In the push model, the marketer is in charge of the timing, content, and frequency of promotions. Prospects are in charge of whether they read or listen to your promotion, and whether they choose to respond. Many marketers seem to feel that their job is to shove enough promotions in front of enough prospects to make their sales goals. Push marketing has been the predominant methodology since the days of the Old West pitchman.
By contrast, pull marketing refers to making yourself visible to prospects when they are looking for what you are selling. Instead of pushing your offer at them, you allow them to pull what they want from you. Push and pull marketing require different mindsets. As a practitioner of Fusion Marketing, you should do everything possible to make it easier for people to buy from you, not only at the time they are ready to sign the purchase order or hand over th
The greatest boon to pull marketing has been the Internet. It has made marketing more complex but also infinitely more flexible and useful to the purchaser. The greatest successes in marketing are being achieved by those who use social media and public relations to make themselves visible to potential buyers, along with pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to make sure that prospects find them when either doing research or when they are in the purchase phase. This is a great way to generate traffic and is extremely cost-effective. Online registration services such as RSS feeds and Web-based newsletter subscriptions are also effective pull marketing methods.
Most of us will want to use a combination of push and pull marketing strategies. For example, you can aggressively use customized offers to promote your products and services to lists of targeted prospects. However, you can also let the world know about you through awareness-building tools such as public relations and social media. In addition, you can create a content-rich Website that satisfies the hunger of early stage prospects to learn about your offerings in a pressure-free environment. The chapters on Website, social media, and search engine optimization will be particularly important. If you do a good job of pull marketing, you will receive the additional benefit of some terrific push marketing, as your community of believers pushes you to their own social networks.
As you decide how much of your time and financial resources to devote to push vs. pull marketing, keep in mind that the battleground has shifted. As the marketer, you are not really in charge—the prospect holds the high ground. Rather than fight this fact, it is better to accept who has the real control and find the best ways to help people buy in the way they want to buy, instead of the way you want to sell to them.
As a pull marketer, these traits will serve you well:
Patience: Yes, you should always ask for the order, but accept your prospect’s timeframe for purchase. Flexibility: Pull marketers require maximum flexibility as they continually search for new ways to inform and please their prospects. Curiosity: Develop and maintain a burning desire to learn about your prospects and their characteristics (e.g., demographics) as well as their hopes, desires, wants, and needs. Service orientation: The old ways of fooling people or tricking people into buying through superior salesmanship are mostly gone. Those who have a true thirst to serve their customers will succeed.
Christopher Ryan is one of the nation’s foremost experts in B2B marketing and sales. Author of How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing and Sales Machine (Fusion Marketing Press, 2009), Mr. Ryan is founder and President of Fusion Marketing Partners (www.fusionmarketingpartners.com). Chris Ryan was formerly a senior marketing executive at noted companies like Stellent, Inc., FrontRange Solutions, PeopleSoft, Sybase, and Group 1 Software. Mr. Ryan’s latest book can be obtained at Amazon.com or at http://fusionmarketingpartners.com/get-the-book/
