Push Marketing V.S. Pull Marketing: Using Both Strategies to Promote Your Site

In business parlance, push-pull marketing refers to different ways of promoting a business model in order to reach a target market. In push marketing, you ‘push’ your content or product towards the audience which may or may not be aware of it.

Conversely, in a pull-marketing scenario, the customer ‘pulls’ your content or product towards themselves, because they are interested in learning more about it.

In other words, push-marketing involves the active engagement of a target market through methods like advertising on relevant websites, email marketing and the practice of cold calling or emailing a prospect.

On the other hand, pull-marketing largely involves the active development of a highly visible brand. This encourages customers to actively seek you out, because they believe you can fulfill their needs. Methods commonly used include media interviews, conference speaking, syndication of your content and word of mouth.

In push-marketing, you largely focus on the features of your product or service and you seek a direct response from the targeted audience. They either buy, don’t buy or opt-in to your newsletter for more permission-based marketing.

On the other hand, pull-marketing focuses on building your business or personal brand. Your target market is more diffuse and not strictly defined by your actions: you don’t email 20 targeted prospects, you generate publicity in order for end-users to find you naturally on their own.

In a sense, push-marketing often involves short-term strategies which involves specific event or time-based campaigns (Christmas deals, new membership offers) while pull-marketing focuses on the development of trust and perceived value.

When Should I Use a Push Marketing Strategy?

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If you own a new blog or product, an initial push strategy of some sort is useful because your brand/product is as yet unfamiliar to your target market. Actively engaging your peers by networking and pushing your best written articles is a smart thing to do because you don’t have an audience that will do it for you.

The biggest mistake you will make is to assume that bloggers and potential consumers know about your article or product. When your site is completely new, it is difficult to obtain attention because readers and the media may be uncertain about your content or expertise.

Push-marketing makes your brand pervasive and ubiquitous. It also helps you to acquire leads which you can convert into loyal supporters.

When Should I Use a Pull Marketing Strategy?

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Pull marketing should be utilized alongside push marketing whenever possible. For instance, you can pull in buyers by creating relevant content. After getting them to register for your community or opt-in to your newsletter, you can initiate push marketing at specific segments of your captured audience.

There are several instances where pull-marketing is especially pertinent. If your monetization model involves the provision of services that are tied to your personal brand (consulting) or the sale of big-ticket products ($700 online course), you need a sales funnel that is built with a good amount of end-user trust.

Prospects must feel and believe that you are the best solution to their problem.

Using Push and Pull Marketing Strategies for Your Websites

Let’s take a look at some push and pull marketing strategies you can use to effectively promote your website or business. They are categorized according to their method (push/pull), although some of them may fall into both strategy types.

All of these tactics can be applied to blogs of all niches, although some creativity and hard work is needed to make them really successful.

Here are seven common pull marketing strategies you can use:

1. Syndicate Your Content/Skills. Guest blogging allows more people to read your content and know your brand. You can also contact email list owners and offer to have an article of yours sent through their list for a fee. If you’re a designer, offer to create designs for prominent websites for free and make sure your designer credit link is left on the site for exposure. Create and share your content through social media channels.




2. Develop Relationships with the Media. Journalists will often quote experts they are familiar with because of convenience and trust. The same goes for bloggers. Networking with the media and getting to know them well can allow you to obtain a lot of credibility, especially when you are cited in major publications/websites that are trusted by the audiences you want to target.




3. Create a Blog and Write Relevant Articles. In this scenario, a blog’s purpose is to produce educational content to teach users and fulfill their info needs. Create dozens of resource pages and make sure they rank well on search engines. You want to dominate a niche, demonstrate your knowledge and use content to support your service, ad or affiliate-based monetization strategy.




4. Interview Thought Leaders and Niche Experts. Leverage the brand power of other individuals and use them to build your own reputation. Interviews with notable personalities attract attention to your website and may send you targeted visitors as well, should the personality choose to mention your site.




5. Volunteer your Expertise. Pick an online community (e.g. networking site/forum) that is most relevant to your website. Volunteer your time in helping other individuals in it. If the community is large enough, word of mouth by the members can easily send you potential customers or readers.




6. Create an Online Community. The authenticity of other user opinions is something that is difficult to replicate by your business. By creating an online forum that is attached to your website, you allow other users to be more deeply immersed in the conversation that is going on about your site, product or brand. This grows initial interest into eventual loyalty.

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And here are five push strategies you can use:

1. Paid Advertising. There are many types of paid advertising methods available and their goal is largely the same: to obtain traffic that will hopefully convert into customers or leads (RSS subscribers for blogs). Paid advertising is especially useful for sales pages, which may not fit well in pull marketing channels like social media.




2. Incentive-Based Promotions. Offer an incentive for users to promote your websites. This can be a public affiliate program which gives users a commission for every referred sale. Because of its overt commercial overtones, many audiences may see this as interruptive marketing instead of real word of mouth.




3. Create and Maintain an Email List. You should always aim to build an email list for both potential buyers and existing customers. This allows you to push advertisements away from normal communication channels and is a very cost-effective way to generate sales.

   Educational email newsletters can be considered a pull marketing strategy because they will often draw in new prospects through word of mouth.




4. Joint Venture with other Businesses/bloggers. This is a variation of paid advertising. Offer to pay partners a referral fee if they refer prospects to your website. Non-profit communities or online associations are a good place to set up referral networks. Bloggers are also possible JV partners to consider.

Both push and pull marketing strategies work well to achieve specific goals. Integrating both strategies in a long term marketing plan is an effective way to promote any business or website.

Do you use both types of marketing?

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