Push and Pull Marketing

1. Push Marketing

Push marketing refers to an organization actively pushing information about itself or its product to potential customers. The primary goal of push marketing is to bring what you offer to customers through your marketing efforts.

Examples of push marketing include the following:

• Calls to customers about a product
• Point-of-purchase displays
• Trade shows
• Direct selling
• Packaging design

Another example of push marketing is something called interruption marketing. Telemarketing falls into this category. It involves a marketer interrupting you in something that you are doing to tell you about a product or service. It’s not passive anymore; they are actively involved in pushing their message to you, the customer.

There are pluses and minuses of this method. On the one hand, it can be annoying to get spam mail or phone calls about a random product or service. On the other hand, it works. If it didn’t work, people wouldn’t do it. Therefore, this can be an effective form of marketing, depending on what it is you’re trying to do.

term to know

Push Marketing

Using anticipated demand, an organization pushes information about itself or its product to the potential consumer.

---

2. Pull Marketing

Pull marketing is exactly the opposite. By using actual numbers about demand, the organization develops methods to bring the market to them. The goal is to build brand awareness and attract potential customers who are actively seeking information. Then, the company uses advertising to pull customers in. They want to convince the customers to come to them, but they’re not necessarily pushing information to them or interrupting them in their daily routine.

Examples of pull marketing include the following:

• Social media engagement
• Email marketing to subscribers
• Referrals
• Sales promotions
• Customer emails or calls to the company with a question

hint

A classic example of pull marketing is if you can get people to actually call you. Once they call or email you, then you can pull that customer into your marketing plan.

big idea

These instances of pull marketing are all passive in nature.

There are also ways to use technology with pull marketing. One example is banner ads that you see when you log onto a website. They are advertisements trying to get you to click on the ad and go to the company website. Another type of technology pull marketing is when a product or service is on a major network.

EXAMPLE

Being on popular networks like the Food Network, or CNN, or MTV can be a great way to pull people in to generate interest about a particular product.

term to know

Pull Marketing

Using actual numbers about demand, the organization develops methods to bring the market to them.

---

3. Push Versus Pull

So, which marketing method should you use? There are benefits and drawbacks to each one of these, and to be successful, a lot of companies use elements of both. In certain tactics like display ads at a point of purchase, you can see that there can be a gray area between push and pull. Is it really pushing a product to you, or is it simply advising you and trying to pull you in to that particular product?

The following are the instances when a company should use push marketing:

• When it is a new brand that isn’t well established
• When it involves new lines within a brand that need additional promotion

The following are the instances when a company should use pull marketing:

• When it needs to raise awareness about a product before it is available for purchase
• When it wants to generate positive feedback about the company

If you’re starting a new business or you’re launching a new product, you don’t have a lot of customer awareness in the marketplace. In this case, then, push marketing is a good option for you, because you have to push information to the consumer. You need to get the information in front of them and make them aware that your product exists. If you don’t do this actively, then no one is going to know about your product—and if they don’t know about your product, they’re not going to buy it.

EXAMPLE

Sometimes retail stores push or persuade outlets or retailers to purchase and stock a product and push it promotionally. In this sense, the retail stores are pushing it to businesses who are also going to be their customers, because if those outlets or retailers can sell it to the end user, then they’re going to buy more from retail stores.

Push marketing can also be raising brand awareness by building word of mouth, such as giving out free samples, asking, “Would you like to try this particular product?” That’s a way to spread word of mouth about how good a product is.

When building a product around a consumer, having a target audience in mind as you’re making the product can help pull the customer in. If you have a new product, build it around a particular customer. You’ve considered all those elements of the marketing mix and developed this great new product that works for a particular group and a particular demand. You can use both methods and not rely solely on one or the other to make your business successful.

---

4. 4 Cs of Social Technology

The 4 Cs in this context are the 4 Cs of social technology, and they define the levels of cooperation or involvement of customers in a company or business.

4a. Consumption

If you’re marketing something using social media or social technology, the first thing you want to do is get the consumer to consume your information. They have to be able to see it or read it. This can be accomplished through pop-up ads or word of mouth on a social network, for example.

4b. Curation

Curation involves the customer collecting and saving data about your business. They may add your website as one of their favorites and visit it or return to it more often. They also might save coupons or download or print information about your business. Now they’re going beyond simply consuming information and going to that next level where they’re saving the information and product promotion about your product.

4c. Creation

The creation phase involves creating a buzz—creating referrals or word of mouth about a particular product on the internet using social media. Did you hear about what Company A did, or did you hear about this great new product?

4d. Collaboration

It’s highly desirable to get your customers to the collaboration phase. In this phase, you can think of your customers as being part of your virtual community. Not only are they creating word-of-mouth advertising, but they’re working collaboratively with you. You are now part of their group, and you are working together, collaborating on your marketing strategy. In doing so, you’re gaining repeat customers, because these are people who are now part of your “family,” and they’re helping drive your sales and marketing by being collaborative in their efforts with you. Pretty amazing, right? However, it’s also very hard to do—but like anything else that’s hard, if it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be worth doing.