Outbound Marketing Ideas: Paid Ads, SMS, and Broker Networks

Today on the podcast, we're going to be looking at more ideas in outbound marketing. Now for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while, we are continuing from the series that we did listener questions on the radio show, not listeners of the podcast. And we'll be continuing with the question that was posed by Jackson, who is based in Abuja and stays around CBN quarters. Now, for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while, you'll remember that he's the real estate professional who was having problems with converting clients, finding people to talk to, you know, all those sorts of things.

So I think maybe last week, I already did a series on inbound marketing. And so today's we're going to explore ideas around outbound marketing that real estate professionals can explore. OK, so if this is your first time listening to the podcast, I am your host. My name is Tavishima Aide, making today's recording at home. So there's going to be some noise in the background. And yeah, there's going to be some change in audio quality because I'm trying out some new recording specs.

So let me know how you guys think it works out. That's for those of you who are regular listeners of the show. Now, if you'd love to connect with me, you can call or send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. And if you love these sorts of issues, how do we go after clients? How do we chase clients? How do we convert clients? Then subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, or any player of your choice because this is your jam if you love these sorts of things.

So let's head straight into it. First off, like to define outbound just to make sure we're on the same page. Now on the podcast where we say outbound marketing, we're referring to the form of marketing or the business philosophy that has you taking responsibility for chasing after clients. So inbound is you're trying to do, you're trying to engage in activities that get people to chase after you. While for outbound marketing you take responsibility for running after people.

Now the reason why I'd like to introduce people to outbound marketing from the beginning is because this is a form of marketing over which you have more control over the results. Because if you've been listening for a while, you remember in the episode that we had about inbound marketing, one of the things that we mentioned was that inbound marketing is a long term play. And so you just have to wait it out. You can't post consistently for 30 days straight and then expect to get customers.

That is just not how inbound works. It takes a long time to build likeability, to build your reputation as a thought leader. It just takes a while. So you have to write it out. And then of course, there are other dynamics which I'm not going to mention today. However, when it comes to outbound marketing, if you're doing the right kind of activities with the proper volume that you're doing at the right intensity and you are doing it with the proper technique, then you do have some control over what the results can be in the short term.

So for a real estate professional, you can expect to get more site visits. You can expect to get more office meetings. You can expect to get, you know, more of these kinds of engagements if you increase the number of Flyers that you're handing out, provided that the Flyers are designed right and provided that you're trying to start up the conversations with people in the right way. So you can increase the number of side visits, increase the number of office meetings,

increase the number of proposals. If you increase the level of cold calling that you do, you know, the phone calls that you make or the offices of people that you go to go and visit, provided you visit a number of them, you know, in the right quantity. Don't want to visit, you know, one or two people a week and say you've tried, you know, you really need to put in more volume, more effort. And then provided that you also using the proper technique, you know, introducing yourself well,

starting the conversation well, trying to figure out what their real estate needs are, making effective proposals and presentations, you know, things like that. So with outbound, you have more control over what the results might be. Remember, provided you are doing the right kind of activities, doing it at the right level of intensity, the right volume, reaching out to the right number of people and assuming that you are using the proper technique.

However, when it comes to closing deals in real estate, always remember if you're a real estate professional listening to this podcast that the closing timeline will always be will still be a long one because real estate is a complex sales scenario. For those of you who are new listening to the podcast, just use, especially if you're listening on YouTube, just use the search function, you know, put my name and then put complex sales scenarios.

And then all the podcast episodes that I've made around podcast, sorry, around complex sales scenarios will come up. But in summary, a complex sales scenario is when you are trying to sell a product or you are in an industry or you are in a context where the product or the service itself is expensive and then the product or the service itself is complex. When we say complex, it just means it has lots of parts that we have to consider when it comes to understanding the product or to making a decision.

And of course, real estate is complex because the people who want to buy from you, they have to consider the location, they have to consider the price, they have to consider the amenities. They also have to consider legal title. You know, is it CFO who actually owns the property? Is it good title? If I buy this thing now, am I going to be in court chasing after people just so that I can end up buying the house or moving into the house?

So you can see that there are lots of things to consider. Then for complex sales scenarios, relationships are also important and it's a form of risk mitigation. So in this case, people will want to build a relationship with the property developer or with the realtor or with the whoever, or with the lawyers involved, just because you want to make sure that there are people that you can hold in case things go South and things don't go according to plan.

So relationships are really, really important. And then let's see what else. OK, we've looked at. OK, yes. And then the sales cycle, when it comes to complex sales scenarios, they have long sales cycles. Now a sales cycle is the length of time in between when you say hello and when the person makes a transfer, makes a deposit and ends up becoming your customer. So these are the factors that determine whether you are in a complex sales cycle or not.

