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Push or Pull?
With SEO initiatives trying to wrestle with the ubiquity of search engine dominance in our daily quest for information… it turns out that if you really want to succeed in promoting and selling products online, you need both push and pull strategies in place before you launch.
OK, sure, social networking technologies have raised the bar even further so that pull strategies are no longer an option… they are a must have for online marketing success. So, let’s start with some brief definitions and then move into a few suggestions.
Marketing theory distinguishes between two main kinds of promotional strategy – “push” and “pull”.
Push marketing is where you develop advertising and promotional strategies geared toward your marketing and distribution channels to entice them into promoting your product. As consumers, we rarely see this type of marketing because it is directed to the importers and distributors. It might include wholesale discounts, kickbacks, bonuses, and other types of support. It’s all designed to have the retailer promote your product to the end users instead of promoting a different or competing product.
Pull marketing on the other hand is when you develop advertising and promotional strategies that are meant to entice the prospect to buy your product or service. Some classic examples are Sales Events such as “bring in this coupon to save 25%” or “buy two get one free” etc. With pull marketing, you are trying to create a sense of increased, time limited value so that the Customer will come into your store to buy something today. When companies encourage happy Customers to spread the word to their friends and families – that’s a type of pull marketing also known as referrals or word of mouth (WOM) marketing. When companies produce ads that are controversial, edgy or downright shocking, they create a ‘buzz’ – and that’s another type of pull marketing. The ad pulls prospects into the distribution channel and if done well – right into the retailer’s arms.
It can be inferred from the above descriptions that Push is generally used by larger organizations with minimal if any direct contact with consumers (thus B2B) and Pull is preferred by the retailer (B2C) who deals directly with consumers and needs more sales this week. As technology provides increased and direct access to the consumer – larger organizations are starting to see the light – they too want to own a piece of the consumer’s attention.
Until recently, TV was the medium of choice for launching pull campaigns but the costs are high and the metrics are delayed so success can only be measured months later – much too late to change tack. Most large firms lack experience in communicating with consumers online and given their sloth like execution speed, achieving success with cost effective pull strategies can quite a challenge.
Online, this is a different story as long as the pull strategy is process based, systematized and supported by a team of experienced online marketers. Yes… online, large firms can help foster communities, create buzz, influence the winds of change and even view the success metrics of a pull campaign in close to real time.
The questions are:
Are large firms ready for real-time interaction?
Are they able to read the metrics, see the wind changing and then tack in time to catch the next breeze?
or do they still wish to act like supertankers heading toward the same destination with no regard for wind and weather?
Let’s dig a bit deeper… before responding.
Push
A “push†promotional strategy makes use of a company’s sales force and trade promotion activities to create consumer demand for a product. Typically this involves a reasonable investment in materials to get things rolling and placed in the right hands for maximum effect along the chain of distribution. The producer’s cost for push campaigns is often complemented by wholesaler’s and retailer’s advertising campaigns that are used regularly to drive traffic and leads into their shops.
Following the distribution chain, the producer promotes the product to wholesalers, the wholesalers promote it to retailers, and the retailers promote it to consumers.
A good example of “push” selling is mobile phones, where the major handset manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and Nokia promote their products via retailers such as Carphone Warehouse. Personal selling and trade promotions are often the most effective promotional tools for companies like these – for example offering subsidies on the handsets to encourage retailers to sell higher volumes.
A “push” strategy tries to sell directly to the consumer, bypassing other distribution channels. With this type of strategy, consumer promotions and advertising are the most likely promotional tools.
Pull
A “pull†selling strategy is one that requires high spending on advertising and consumer promotion to build up demand for a product.
If the strategy is successful, consumers will ask their retailers for the product, the retailers will ask the wholesalers, and the wholesalers will ask the producers.
A good example of an effective (but expensive) pull strategy is the intense advertising and promotion of fast food restaurants and also kiddie toys – mostly on TV. Fast food restaurants often use children’s toys as a hook in order to target the primary influencer (the child) and insert desire into this very vocal and assertive segment of the population. Parents find it very challenging to resist visiting the restaurant that their child talks (and often sings) about day after day and hour after hour.
Thus, in this example, the producer creates demand using a loss leader to lure their target into the retail shops. Ten years of research has revealed that the more memorable and emotional the promotion is – the better the ROI.
In the online world, there are many different ways to create demand including leveraging social networks, viral tactics, videos, mobile phones, software applications and utilities like Twitter and community forums. The online difference is that the internet is quite transparent to feedback (both positive and negative). Marketers need to be aware of and plan for damage control to minimize the impact that potentially disruptive individuals can have on their pull campaigns.
Sure, you can filter out negative comments and such but, with social networking… the consumer really has a voice in this medium and the marketer’s task is often to convert the negative input into something more neutral should it occur while driving more and more traffic toward the core promotional message and thus the distribution channel.
Over-delivering on promises and flooding the media with video testimonials has helped many of our Clients overcome undesirable input by drowning out the noise of negative feedback or converting it into something more positive and constructive.
The focus of an effective online pull promotion is to create consumer demand for a reasonable cost and have consumers pull the product into a given online or OFFLINE distribution channel.
With careful planning and best practices pull campaign success is easier to achieve today than ever before. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in creating, launching or maintaining pull campaigns online. We have an entire library of process maps dedicated to serving our Clients with proven methods to achieve pull strategy success.