer, this is where you finally make the sale!

Delight: You’re hopefully already doing this to some extent, but the Inbound Methodology places a massive importance on delighting your customer. And not just while they’re still a prospect, but even afterwards!

By now, you can see that there are definite similarities between typical real estate marketing tactics and this slightly newer “inbound thing”. The one piece that needs some major updating in the world of real estate is the “Attract” stage:

Once you have your buyer persona figured out, you can easily create super helpful content that’s exactly what your ideal buyer is looking for. Depending on what that persona looks like, you might have some ideas that your :

• a first time home buyer guide
• a “veterans” guide to buying or selling in real estate
• a checklist of things to complete to get your home ready for sale
• an eBook packed full of things to consider when downsizing

This is the best strategy to attract new leads directly to you.

On the other side of the coin, there are online buyer leads, like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com. Whether you’re a “fan” or not – the fact remains that buyers (especially first time buyers) TRUST these sites. And most of the time, they’ll be their “go-to” place to get started.

So, love or hate… you need to be where your buyers are if you want to attract them in the first place.

If your buyers are looking at ZRT (attract) and see a house they like, they might send in an inquiry expressing interest (convert to a lead) and the agent will respond with calls, an email drip campaign, a text message, and more (trying to close).

While that’s not EXACTLY inbound, it’s on the way to inbound.