The majority of customers (71%) chose to pull marketing over push marketing as their preference.
Are you curious as to what push and pull marketing entail? Don’t worry, we will solve all your misunderstandings.
Marketing techniques can be broken down into two main types – push and pull.
The two marketing tactics are quite distinct from one another. Prior to settling on one or the other, you have to consider the ambitions that you have for your business in the long and short term. Therefore, this choice will help you decide on the best tactic.
To assist you in making an educated choice, we will emphasize the pros and cons of a push-and-pull marketing approach. We will also contemplate what lies ahead for them in the marketing domain. Let’s start our detailed evaluation of the push and pull tactics of marketing.
What is Push Marketing?
Using a push technique promoting products or services, marketing directly to customers is accomplished. Brands advertise their wares and services to potential customers. This approach to advertising is typically named ‘direct marketing.’ It is important to remember that push marketing is a variety of publicity.
Companies employ this tactic when they are introducing a new item or striving to acquire distinctive patronage in the market. The company makes their offerings well known through its active promotion, meaning the customer is exposed to the product through the brand’s broadcasting rather than conducting their own investigation.
Push marketing is an effective technique for presenting new items or serving initial buyers.
Case in point, Business ABC has rolled out a fresh product. To gain recognition for this fresh product, ABC does everything possible – they submit social media posts, present webinars, and arrange product launch gatherings. In the end, they go to great lengths to advertise their product.
Push Marketing Strategy
A push marketing approach is when a company tries to directly bring its goods to its customers without the use of any intermediaries. It advertises its products enthusiastically and encourages customers to buy them. The business attempts to advertise its goods to customers through different promotional techniques. This promotional approach is likewise labeled the ‘pressure promotional strategy.’
The primary goal of this approach is to draw attention to your products. Businesses attempt to minimize the amount of time it takes for the customer to observe and acquire a new item. Basically, businesses try to shorten their sales cycles.
This technique is generally utilized by organizations that desire to raise their product’s visibility. They employ strong promotional strategies to push their goods onto shoppers. Push promotional tactics to focus more on completing a transaction rather than developing a connection with the customer.
Display Ads
An illustration of digital promotions made by businesses on multiple digital interfaces is presented by display ads. These systems involve social networking sites, search engines, web pages, or streaming services. Ads shown on websites can be utilized to conveniently capture a person’s attention when they are on the internet.
Billboards
Billboards are also known as billing boards. These enormous billboards are utilized by businesses to publicize their goods. These types of items are generally located in places with a lot of foot traffic, in order to draw more attention. Firms commonly rely on billboards as a form of traditional promotional push strategy to increase visibility.
Direct Marketing
When sales representatives converse with a customer concerning one of their merchandise, they are directly advertising their product to the individual. Marketing that relies on personal communication with clients is referred to as direct marketing. No outsiders are part of this advertising plan.
What is Pull Marketing?
A pull marketing technique involves businesses using subtle advertising to attract their customers. The companies attempt to obtain organic traffic through this process. Firms create high-value content for their target audiences. They try to lure their customers in naturally. According to this plan, customers find the goods or services of a company on their own.
Businesses that use pull marketing techniques attempt to create personal connections with their clients. They are aiming for long-term business growth.
Marketing efforts that use draws or attractive offers require a significant amount of time and energy before they begin to produce positive results. Maintaining a strong presence in the market requires a significant amount of lengthy production of exceptional material to attract a natural broad fanbase.
For instance, Sarah is looking to purchase a new cell phone. She searches the internet for functional phones. Suddenly, while she is conducting her investigation, she is reminded of a blog entry she read concerning the iPhone 13. It discussed all the unique qualities and advantages of the iPhone. Eventually, Sarah made the decision to purchase an iPhone 13 as a result of reading the blog post. She found the product so appealing that she eventually decided to buy it.
Pull Marketing Strategy
A pull marketing approach involves enticing customers to come and see what products you have on offer. The customers find your products through their own research. This tactic is referred to as the ‘pull promotional strategy.’
The goal of this content marketing plan is to encourage customers to look for your products willingly. Companies tend to prioritize long-term ambitions over immediate goals. They desire to cultivate more meaningful connections with their patrons rather than simply making sales. Better client-firm relationships mean more brand loyalty, in turn. The end result is that their clients will continue to purchase their goods in the long term.
A pull marketing approach is used to stimulate the natural market demand for the goods. Firms market their products directly to their customers. The customers are demonstrating an active interest in the products, thereby prompting them to buy them.
Social Media Marketing
By utilizing social media, you can help to execute strategies that attract customers to your business. You can produce condensed video tutorials or sponsor an influential person to discuss your merchandise. Furthermore, you can design attractive infographics and share them on your social media accounts. Teaming up with other businesses to promote your goods together is an effective way of gaining recognition.
It is worth pointing out that examples of pull strategies do not include paid social media ads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You can employ a search engine optimization (SEO) tactic to boost the recognition of your firm in search outcomes. SEO practices help your material become more noticeable to those who are looking for terms and phrases that are applicable.
SEO is a great way to promote organic growth. By incorporating the latest SEO keywords and phrases into your content, you are apt to pull in your desired readership. It gives you the possibility to connect with your target customers without being overly aggressive.
