What is Pull Marketing?
03rd February 2009
What do the words 'pull marketing' bring to mind for you? Perhaps words like draw, attract, allure, persuade, and entice? These all lie at the very heart of a pull marketing strategy, and it's is what it's all about.
In marketing, companies use 'push' and 'pull' strategies to sell their products and services. A push strategy relies on you going out and creating demand for your product or service, pushing it into the market and finding new customers. A company normally knows very little about its end users and rarely has a direct relationship with them.
With a pull marketing strategy, on the other hand, the company actively seeks to build relationships directly with their end customers. In a pull strategy the company builds demand in the marketplace and then customers come to them, looking for information and ready to buy their products.
Technology like the web, email and CRM help companies execute successful pull marketing strategies by using the natural power of the Internet to facilitate two-way communications directly with end customers. As a result, 'push' marketing efforts can be spent more wisely on more highly qualified or targeted leads and prospects.
For successful pull marketing, you should:
- develop strategies that attract qualified prospects to your business
- differentiate qualified leads from the rest of your enquiries
- inform customers with information relevant to them
- personalise the content they are provided with
- transact business in simple ways
- distribute sales leads appropriately throughout your organisation
- monitor your web-based business with up-to-the-minute reporting
- interact and build relationships with every customer
- integrate your technology such as web and CRM with your traditional business processes
Attract
Qualified prospects can be enticed or pulled with automated campaigns such as e-marketing campaigns and personalised e-mail messages. By setting up co-ordinated marketing strategies, your business can increase the number of hot leads it receives while lowering your cost per lead and improving your operating efficiency.
Qualify
You should have processes to qualify all enquiries, saving you time and improving the effectiveness of your sales team. Your prospects need to find easily access to relevant information that they are seeking. You should remember, or be able to instantly recall information about repeat enquires, and simplify their interaction with you.
Personalise
Use targeted content and personalised collateral as part of your pull marketing strategy to build long-lasting relationships with every customer. Learn from your customers and respond immediately. Ensure that your customers are always provided with the information that they are seeking. Create offers based on your customer's account history and activities. A customer-centric approach will increase your efficiency and your sales.
Distribute
Any technology you deploy should work within your existing sales structure. The sales leads should be distributed to your channel partners or your field sales teams using the web and e-mail. Your sales channel should be able to reply to your prospects from anywhere in the world within seconds of receiving the lead. And if everyone is working from the same database, information will always be up-to-date and accurate.
Interact
Building valuable relationships with every customer is a vital part of pull marketing, so you should remain in constant communication with customers or business partners using features such as customised newsletters, reminder services, and personalised content delivery and
e-mails. And your customer service department should interact with the same database as your sales and marketing teams, therefore you'll exceed customer expectations, saving both time and money.
Comments
The business terms push and pull originated in the marketing and advertising world, but are also applicable in the world of electronic content and supply chain management. The push/pull relationship is that between a product or piece of information and who is moving it. A customer pulls things towards themselves, while a producer pushes things toward customers.
By robert on 23rd December, 2009
This is great stuff. Now I WANT to make some phone calls!! Thank You.
By Michael on 29th November, 2008
Quite inspiring, Keep up the good work, Thanks for bringing this up
By Website Development in London on 18th December, 2009
The business terms push and pull originated in the marketing and advertising world, but are also applicable in the world of electronic content and supply chain management. The push/pull relationship is that between a product or piece of information and who is moving it. A customer pulls things towards themselves, while a producer pushes things toward customers.
By robert on 23rd December, 2009
First you must know as much as you can about people's needs, human culture, Internet culture. You must know what they want and what they want to hear. But do not do the same mistake that most people do. Some have the charisma but are not honest. Others are honest but do not have the charisma. So you must inspire confidence.
By daneil on 23rd December, 2009
Where else "Push Marketing" uses method to motivate their sales team or channel to deliver the result - e.g. trade promotion, sales incentive and many other aggressive performance driven marketing activities.
By Online Tax Preparation on 02nd January, 2010