Alexis Kestler
What Exactly is Push Marketing?
Push marketing, also known as outbound marketing, refers to marketing strategies focused on pushing a company‘s products or services onto customers. This involves using persuasive, consistent messaging and offers to compel potential buyers to purchase.
As a social media marketing guru with over 10 years of experience driving multi-channel growth campaigns, I define push marketing as:
Proactive tactics for distributing promotional messaging to large volumes of potential customers, with the goal of directly triggering conversions, lead generation, or sales.
Unlike pull marketing which focuses on drawing visitors in with valuable content, push marketing broadcasts outbound communications designed to spark immediate interest and purchase consideration.
Core Push Marketing Tactics
Brands leverage a wide range of push tactics to accomplish short-term customer acquisition and revenue goals. Common approaches include:
- Email Marketing Campaigns: Segmented drip campaigns with special offers, promotions, and product recommendations sent on an ongoing basis.
- Social Media Advertising: Paid ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn targeted to relevant demographics and interests.
- TV/Radio/Print Advertising: Leveraging traditional broadcast and publication channels to push offers out to broad audiences.
- On-Site Pop-Ups and Notifications: Website prompts promoting sales, deals, or mailing list sign-ups.
- In-Store Flyers/Signage: Printed circulars and promotional signs with pricing or discounts used in brick-and-mortar retail locations.
These interruptive methods range from relatively targeted (ex. customized email drip campaigns) to very broad (ex. TV spots aired to general market segments). While specifics vary, the unifying focus stays on distributing outbound offers to accelerate short-term growth.
When Does Push Marketing Make Sense?
As an established authority in social media marketing, I recommend push campaigns specifically for:
- Generating awareness rapidly when launching new products or features
- Acquiring leads and conversions in focused geographic or demographic segments
- Promoting time-sensitive deals, sales, or promotions
- Reengaging churn risks and lapsed existing customers
The chart below summarizes core use cases:
| Push Marketing Goals | Primary Tactics | Ideal Use Cases |
|---|---|---|
| Rapid awareness building | Social media ads, TV/radio spots | New product launches |
| Geo/demo-targeted lead gen | Localized email nurtures, social ads | Entering new regional markets |
| Promoting deals and offers | Email promos, on-site pop-ups | Moving excess inventory |
| Reengaging at-risk customers | Behavioral email, retargeted ads | Reducing subscriber churn |
The ability to align specific push channels and creatives to short-term acquisition and monetization goals makes this approach very flexible. Next let‘s contrast with pull marketing.
What is Pull Marketing?
Pull marketing flips push methodology on its head – instead of blasting outbound promotions, the focus shifts to published content and experiences that add value. The goal becomes attracting and earning customer attention over time by solving problems and building relationships, rather than constantly pushing products.
As a veteran social media marketer, this is how I characterize pull marketing:
Inbound tactics for producing educational, entertaining and useful content that consumers voluntarily engage with, which seeds interest and evangelism for your brand, products, and services.
Pull marketing establishes thought leadership positioning not through hard-selling, but rather content that sparks natural curiosity and creates affinity with your brand purpose.
Core Pull Marketing Tactics
Executed skillfully, pull marketing taps into motivators beyond immediate purchase desire – things like intellectual curiosity, social proof, and lifestyle aspirations. Leading pull strategies include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing website content for organic search rankings and traffic.
- Content Marketing: Educational articles, ebooks, guides, blog posts, videos, podcasts etc. that offer helpful advice.
- Social Engagement: Cultivating brand adherence through authentic social community relationship building.
- Co-Marketing Partnerships: Participating in collaborative campaigns or cross-promotions with influencers and other complimentary brands.
These tactics focus less on selling specific wares in the short run, and more on nurturing affinity over sustained periods by providing unique informational and creative value.
When Should You Leverage Pull Marketing?
For enterprises interested in constructing durable competitive edge rather than temporary sales bursts, pull marketing should constitute the majority steady-state budget allocation.
