Everyone wants to drive traffic to their website, and everyone wants that traffic to turn into paying customers. But sitting there waiting for that traffic to appear isn't a great approach.

Most marketing techniques fall into one of two very broad categories. Push marketing involves techniques that get your message out in front of the customer to make an impression on them. Pull marketing is creating content that is sitting there waiting for the customer to come find it. Without a well-designed strategy, we find that most business owners tend to focus on pull marketing. While this is important, without the balancing approach of push marketing you are not likely to see the results you are looking for.

Think of it this way: If you own a restaurant, you’re going to spend a lot of time working on the quality of your food, the appearance of your establishment, the way your menus look, and uniforms and grooming for your staff. We’d consider these all “pull” items - you’re creating the best experience for your customers once they enter your establishment and making it likely they’ll return.

But even the best restaurant will sit empty if nobody knows about it, so you’re going to take some steps to get the word out. In the world of traditional media, this might be billboards, bus benches, newspaper or radio advertising. If your budget is big enough, maybe even some TV. These tools push the word out and help you get in front of your desired audience.

Push marketing

Push marketing revolves around content. What can you put out there that makes your message and brand enticing and appealing to your target customer? Written articles, videos, email marketing with quality and relevant content, messenger chatbots, and other tools are all viable considerations for push marketing. You can also utilize engagement campaigns like games, quizzes, giveaways or sweepstakes, and user-generated content.

The content you create, in general, should be hosted on your website. Drive traffic to that website through social posts and ads, email marketing (one-time or autoresponder), chatbots and more.

Approach push marketing from the standpoint of trying to add value into your relationship with the customer. If your entire message revolves around “Hey, come buy from us”, your audience will quickly develop brand fatigue and tune you out.

Pull Marketing

Pull marketing requires that you have a good amount of content that is easy to find when the user comes looking for it. Search optimization, sponsored search (Google Ads), and a well-designed, mobile responsive website should all play a role in your pull marketing campaign. Review platforms and local business directories are also important to consider in this phase.

Multi-purpose content

Generating good quality content can provide benefits in both push and pull marketing. Every piece of content you create becomes an asset that you can push out to your audience through social media, newsletters, and other engagement platforms.

By hosting that content on your website, you provide assets that are attractive to search engines. When users look for information regarding your product or industry, there's a good chance that your site will become a resource provided to answer those questions.

Push and pull marketing are both crucial to any successful campaign. If you need help planning a campaign, the marketing experts at Brentwood Visual are always happy to sit down with you for a free consultation to identify techniques that would be a perfect fit for your business.