Push vs pull marketing…Or both!?
The marketing is changing year by year, we all know how overwhelming the content marketing process can be, the amount of research, information and resource required can make it seem difficult to know exactly where to begin.
The traditional media marketing, in example ads on TV or in a magazine, basic job is simply to interrupt the audience. We hope when commercials come on, people don’t get up from a chair to get a snack or something else, but watch your message. That’s called the Push Marketing and it worked for many years.
Today, that is changed. The problem is that we don’t control, what the viewer is seeing right before they see our message, so we switched to something called Pull Marketing. We put content on the Internet, people find it, click on it, and we draw them to our business to learn more.
The main advantage is when somebody clicks on our website we control everything there and they are seeing the message in the context we’ve created! We now have to work harder than ever to ensure that our content stands out from the crowd by being as educational, informative and engaging as possible.
Push marketing
Now, let’s get into details. As we said, the primary difference between push and pull marketing is how consumers are approached. The term push comes from the idea to promote products by pushing them at consumers.
Common sales tactics are when brand in department stores increase visibility of it’s products like special offers and that is pushing them at customers. This tactic can be especially beneficial for new brands that aren’t well-established or for new product lines of brand that need additional promotion. The push technique can work especially well when customers in the market are standing at the line for paying and also ready to make their decision in short period of time on the spot. For a push marketing campaign to succeed, we need to push our message often and to a big audience in order to draw in our leads. The audience needs to be disturbed enough in order for us to get the needed response.
If many consumers don’t know our product or if consumers simply aren’t actively looking for our product because lack of need, then push marketing is the best way to react. It’s almost impossible to build awareness with pull marketing if the customers aren’t already interested in our product or service. If our product isn’t even known, then nobody will be looking for it.
Advertising on relevant industry websites with big banner ads, sponsored blogging, Social Media ads, Display Marketing and TV advertising are all great channels for us if we want to get our product known.
Pull marketing
On the other hand, in pull marketing, the idea is to establish a loyal followers and draw consumers to the products. Common sales tactics used for pull marketing include mass media promotions, word-of-mouth referrals and advertised sales promotions.
While pull marketing attempts to create brand loyalty and keep customers coming back, push marketing is more concerned with short-term sales. The ability to target, disturb and interact consumers who are actively searching for our products has proven to be a winning formula time after time. Our today’s buyer is online researcher. He reads reviews, searches Google and asks friends on social media for suggestions.
Pull Marketing gives us an opportunity to attract the researcher wanting answers we provide. When a prospect finds an ebook or blog about a topic they want to know more about, pull marketing works.
Both push and pull marketing
How about we merge these two and make the best of both?
By implementing both Push and Pull tactics into our content marketing strategy, content produced will have a stronger support system as traffic is generated from a wider range of online sources.
We need Push to reach out to those who might not have heard of our service or company. A Push approach also is needed for communicating with our qualified leads, lapsed customers and existing customers to increase sales. We need pull to attract those in the research or buying stage who are searching for our product or service and to promote our business as a thought leader.
Most marketing departments would agree that a good marketing department will utilize a little bit of push and a little bit of pull. However, most would also agree that our company would ideally be able to rely on a pull marketing strategy. After all, the customers who seek out our company on their own are the customers who are more likely to convert.
Most companies understand the need for push marketing; especially at the start of a company. However, pull marketing is a newer concept and it has caught the attention of many, and for good reason. Pull marketing takes less effort and is less expensive than more traditional marketing techniques. It also takes advantage of the growing social media and search engine marketing popularity.
A successful strategy will usually have elements of both the push and pull marketing methods. First we use push marketing to get a message out and then attract the consumers using pull marketing. We’ll also need to raise brand awareness and start building valuable word of mouth. Although these might be new terms to some, companies are already using both push and pull methods.
