Push & Pull Your Way To Web Marketing Glory

To Marketers, it’s like breathing in and out – but if you are planning to leave your day-job to pursue your own home based business on the Internet ‘without’ the benefit of a Marketing Education, then you need to know these two Basic Promotional Strategies – ‘Push’ and ‘Pull’ Promotional Strategies. 

In this article, I’ll explain how the  ‘Push’ & ‘Pull’ promotion applies to web marketing and I’ll even show you how to plan your ‘Push-Pull’ strategy and take action now, and increase sales activities from your existing business.

But first, you need to know what these strategies are in the offline world.

‘Push’ Promotional Strategy: Push marketing is where you use a sales force into your marketplace to buy your products, services or opportunity. A good example of push selling is cell-phones, where the company promotes their offers to retailers (not consumers) and then sold to consumers.

‘Pull’ Promotional Strategy: A ‘Pull’ marketing strategy is that requires advertising to promote a brand. Brand awareness is key to this type of promotion. When people are familiar with your brand and trust in it, the buying decision comes easy.

Since I am writing for online business owners and affiliate marketers, the ‘PUSH’ & ‘PULL’ strategies can be applied on your web-based business as well.

The Good News Is…

While Offline ‘push’ ‘pull’ strategies require a large amount of investment upfront, online ‘push’ ‘pull’ strategies can be done with very little money of no money at all.

Low cost ‘Push’ Strategies you can use to sell more products and services online. 

Below are some online push strategies you can implement to your business right away:

1. Affiliate program:

Affiliates are like sales force for your business. If the product or service that you are selling online do not have an affiliate program setup, you are losing sales or spending too much money on advertising it yourself. Setting up an affiliate program for your website is not complicated at all. You can easily setup a tracking and manage affiliates using online marketplaces like Clickbank or any other similar affiliate software.

2. Follow Up Leads By Phone: Now, you probably use an auto-responder system to follow up with your prospective clients, and that’s great. Email follow ups are very common these days but your prospective clients receive tons of emails and even follow ups from your competition. Most landing pages collect phone numbers but never use it to call the prospective clients. The combination of email follow up and a friendly phone call will shoot your conversion through the roof.

3. Direct Mail: If you are collecting mailing address from your Landing page, try sending a batch of direct mail offers to your prospect list on top of your email and phone follow up. It works fantastic.

4. Targeted Advertising: The frequency of your advertising determines how well the rest of the ‘push’ strategies will work for you. If you don’t advertise, there aren’t any leads for you to call or direct mail for you to send out. Try giving useful resources and places to advertise to your Affiliates, so they can bring in the sales for you.

Low Cost ‘PULL’ Promotional Strategies to bring in more Online Sales: 

1. Viral Promotions: Most people know the power of viral marketing but may not have an effective viral marketing system in place. Here are some thing you can do to market your website virally.

• - Write small re-printable reports for others to promote with your link and logo
• - Write articles and encourage other to post them free as content for their site.
• - Send out news releases concerning a free service or product available on your site.
• - Install a Recommend-It.com referral system.
• - Enable visitors to e-mail post cards or greeting cards from your website.
• - Offer a digital game or utility for free download that carries your marketing message.

2. Social Networking:

Social networking websites like youtube, facebook or frienfdser can get you a ton of exposure. Use your branding, links and logos on social network websites.

3. Blogs: Personalize your blog pages with your company logo and links.

4. Discussion Forms: Start your own discussion forums with your company’s identity, or respond to posts with helpful answers to discussion lists in your niche market — but be sure to craft a good signature file with your link in it.

5. Seminar Networking: Attend seminars and connect with others. Strike JV deals and an opportunity to create word-of-mouth.

Why you need both.

Just one strategy will not give you as good of a return. I believe you need to balance both strategies to create a great marketing mix that powerfully entices customers to come through your door. Some customers react to one type or to the other. For example, the bargain hunters might react to the pull marketing tactics while the socially-aware buyers might respond to the push marketing. Or, if you have a product that requires a lot of convincing to buy, the “double barreled” approach will help to ensure that they can’t resist your offer. It’s absolutely imperative to use both strategies, ‘Push’ & ‘Pull’ promotional strategies, for your business.

Here’s how to build both into your business:

Do the following right now and watch your sales increase within 7 days.

1. Write down a list of ‘Push’ strategies that you can implement in your daily, weekly or monthly promotions.
2. Write down a list of ‘Pull’ strategies that you can implement in your daily, weekly or monthly promotions.
3. Maintain a daily, weekly, monthly check list and ‘Just do it‘.
4. Do it yourself until you create a system for your business. When you have a system in place you can hire someone or outsource these tasks to others.

Conclusion:

Working on all promotional pillars will propel your business to the next level. A combination of ‘Push’ and ‘Pull’ strategies for your web business is key to your marketing success.

Wishing you all the success!

Abe Cherian 
Multiple Stream Media, LLC.