Push vs. Pull Marketing: Top Differences & How to Use Them
In MarketingIn this blog post, we cover push and pull marketing, their respective strategies, and examples of each.
What is push marketing?
Push marketing is a strategy focused on “pushing” products to a specific audience.
The goal of push marketing is to bring what you offer to customers through your marketing. For instance, you can push your products via marketing content on social media.
Also known as direct marketing, push marketing is a form of general advertising. When I grocery shop, I look for the signs that notate sales and gravitate towards them — picking up limes I never knew I needed. This is an example of push marketing.
Push Marketing Strategy
To understand a push marketing strategy, let’s consider Brenda.
Brenda’s marketing company is ready for its big debut. But the local businesses she’s trying to work with have no idea her company exists. This is a job for push marketing.
So, Brenda reaches out to businesses in her area via email marketing, puts ads in local shops, and creates a social media business page to expand her reach.
Because Brenda’s goal is to introduce her company to local businesses as she launches her new service, push marketing is an effective way to get the word out about what she does and what she offers.
For a business that’s been around for a while but still wants to execute a push strategy, another option is running a limited-time offer for your product. Use a channel your target market is closely tied to, such as a social media platform, or use landing pages to your advantage by including a CTA at the end.
What is pull marketing?
Pull marketing is best for when you want to draw consumers to your product. The goal is to create loyal customers by providing marketing materials that showcase what they’re looking for.
For instance, if someone is looking for a new babysitter, they might visit Care.com. They can select a babysitter based on a list of preferences that are specifically shown to fit their needs.
In the age of consumers educating themselves on products and services, pull marketing has become vital to markets with heavy saturation, like new apps or clothing companies. Pull marketing shows how you are unique as a brand.
Pull Marketing Strategy
To put this in the context of another business, let’s take a look at Luis.
When businesses are looking for a point-of-sale (POS) system, Luis wants his POS to be the one they choose.
Pull marketing channels are exactly what Luis needs to achieve this. To pull his target market, Luis starts a blog on his website, runs specialized and high-traffic social media campaigns, and focuses on differentiating his brand from his competitors.
To amp up his pull marketing strategy, Luis focuses on SEO for his online marketing to make his system discoverable to his target market. Google reviews, and word-of-mouth reviews on sites like Yelp are his best friends throughout his campaign.
Since Luis has already developed a following from his app’s debut, he can focus on credibility and reliability rather than marketing to make the next sale. After a while, this will pull customers to his business. Pull marketing strategies generally take longer than push marketing to drive results, but this strategy ensures long-term customers and growth.
Now you may be wondering about the best ways to ensure you’re selecting the right type of marketing for your business — to help with just that, lets more thoroughly compare the two strategies.
Is push or pull marketing more effective?
To decide which method best fits your business, think about how you want to approach consumers.
If you are trying to get the word out about your business, push will most likely be the way to go. If you’re a marketer building brand buzz in your market — perhaps about a specific product or service — pull would probably be best.
There are a few cons to push marketing — mainly splitting costs and keeping long-term customers. If your company is working with a supplier to implement a push marketing strategy, you’d have to split profits with the supplier at the end of the day, which means less revenue for you. Since push marketing focuses on short-term sales, building brand loyalty is difficult with an outbound strategy.
Meanwhile, a downside to pull marketing is that you might not cater to the right target audience. In order to connect to your consumers, you need to know who they are and what they’re looking for. For instance, an athlete shopping for running shoes might not be interested in advertisements for heels.
An effective way to make sure you’re covering all bases with your marketing strategy is by implementing a push and pull marketing strategy — you can marry the best parts of both strategies in a way that’s complementary to your business, audience, and goals.
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