Two of the broadest categories of marketing – Push and Pull.
If you had a choice to pick just one for your business, which one would you go for?
The answer is, it depends.
It depends on your knowledge of these two concepts concerning your business, your requirements, your target audience and much more.
So if you do not have an answer yet, let us help you out in understanding, which of these two strategies holds the most potent potential for your business.
Read on.
What are Push and Pull marketing strategies?
As their names suggest, they are two opposite strategies that work towards one common goal – Growth.
The Push approach is when you actively promote your products and services out towards your target audience. On the other hand, the Pull strategy is about attracting your target consumers towards your products.
For the sake of an example, all the social media channels and the engagements built on them is a push marketing strategy while, search engines or large databases, such as YouTube, can be considered a Pull approach.
Push marketing strategy
Push marketing strategy is when you produce something of value, and you bring it among your potential customers for making a sale. There may or may not be a need for your service, but your marketing efforts are based on generating a need for it.
The best-suited scenarios for implementing this approach can be:
- During the launch of a new product
- While operating within a niche market
In both of these cases, there is likely to be a significant resistance from the consumers to accept your products. This is why there arises a need for an active push from the business to make the potential customers see its value.
Let us take an example.
You produce the best kind of knives in the world that works automatically and exceptionally efficiently. It is a brand new, unique product and nobody knows about it. Here, you will face difficulty in gathering customers on two levels:
- While creating awareness about your product – Something like this exists.
- While trying to persuade people to buy it – This can add more value than regular knives.
Therefore Push marketing would be the best way for you to reach out to your target audience and explain to them the value that your product brings for them and of course, it will work like a charm.
Pull marketing strategy
When the customers already know what they want, generally they are also aware of the advantages of that object or service. In such scenarios, the customers readily engage in knowing more about the product before making a purchase.
They research it, ask people, look for the best places to find it, and much more. For instance, dental services, daily utilities, vehicles, etc. Thus, the best times to implement the Pull strategy is
- When the consumers are well aware of their needs
- When you want to give priority to branding
So, Pull marketing fuels itself. All you need to be at the right places, at the right times for your target audience to find you.
The difference in investment
Now that we have understood the driving forces behind both, pull and push strategies, another important factor to consider is the cost requirements of each of these strategies.
The actual cost of both kinds of campaigns might depend on many variables, including their duration, platform, size, etc. This makes it a little difficult to calculate, so for comparison, we can consider the following.
- The cost of attracting Push traffic is ‘cheaper when compared with Pull traffic cost per click. This cost makes it a more common and easily adaptable strategy.
- Pull marketing is naturally more expensive because it is generally a high market competition area for most businesses. So, the more expensive your search keyword, the more will it cost per click.
The better you know the platform that you are working with, the better will be your chances of increasing your profits. As for Push and Pull strategies, now you know which way to go based on your business.
