When it comes to promoting your product there are many strategies that you can put into place to get your product in front of your customers. There are two main strategies, push and pull, that will help you sell your product. Depending on the infrastructure and type of small business you own, each strategy has its benefits.
What is a Push Promotional Strategy?
A push promotional strategy is a marketing strategy that sees companies take its products to its consumers. The goal of this strategy is to get the product directly in front of the customers, in the form of trade shows and point of sale displays. These are the most common push promotion strategies used today:
- Direct selling to customers in showrooms
- Point of Sale (POS) displays
- Trade show promotions
- Package or display design
Advantages of Push Marketing Strategy
There are many advantages to using a push marketing strategy including:
- The ability to establish a sales channel
- Create product exposure, demand, and consumer awareness about a product
- Able to forecast and predict demand
What is a Pull Promotional Strategy?
A pull promotional strategy also called a pull marketing strategy, is the opposite of a push strategy. Instead of directly attempting to get products in front of customers, a pull strategy aims to get the customers to come to the product (hence the term “pull”).
A pull strategy is all about getting the customer to come to you. There are six widely used pull marketing strategies employed today:
- Advertising and mass media production
- Word-of-mouth referrals
- Customer relationship management
- Sales promotions and discounts
- Social media coverage
- Email marketing
Pull marketing strategies have gained momentum in the mobile-based world. With geofencing, geotargeting, and similar technologies, pull strategies are becoming increasingly easier and more relevant.
Advantages of Pull Marketing Strategy
There are many advantages of using a pull marketing strategy, including:
- Establishing direct contact with your customers
- Building consumer loyalty
- Stronger bargaining power with retailers or distributors
- No pressure to conduct outbound marketing
- Ability to test a product’s acceptance in the market and gain feedback on the product
Whichever promotional strategy you choose, it is important to use a strategy that works with your small business goals. Keep organized and thrive with QuickBooks Online. Keep an eye on your cash flow with up-to-date financial reports, track your expenses, and manage your business.
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A Push Marketing Strategy also called push promotional strategy, where businesses attempt to take their products to the customers. In a Push marketing strategy, the goal is to use various marketing techniques or channels to ‘Push’ their products in order to be seen by the consumers starting at the point of purchase.
Why is PUSH Marketing Strategy important?
The main purpose of PUSH marketing strategies are usually used to gain product exposure, and it applies to both new and existing product, particularly crucial for newly launched products where creating visibility is a top priority. In many instances, consumers are unaware or actively seeking the product, with the right and persistent ‘PUSH’, a product awareness and understanding will become more established, that eventually helps to create demand of the said products. In other words, This type of marketing strategy hopes to minimize the amount of time between a customer discovering a product and buying that product. To accomplish this, companies use aggressive and wide-reaching ads to make the biggest and most immediate impact they can on customers.
Push Marketing Strategies can be implemented in both traditional and digital marketing media or channels.
Example of a traditional push marketing methods are:
- Direct Selling to customers in showrooms
- Point of Sale display (POS)
- Direct Mailer
- Packaging designs to encourage Trial or Purchase
- Trade show Promotion
Example of a digital push marketing methods are :
- Display advertising across devices i.e. publishers media buyer, network media buy, behavioral marketing
- Social Marketing i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter…
- Video marketing i.e. Youtube, Facebook, Tik Tok…
- Content Marketing i.e. blogging, an advertorial on publishers’ site, contest...
All of the above digital channels are great methods to reach and educate the consumers.
Since I am in the digital marketing industry, I am a firm believer that digital marketing can be an easy and cost-effective channel to implement Push strategies and result. Why? The answers are simple :
- The scale of reach – almost limitless in the internet world
- The speed of launch & reach – quickest of all media
- The accuracy of relevant reach – audience targeting capabilities based on demographic, behavioral and geographical
Having said that, both traditional & digital PUSH strategies are equally important to create product exposure to different market segments & audiences, consumer awareness about a product and ultimately product demand. When this happens, marketers can then introduce a ‘Pull’ marketing strategies for sales conversion.
What is ‘Pull Marketing’? I will discuss in the next sharing. Stay tuned!