Creating a push or pull strategy for your marketing

Creating strategies can often be overwhelming. You’ve got the overall marketing strategy, channel strategies, and grouped strategies. However, by using a push-and-pull marketing strategy, you can categorise them into two distinct groups, removing the crossovers and making things a lot simpler.  

What is a push or pull strategy? 

These strategies take your larger overarching strategy and split it down into push and pull, which resemble outbound and inbound marketing.

Push Marketing Strategy

A push strategy is the same sort of thing as outbound marketing. It’s called push as it involves pushing your business directly to customers. In other words, you go to them. 

Pull Marketing Strategy 

A pull strategy is related to inbound marketing. In this strategy, you actively promote your business on platforms accessible to users but allow them to come to you. 

Types of Push Strategy

We’ve covered the idea of push, but we need to unpack it to determine which one is right for your business and when by breaking it down into the different types of push marketing. 

Display Ads 

These visual ads position your brand directly in the feeds of users and potential customers. They work on both search and social media. 

Regarding search, display ads are positioned within a network of sites connected to your ad provider. For example Google has the Google Display Network for this reason exactly. 

For social media, your ads are placed in the feed of the users you’re trying to target based on demographics and set features you select during the setup process. These kinds of ads hold a lot of weight in the visual aspect as it’s what gets users to click and, in turn, convert. This type of push strategy is perfect for products and e-commerce businesses as users often like what they see and impulsively purchase there and then.  

Billboards

When you think about outbound marketing, the first thing that comes to mind for most marketers is billboards. Whether on a busy road, bus stops, city central, or the underground (subway for American readers), there’s absolutely no denying that billboards can and have been effective. 

However, one negative of this kind of marketing is the cost, as it’s difficult for smaller companies to reach key locations and times without spending most of their annual budget. 

Direct

Direct marketing is extremely broad. But to put it simply, it’s when you have customers ready and raring to buy, and you present yourself at the right time. 

A B2C or larger-scale example of this would be centering your promotional strategy around sale displays and free samples in stores to encourage more product exposure and an increase in short-term sales.

Smaller and B2B businesses can do this at trade shows. People come to trade shows to look for and discuss new business opportunities. By attending or exhibiting, you’re raising their awareness. 

Types of Pull Strategy

Pull strategy is a marketer’s bread and butter. We’ve already covered that a pull strategy is the same as inbound marketing, but if you’re not up to scratch on your terminology, then that still means nothing. If you’re in need of a reminder of the key pull strategy components, we’ve included them below. 

Social Media Marketing

Social Media is quite the all-rounder when it comes to marketing strategies. Ads fit perfectly into your push strategy, and organic content sits comfortably within your pull.

By posting content on social media, you’re putting your business out there to be found by the right users. Growing an organic social media following can create a community of industry peers, clients, and potential customers.

SEO

For us, SEO is the pinnacle of a pull strategy. Don’t get us wrong; the other factors are important, but SEO is the icing on the cake, pulling it all together. 

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the process of improving your site to support search engines in crawling and ranking it. These steps ultimately help you rank higher on search engine result pages like Google for the queries your customers are searching. 

However, this only works if you write quality, relevant content that your users want to read and have a technically sound website. 

It may sound like a lot of balls to juggle, but if that’s the case, hand them off to our team of specialists and discover what our SEO Management services have to offer. 

Content

Content and SEO go hand in hand, but your content marketing should be able to stand on its own two feet. 

Content marketing is generally any media that you create and share, from informational blog posts and landing pages to social media and video. 

Content marketing can help you cast the net wider when attracting your target audience. By having content that answers queries for different stages of the buyer journey, you can meet your audience at every opportunity. 

That’s where SEO comes in. By writing content for users but considering SEO factors, you really get the best of both worlds: meeting Google’s helpful content and EEAT standards while considering the search engine and how it may rank your content. 

Check out our blog ‘How does Google rank your content’ for more insights.

Word of Mouth 

Now the digital world is fantastic, but we cannot forget the old faithful, word of mouth. 

Word of mouth is the perfect pull strategy because you’re almost uninvolved. Of course, there are ways to make word-of-mouth marketing a paid strategy, and with the rise of influencer marketing, it’s probably never been easier. However, consumers aren’t as easily influenced as they once were, and in a Neilson survey, 88% of respondents globally trusted recommendations from people they know more than any other channel.

The number one way to get customers to spread the word is to provide an outstanding experience, service, or product. Once you feel you’ve done this, you can ask customers for reviews or to mention it to their friends or family. 

Should I be using a push or pull strategy? 

Whether you use a push or pull strategy depends on your business needs. Various factors can affect which strategy you choose right now, but let’s unpack them and make the decision slightly clearer for you. 

Time 

If you’re looking for results fast, the push strategy has the channels and factors to help you do that. By putting yourself in front of the right people at the right time, you can quickly build up trust and authority in your industry. 

Budget 

If you have a small or modest budget, a pull strategy model is for you. You can generally run the pull marketing channels yourself with guidance from industry blogs and resources. The push strategy requires paid ads and promotions, which can quickly get pricey. 

Resource 

There is no answer to this one. Both push and pull strategies need some resources, and to be successful, they need skilled people to create and manage campaigns. Whether it’s PPC management or SEO, skilled marketing professionals will have much more payoff than going into it blind.

All in all, in a perfect marketing world, you’d use push and pull strategies together in harmony to drive a consistent flow of customers to your business. But until you find that perfect balance, go for the strategy that will give you the results you need at the moment. 

Speak to ROAR today to discuss how our digital marketing services can help your business achieve its goals.