Common pull marketing applications include:
- Establishing thought leadership in a given industry or niche
- Building an engaged, loyal community advocacy group over time
- Educating potential customers through complex sales journeys requiring trust
- Promoting high-consideration premium products or services
Consider the frameworks below:
| Pull Marketing Goals | Primary Tactics | Ideal Use Cases |
|---|---|---|
| Thought leadership building | Published research, speaker events | Professional services positioning |
| Customer community development | Social engagements, co-creation projects | Consumer tech user groups |
| Multi-channel education | SEO content, nurture streams | Considered B2B purchases |
| Evangelism for premium brands | Aspirational content, influencer co-marketing | High-end fashion lines |
As with most marketing efforts, blending push and pull strategies tailored to business objectives drives optimal outcomes. Before exploring ideal combinations, let‘s differentiate goals.
Core Differences: Push vs. Pull Marketing
While push and pull both drive critical top-line results, understanding divergent objectives, time horizons and metrics is crucial for proper application:
| Push Marketing | Pull Marketing | |
|---|---|---|
| Time Horizon | Short-term (days-months) | Long-term (years+) |
| Main Objective | Maximizing immediate sales velocity | Constructing sustainable brand growth |
| Primary Performance Metrics | Sales cycle compression, cost per lead | Lifetime customer value, net promoter score |
Both methodologies add tremendous signature strengths. Push marketing generates crucial short-term revenue through urgent calls-to-action. Pull establishes enduring affinity and trust through consistent education and value delivery.
Finding the right equilibrium depends entirely on strategic scenario, as explored next.
When Should You Use Push vs. Pull Marketing?
As with most things in marketing, sound deployment of push and pull comes down to aligning tactics with overarching objectives.
Here are a few best practices I guide my Fortune 500 social media clients through based on their positioning:
- Early-Stage Startups: Leverage push marketing to boost awareness quickly on a limited budget while focusing product-market fit.
- Startups Seeking Growth Capital: Implement more advanced pull streams (content, SEO) to demonstrate engagement trajectory and retention potential.
- Digitally Native Vertical Brands: Maintain large pull budgets focused on community building while tapping push for promotions.
- Large Enterprises: Anchor brand building in organic pull properties while localizing push campaigns to hit regional or demographic targets.
Regardless of size, I generally advocate the 80/20 rule – anchor the majority of investments into pull‘s long-term brand building, supplemented by targeted push promotions to accelerate milestone launches, inventory move, or border expansion.
Blending Push and Pull for Customer-Centric Success
Modern marketing organizations should leverage both push and pull levers, combining strategies to:
- Build sustainable brand affinity, trust and engagement via constantly optimized owned and earned educational assets and experiences.
- Drive conversions, transactions and customer acquisition in targeted segments on strategic schedules via rented and paid media promotions.
This balanced approach aligns tactics with targeted outcomes across distinct planning horizons. It also embraces the reality that different audiences generally require both educational and promotional touch points at various junctures.
As legendary growth hacking entreprenuer Andrew Chen noted: "The companies seeing success these days are blending these approaches artfully depending on the specifics of the product, service, and customer."
No enterprise can thrive solely on push or pull alone. Strategic sequencing of both is required to convert interest into advocacy across fragmented consumer journeys.
In Closing: A Continuous Optimization Mentality
I hope this comprehensive guided tour of core push and pull marketing strategies helps demystify key differences and use cases. Successful orchestration boils down to aligning tactics tightly to overarching business objectives while obsessing over performance data to guide iterative improvement.
As a parting thought, I‘ll invoke celebrated VC/founder Ben Horowitz:
“In my experience, marketing executives rely too much on intuition and not enough on data. The ones who embrace data, testing and optimization build sustainable growth machines.”
No matter what tactical lever you are pulling, adopt rigorous analytics with a progressive optimization mindset. Measure results, learn from empiricism, and evolve approaches continuously.
Combining this diligence with the strategies above will unlock enhanced marketing productivity and commercial acceleration over both abbreviated and enduring time horizons.
Now go forth and pull the right levers at the right moments to construct marketing machines embodying both science and soul!
