Promotional Pull and Promotional Push Strategies,

What is best for your Marketing Campaign?

By Ashley Schultz

There are two different promotional strategies to consider when developing your business’ marketing campaign. These strategies are pull and push strategies. What is the best strategy for your business and what does each strategy entail?

Push strategy directly places product in front of the consumer to make its existence known. The push promotional strategy often focuses on selling directly to customers. This is through point of sale displays and directly approaching the consumer. Push marketing combines the resources of retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers to create consumer demand for a product or product line. The strategy tries to convince resellers that they can make a profit on a manufacturer’s product and encourages them to order the merchandise and push it through to their customers. Some examples of push strategy can be: direct selling face-to-face at a tradeshow or showroom, packaging design to encourage purchase, and negotiations with retailers to stock your product. Often consumers find the push strategy, “pushy” and sometimes too much. This is where the Pull strategy can come into play.

The Pull strategy creates a demand for your product and encourages consumers to request the product from retailers. Pull marketing generates brand awareness, causing the consumer to want to learn more about your product or service. The pull strategy is actively used because of the Internet and Social Media. Pull marketing gets the consumer to come directly to you rather than you going directly to your customer. Often pull marketing is through “viral” content and word-of-mouth. Social Media has become the perfect transport for pull marketing because of the established relationship that is developed. Social media has allowed customers to share information about a product or service with their friends without costing the company any money.

Push and Pull promotional strategies both have their pros and cons. In order to determine what strategy to use; companies need to research their target audiences demographics, wants, and needs. Often companies use a mixture of push and pull, yet in order to use this mixture, a true understanding of each on their own in necessary.