Push Or Pull, Are You Marketing Properly?
Traditional marketing has often been called “push” marketing, but there is another kind of marketing that has taken root and been expanded upon within the last 15 years, getting its big debut with the advent of the Internet. It’s called “pull” marketing. Also known as in bound marketing in some places recently as well.
So what’s the difference? Push marketing is marketing that you push out to an audience, delivering your message to an unsuspecting audience who wasn’t really looking for it. Examples would be TV and radio advertising. Pull marketing is just the opposite. With pull marketing, you attract an audience to you who is actively looking or in the market for what you have to offer.
Pull marketing has been made possible by search engine optimization and search engine marketing. When a searcher goes online to find information about a particular topic, your goal as marketer is to position your offer so that the searcher can find it easily. That’s what search engine marketing and optimization is all about. It’s also what pay per click advertising, e-mail marketing, and social media marketing are all about. The marketers are “pulling” their audiences in; that is, the successful ones are. Many of the unsuccessful marketers are still trying to push.
Another term that push marketing is also referred to is interruption marketing, this has always been a standard for traditional marketers. Mediums such as radio, TV, billboard or print advertising often push or interrupt their audience. This type of branding is useful but often does not generate the type of return on investment or ROI that a pull campaign might.
Are you pushing or pulling? Have you tested both strategies side by side? Which one produced better results? I am not that biased or anything 
5 Responses to “Push Or Pull, Are You Marketing Properly?”
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Great twist on attraction marketing – I tweeted this one!
Hi Nick,
Good points! You are absolutely correct that pull marketing traditionally results in higher conversion rates and better ROI than push marketing. However, a drawback to pull marketing is you have little influence over when (and if) potential buyers take action. Sometimes buyers need to be nudged to take action.
The old adage, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” is certainly true in marketing. You may have built the best mousetrap in the world, but if nobody knows it exists and they don’t know to search for it, then you won’t be able to pull anybody to your site.
As a result, you often need to supplement your pull marketing efforts with push marketing efforts. As your brand builds momentum you can rely more heavily on pull efforts, which is a huge payoff for the reasons you mentioned in your article.
Keep up the good work Nick!
Thanks Sally for reading, your comment and the Tweet!
Hi MasterLinker,
Thanks for the comment and your thoughts! I appreciate you being a great loyal reader
This is in response to the comments by Masterlinker about HAVING to fill the gaps in Pull marketing. You are assuming that there really aren’t that many people out there looking for what you do.
Your beliefs about Push marketing are misleading you when it comes to Pull marketing.
Try this, go to Google Keyword tool and type in what people would look for to find you. You’ll probably see that there are thousands of people looking for you. And IF you have a compelling marketing message it isn’t hard to gather 5% to 10% of those looking into your Pull marketing net.
A construction company told me they were having trouble getting clients with their regular marketing. I showed them there were 13,000 people (yes 13,000) looking for what they do right here in Kansas City (not a really large city). And all we have to do is get a listing on Google (natural search engine position or pay per click), and bingo they start calling you.
It’s a hard thing to understand when you’ve been chasing them, to learn that IF you do this right that they will CHASE you. You can have as many as you want.
I showed a Mary Kay lady who had said she had only 1 call a year from the national Mary Kay website that there were 1,000 people a month looking for a Mary Kay lady. We turned on a pay per click and within 2 weeks she had 72 people checking out here website, and 10 new sales. In a year she’s added an additional 250 people.
That’s what can happen with Pull marketing when done right. Gaps??? Only if you don’t do it right.
Hi Alan,
Thanks for reading and sharing several examples with our readers. I think you have a point about having to fill gaps in pull marketing, but pull marketing does not always work as you describe. What is the ROI on advertising spend or the conversion was very low and it is not worth it and I think you have over simplified it to an extend. We all know SEO is a great long term strategy as is social media, but pay per click advertising (what you are referring to) is not always the best for every type of business (that is a totally different post, but a good topic too, I think
As we all know every business is 100% different in every respect and this includes what combination of push and pull marketing that is needed to drive long term success.
Thanks again for the comment and for reading!