Blogs
Many businesses make use of traditional forms of advertising referred to as pull marketing strategies, with blogs being a common example. You can deploy these tools to devise educational and beneficial information concerning your products and your company. Everything you publish in your blogs will definitely aid your clients in making an informed buying choice.
Combining SEO and blog strategies is extremely beneficial when it comes to promotional activities. You can increase the value of your blogs by utilizing SEO keywords to make them better. Optimized blogs also garner wider traffic and engagement.
Pull vs. push marketing: Which is more effective?
It is not the case that either push or pull techniques are superior to one another. Both are legitimate marketing strategies.
The decision of which one to use is contingent on the demographic of your customer, what you are wanting to achieve, and the phase of your business.
Here are three scenarios to guide you in the right direction:
Scenario 1. You’re launching a new product/startup
In this scenario, no one knows who you are. You don’t have any recognizable name, no people buying your products, and no collection of material. Given the current situation, it is likely that you will have to take action that cannot be easily expanded upon. You have to go out there and get customers.
Typically, these involve using tactics such as sending cold emails to other businesses (Intercom, Birchbox), participating in events (Pinterest), visiting in person (Airbnb, Alibaba Group), and even handing out brochures (Groupon).
It should not be assumed that the use of pull marketing is not useful for a business at this point. It may take a long period for a business to establish its title, create content, and gain a high ranking on Google searches that are important.
It’s best if you can do both activities equally: attract your first customers and construct a recognizable brand for later.
Studies have proven that businesses will attain the highest marketing success if about 60% of their time and resources are dedicated to building up their brand, and the remaining 40% towards advertising campaigns attempting to increase sales.
Scenario 2. You’re promoting a one-time offer/short-term campaign
Pull marketing tactics take time. The campaign may have concluded before any of its results are seen.
You may wish to look into employing push promotion strategies such as advertisements or influencer promotion in this situation.
Scenario 3. You’re building for the long term
Pull marketing tactics tend to compound over time. Take SEO, for example. As long as your posts are listed in Google results, you will receive stable, automated, and natural search activity.
The rationale is that the majority of draw marketing strategies are effective as a result of a continuous driving force. At first, you won’t detect any notable results while starting momentum. However, as time passes, it will become easier to achieve outcomes.
In comparison to push strategies such as advertising, if the campaign is stopped, the flow of traffic will come to an end.
The use of pull marketing tactics tends to be more cost-effective in the long run due to the compounding effect. Our website has an estimated 1.2 million searches on it every month.
If we had to pay for the traffic through Google Ads, the total would be $1.3 million per month. Given the lack of money allocated for compensating the content marketing squad, it is justifiable to ponder that bringing in strategies is more budget-friendly and advantageous in the longer run.
Pull and push marketing: combining them together
Companies with the most success incorporate both pull and push marketing strategies in combination with one another. Ultimately, if either approach is effective, why wouldn’t you choose to utilize them both?
Here are some ways you can combine both pull and push marketing together:
1. Generate leads with pull marketing and close them with push marketing
This is a tactic employed by a number of firms such as HubSpot. The idea is simple:
- Create content that ranks high on search engines for their target queries (pull marketing)
- Get these readers to sign up for an email list, usually via an incentive
- Later on, the sales team will reach out to these prospects via email or phone (push marketing)
2. Run social ads to promote your content
Your content is not going to promote itself. You should assist people in identifying it by possibly displaying it prominently.
One of the most dependable means of achieving that goal is to promote through advertisements.
The primary reason we advertise the majority and possibly all of our blog posts. We would be wasting a considerable amount of time in the creation of each item if they never got seen by anyone.
3. Target your ads to lookalike audiences built from your “pulled” audience
If tactic #2 is being employed, an audience composed of persons who might be intrigued by the content can be established by forming a lookalike audience.
A crowd of people resembling the source audience you load onto the ad platform is referred to as a lookalike audience. This group of people has similarities to the source audience.
The people drawn in by the content you are generating are perfect to be utilized as your “reference group” as they have inferred an interest in the type of material you have made.
4. Send outreach emails to boost awareness of your existing content
Links are an important ranking factor. Constructing additional units is a good way to acquire more. This involves getting in touch with other websites and encouraging them to create a link to your site.
To commence, you ought to have a compilation of web pages to contact. A good method of locating webpages related to your interests is to seek out those that share similar subject matter. Here’s how:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
- Search for a term related to your article
An illustration: searching for “home exercise” turns up 290,125 sites. But that’s too many pages to look through, so let’s add a few filters to narrow things down:
- Set the Language filter to English (or the language you write in)
- Set a DR filter to a range of 30-90 (or a range you’re comfortable reaching out to)
- Set a Website traffic filter to 500+
- Set a Words filter to 500+
- Filter explicit results On
- Check Exclude homepages
- Check Exclude subdomains
- Check One page per domain (we don’t need to reach out to each site more than once)
This brings us down to around 9,000 pages. If you want to trim the list, experiment with the filters.
Once you have finished, locate the email address of the site’s proprietor. Contact them to find out if they can provide a link to you.
Final thoughts
Neither strategy is better than the other. The appropriateness of either option will depend on the situation and what you are trying to achieve.
The most successful businesses don’t favor one strategy over the other. Instead, they combine the strategies for greater effectiveness.
Leave a Reply