So even though we can use outbound activities, doing the right activities at the right volume, the right intensity, using the proper technique, we can get some short term results like site visits and office meetings. But whether the deal is going to close is still, excuse me, it's still going to be a long term thing. It has to play it's course. Now, some of the outbound activities that we looked at while I was on air on the radio show included paid advertising and some of the things that we spoke about, especially for paid advertising online.

Oh, by the way, some of you will say that advertising is not an outbound activity, but you know, it's one of these things that people argue about one way or another. So some people say that paid advertising is outbound because you are influencing some control over how things go. So if you are doing inbound and just creating content and putting it on Instagram or on Tiktok or whatever, the algorithm would be in charge of who gets to see whatever content that you're putting out there.

However, for paid advertising, you are now trying to influence the process because through the targeting criteria, when you're setting up the ads, you get to tell Zuckerberg, you get to tell Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, whoever, that the advert should only be shown to people who meet these certain criterias. So on the radio show, we discussed that you should be paying attention to your targeting criteria and in particular, you should be paying attention to the demographics and the psychographics.

So demographics, of course, for those of us who were born and bred in Nigeria, went to school in Nigeria, we already know what that means. Demographic just means, you know, ways of looking at people, where we classify them and break them down into age, into height, into location, into occupation, into, you know, stuff like that. So that has to be a part of our targeting campaigns. We have to say that Facebook should show this thing to either men only or men and women, and then give an age range, give a location, which city do you would you like the people to live in for the advertisement to be shown to, And then let's see what else.

So those are demographics then Psychographics are also another thing that we should pay attention to. And psychographics is a much newer term. It just refers to what people are interested in. So what are people's hobbies? What are people's interests? So in this case, since we're talking about real estate professionals, I'm assuming that some of the psychographics that will put there are, you know, people who well, obviously love interior decor, who love houses.

Maybe people who are interested in retirement, because we're assuming that, you know, older people should be wealthier, should have bigger pockets, might be more, what would I say might be closer to making the decision to buy a house or to buy a piece of land as an investment. So these are some of the things to consider when it comes to targeting. Now by the way, as we've started discussing this thing in detail, I'm sure that you guys can see that these principles, these tactics, these strategies apply across any kind of business.

So just because I'm using Jackson who is engaged in real estate in Abuja, doesn't mean that this is not going to apply to wedding photography or apply to what else? Apply to architecture or apply to construction or apply to government contracting or apply to selling cars. It's all the same. If you're going to do paid advertising and you're selling cars, you would have to compile the demographics. You would have to compile the psychographics so that you can tell the advertising platform exactly who the advert should be shown to.

Because remember, proper activity, proper volume, proper technique. So demographics and psychographics, this is part of making sure that we're doing the right thing at the at the right thing the right way. Because if we don't have the demographics and we don't have the psychographics, if they are off, then we're going to get all sorts of people responding to the advertising campaign who shouldn't be. For instance, there's a client that I'm currently working with right now.

They are in the real estate space and they're a company who wants to provide solutions for people who are based abroad and who want to buy real estate back home here in Nigeria. But because the psychographics and the demographics were off, most of the people so far, 100% of the people in that particular campaign that, excuse me, that we have been calling are people who are based in Nigeria. And of course the whole plan is to capture people who are based in Canada, based in America,

based in, you know, Niger, in diaspora basically. So since the targeting, the demographics and the psychographics are off, the conversations that we are having now are conversations with the wrong people. So we're doing the right activity and we're doing it at the right volume because the advertisement, the advertisement is being seen by hundreds of thousands of people, but the technique is off. And because the technique is off, the results are also going to be off.

So remember, it's not just proper activity, proper volume and then proper technique. So for paid advertising, we have to look at the demographics, we have to look at the psychographics and of course it's online and offline as well. Then on the radio show, we also looked at ideas around SMS marketing. SMS just means, you know, simple text message that all of us already receive. And of course, we're, we're already sent to our loved ones,

but we can send that in bulk as a means of doing lead nurturing. So when you're able to get a list of contacts, maybe you know, 102 hundred, 300 people who might be interested in real estate, then you can send them messages for lead nurturing. Now lead. OK, let me explain lead nurturing. Well, first of all, the lead is someone who has taken some activity to show that he might be interested in your product or your service.

So let's say there's a real estate convention, let's say it's a, you know, Niger Property Conference 2025, whatever happening in Abuja or in Lagos and able to get a list of people who attended that event. I mean, not, not the, not the vendors who took part in the event, but people who attended the event, you know, regular customers, regular people, you know, like you and me listening to the podcast. Then those might be people who could be leads because they attended an event that was called Niger Real Estate Conference, Abuja 2025 S.

Those sorts of people might be interested in buying property, might be interested in renting property, might be interested in investing in real estate. So it might make sense, it might make sense to start sending those people text messages if you're able to get access to that list. So lead nurturing is when you're sending message messages to people, you know, every now and then because you're hoping to stay top of mind.

