Every marketing tactic falls into one of two categories: push or pull. Do you understand the difference between them and how your target audience responds? Once you have a firm grasp of that, you have to figure out how you’re going to be utilizing just one…or maybe even both? Let’s break it down.
The Difference Between Push vs. Pull Marketing
As you can tell by their names, the two types of marketing are completely opposite of each other. Push marketing tends to fall on traditional marketing tactics of print, newspaper ads, radio ads and TV spots. The tactic employed here involves pushing your message, products and services out to as many people as possible. It’s very YOU focused, meaning you spend a lot of time talking about yourself in hopes your message resonates with someone seeking out your product or service.
Pull marketing, on the other hand, is based on a philosophy that the internet is a place where people go every day to research, learn how to do something and find solutions to their problems. Therefore, businesses need to create content that the search engines and—more importantly—potential customers can find, deem useful and pull them into your site to make a decision, which hopefully ends up being the purchase of your product or service.
How do I integrate the two?
Most businesses find great value in having an integrated marketing campaign that embraces both push and pull marketing. According to Brand Science, companies that blend direct mail (push) with other channels, such as social media (pull), yield a 20% increase in ROI. For example, you might send a postcard to a list of potential leads, which is push marketing. That may be ok if it proves to be the best method of reaching this audience.
But how do you get that 20% increase in ROI?
The key to finding ways to integrate push and pull marketing together is all about the messaging and call to action. A way to do this may be to have the postcard hit a pain point that your buyer has and offer a solution for that pain point by bringing them to a landing page on your website. Not only did you just marry the two beautifully, you gave yourself the ability to measure the results of your campaign, which is traditionally difficult to do with offline marketing.
Understanding push vs. pull marketing tactics (and how your target audience responds to these tactics) is a great way to position your business for future growth. Are you prepared for what’s coming up ahead? And how are you changing your marketing to account for the change in buyer’s journey we’re seeing thanks to online search? Check out our free white paper below, “Is Your Business Ready for the Next Generation?”
