Push Marketing and Pull Marketing Strategies In Social Media
Posted by Abdul Vasi on 18 Feb 2010 at 8:41 pm | Tagged as:
Push and Pull marketing strategies are both powerful ways in to reach customers.A Pull marketing strategy requires the customer to actively seek out your business or enterprise because they believe it will cater to their needs. This usually means that your brand has high recognition, high visibility and easy accessibility. Essentially, the customer pulls your content towards them.
By contrast, push marketing uses a technique in which content is pushed to specific target consumer groups. Push marketing usually relies on features of the product or service to be highlighted, and content to be directly marketed to target group. Where push marketing functions well in cases where specific information needs to be broadcasted, pull marketing is ideal in the longer term, for building relationships and development of trust.
These strategies can be used very effectively in social media marketing, especially because of the rapid flow of information that can be utilized.
Push marketing is usually a great way to get started. If you own a product or a service that is new, and that needs to reach out to a large number of target customers, content and information can be pushed directly to them. This is a great opportunity to be vocal, and advertise as much as possible about your brand. The more you can express, the better, as customers will need to know as much as possible about your brand, since this is the first time they will hear about you.
Push marketing also functions well when specific short term information needs to be communicated rapidly to an existing customer base. Have a new product being launched? Want to let your customers know about a great holiday discount? Push marketing is the answer. Direct information made available to an existing customer base will always be powerful. Send e-mails to target customer groups with the news. By reaching customers directly with important information, you also ensure a loyal customer base.
Pull marketing is an excellent way to maintain a good public image. You need to make customers interested in you, and come to you every time they want a specific product or service. Have a website that states all relevant information very clearly. Allow customers to register with mailing services online so that you can have push and pull marketing services running in parallel among the same customer group.
Creating an online community can be great for pull marketing. An open exchange of ideas and suggestions also ensures that you are aware of the customers needs.
Volunteer information wherever possible. Even if you are not the domain expert in a field, it will help customers build a trust based relationship with you.
Essentially, if you can create a niche for yourself, then you will always have people coming back to you for more. The key is in knowing which strategy to use and when to use it. More often than not, a combination of the two will be what your business requires.