Top of mind just means people should see you every once in a while. You know, they should feel you. They should know that you exist. So that's the whole point of lead nurturing. So you're sending out messages to them from time to time. Let people see you, let them know that you exist. You're going to be able to do some relationship building and yeah, those sorts of things. And then hopefully since it's text messages and text messages are opened 98% of the time,

hopefully we should be able to get spark some conversations going that might lead to business later on down the line then. OK, One thing I mentioned for those people who want to try SMS marketing, because some people say it doesn't work. It's not that it doesn't work, it's just that sometimes people, this is the right activity, definitely, but people do it with the wrong volume. Maybe you're sending these messages to 10 or 20 people and that's not enough of a sample size to make this thing work.

Or the technique could be off. You're not crafting the messages the right way. Like for instance, you could be sending it to people who are not interested or people who have who have opted out. Opting out basically is where people say look, don't send me any messages and that this happens to all of us because I know that this happened to basically 99% of those of you listening to the podcast right now. If you are Nigerian, you definitely have received that message.

That is a sport betting kind of thing, you know, click here to bet and click here to win 40 million, blah blah blah will receive those messages. Now there are some of us who respond to that message by saying because sometimes in the message it says there, you know, if you don't want to receive this message anymore, text 163 to 555 to unsubscribe. So there's some of us who actually do that. We actually text 163 and then we hit send.

Well, then the next day we receive that message or next week we receive that message again. And then after a while people get frustrated and then what they do is some people now block and then report as spam. Now when you block and report a spam, what happens is the service provider that's MTN, Airtel, Glow or whatever it is that you get your services through will notice that this sort of activity is going on. And then the regulators, you know, like NCC, Nigerian Communications Commission, I'm assuming that they are the ones who are responsible for monitoring these sorts of things.

So the NCC is also going to see that every single time you send out a bunch of SM s s, let's say you send out 200,000, you know, they notice that 198,000 people block you. So this is where blacklisting now comes in. The NCC is going to make sure it's going to hamper your ability to send out messages. They're going to want to curtail the number of messages that you send out and the service providers, you know, glow empty and alcohol also, they also want to reduce or curtail the number of messages that you send.

Now, when that happens, that is blacklisting. And then of course, your campaigns are going to be ineffective because in your mind you will think that you are sending messages to 200,000 people. But in reality, because of the unsubscribes and because of the blacklisting and the reporter spam, you know, you might send out 200,000 messages, but you know, actually, maybe, I mean, who knows, maybe 100 people are going to see it.

So we should be careful about blacklisting. So remember the right activity at the right intensity, but we should always be using the proper technique, you know, following best practice and things like that. Then on the radio show, we also discussed billboards and signposts because it's something that is still used by people in the real estate community in, in some businesses, like back when I was in the event space, you know, we typically didn't do billboards and events.

Sorry, billboards and signposts, you know, but in real estate here, they do it. Like is this real estate professional, I think her name is, is it Iberia or something? I can't remember. But her signboards are yellow. And you can see, you can see her signboards in prominent parts of the city. Ecodara. Yeah, that's her name. And her her signboards are very, very simple. It's just yellow. And then it says sell your house fast, fast, fast.

And then the phone number is underneath. And I think that's brilliant. It's very, very clear that if you have a house and you want to sell the house quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, call this number. So it's very, very straightforward. I, I would like to meet her. If any of you knew Ecuadora, you know, please just let me know so I can give her a call and we can discuss how successful that campaign was or is because I

still see her signboards up. I'd really love to see her. So anybody listening to the podcast, you're based in Abuja, you know who Ecuadora is, you know, let me know, hook up an introduction. I would love to talk to her. Who knows, maybe she can be my first interview for the podcast. And then and it'll be nice just to see how that that campaign goes out. So yeah, billboards, signpost. So these are some of the things that we talked about on the radio show.

That was yesterday's radio show. When we spoke about Outbound Now, we spoke about some other things. We spoke about networking, referral, marketing, cold calling, direct outreach, trying to reach out to people in diaspora. And then trying to hook up broker networks. Broker networks is basically where you're having alliances with people, where you guys are reaching out to the same sort of client list and you know, you guys can work something out, you know, and take a percentage.

So like you're a real estate person and then you partner with lawyers because lawyers have clients who have houses and they want to sell those houses. So you can see that the client is the same. The lawyer has access to the client, you guys partner up and you give the lawyer a Commission. So those are some of the things that we discussed. But because we've currently hit 20 minutes on the podcast and I don't want to make very long episodes right now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut this short right now.

And then in the next episode, I'll continue with other outbound marketing, outbound marketing ideas. So that's it. And that's all for today's episode. Remember, if you would love to connect with me, you can call, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I will catch you guys some other time.