Push vs Pull Marketing Strategies
Dear Webbie Family,
In the world of marketing, there are two main approaches, namely push and pull. Push marketing focuses on making a product or service available to consumers, while pull marketing focuses on attracting consumers to a product or service.
Push and pull marketing strategies are all about how you reach your target market. Push marketing is generally more interruptive and aggressive, while pull marketing is more subtle and engaging.
Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages, and the best strategy for a business depends on several factors. I’m going to dive into how each works and cover the pros and cons of each.
What is push marketing?
Push strategies involve “pushing” your product or service onto your customer base.
Examples of push marketing strategies include:
- Television commercials
- Radio adverts
- Popup ads and banners on websites
- Paid social media ads and promotions
- Direct mail or bulk mail
- Google and Bing adverts
- Selling face-to-face at a trade show, at a robot or in a retail setting
Because push marketing relies on interruptive methods like pop up adverts and banner adverts, or algorithm feeds on media profiles. It can be very effective in getting people’s attention. However, because these techniques can be perceived as intrusive and annoying, it’s not always the best choice for building long-term customer relationships.
What is pull marketing?
Pull strategies, on the other hand, focus on “pulling” customers towards your product or service organically.
Examples of pull marketing strategies include:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Optimising your website content to attract the right kinds of traffic and offer a great user experience. This ensures that your indexing or ranking on Google is prominent if executed correctly by your developer
- Content marketing or posting on media platforms and including a live feed from a visual platform such as Instagram on your website
- Organic social media posts that offer genuine value and help you grow a following
- Lead magnets like blogs, tutorials, white papers, in-depth guides and ‘how to’ content
- In a physical setting, sponsoring events as a brand offering promo material gifts, offering discounts, vouchers or loyalty programs, etc.
Because pull marketing is more engaging and less interruptive than push marketing, it’s often more effective in building long-term relationships with customers as it is a consistent brand representation. Sadly, pull marketing is often the second choice in marketing because takes longer to reach a wide audience.
What is the best marketing strategy for your business?
The answer, as always, is “it depends.” Keep in mind that both strategies can be used in conjunction at any specific stage during your marketing strategy.
Pull strategies may be your best bet if you’re looking to increase brand awareness or reach a new audience. But if you’re trying to generate leads or make sales at a rapid pace and do not mind if your brand causes intrusion and might be considered as annoying, then push strategies might be more effective.
It also depends mostly on the nature of your business. For example, companies that sell unique or niche products may benefit more from push marketing, as they need to make sure potential customers are aware of their products. On the other hand, businesses with mass appeal may do better with pull marketing, as they can rely on consumer demand to bring customers to them.
Ultimately, the best marketing strategy for a business is to establish your brand with a comprehensive pull strategy first and then add a push strategy later for specific achievements such as discounted product pricing or to sell products that have become redundant as a ‘bargain buy’.
What are you trying to achieve with your marketing?
Once you’ve answered that question, then choosing the right strategy becomes very straightforward.
From our experience, pull marketing is a more efficient and effective way to reach potential customers and sell your product or service. This is because you’re reaching customers who are already interested in what you have to offer. By contrast, with push marketing, you may end up wasting money on promoting your products to people who have no interest in them.
In addition to this media platforms that use push marketing in the form of pushed adverts or paid adverts seem to fall short in their reporting. In comparison to implementing a comprehensive organic advertising strategy by simply posting with relevant graphics, content and hashtags the reporting outcome shows a steady growth that has a longer return on investment as the posts need never to be removed.
If you’re not sure which is right for you, or need help with your marketing strategy that ticks both boxes, then the Webaware Advertising team can help you. If you want to learn more about these two strategies and why it has become a deep passion of mine over the past 18 years then please feel free to pop me a email.
~ Webbie Sam
sam@webaware.co.za