To Get Clients, You Need To Pull, Not Push
March 17, 2010
In marketing, there are two main categories: Push Marketing, and Pull Marketing.
Push Marketing, also known as “interruption marketing,” is basically when you force your marketing message upon potential clients when they’re in the middle of doing something such as driving a car, surfing the web, or just spending time with friends or family. While they’re doing something else, you push your message in front of them.
Tactics of Push Marketing include:
- Flyers
- Banner ads on websites
- Classifieds
- Cold calling
- Radio spots
Of course, all of these tactics are just adding to the cacophony of information that people in our culture deal with on a daily basis. There are constantly ads screaming at us to “BUY! BUY! BUY!” along with cold callers always trying to push their sales onto us. Personally, I get tired just thinking about it.
These days, given that we face so much unpleasant push marketing on a daily basis, most people habitually tune it out. It becomes useless background noise that we don’t even pay attention to. That’s why push marketing is nowhere near as effective as pull marketing.
Pull Marketing consists of marketing tactics in which you get your message out in front of potential clients who are ACTIVELY SEEKING the products or services you offer. They’re already looking for the types of information you can supply them through you’re marketing strategies, and this gives you the opportunity to present yourself as the person to solve their problems and meet their needs. For instance, they’re actively searching for, say, a personal trainer, a massage therapist, an accountant, or whatever it is your business does, and there you are.
Some of the most common pull marketing tactics include:
- Search engine optimization
- Pay-per-click marketing
- Social media sites
- Newsletters
- Tradeshows
- Public speaking
- Blogging
- Strategic networking
In general, there’s a lower return on investment associated with push marketing. Push marketers tend to get fewer clients for every dollar they spend on their efforts. All in all, push marketing costs more and requires more effort.
Pull marketing, on the other hand, is very targeted. It gets your message in front of your ideal clients, and it presents your business as the solution to problems that people are actively seeking help with. That’s why pull marketing has such a high conversion rate. It attracts more clients, and it takes much less effort.
Most Businesses Still Only “Experiment” with Social Media
March 2, 2010
Social media use among businesses has grown significantly over the past year or two, but new research from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit (where WebProNews is conducting exclusive interviews this week), indicates that most businesses are largely still in the experimental stage when it comes to their efforts.
There are a great deal of interesting stats to pick through in the report, but to me, one of the most striking is that 61% (nearly 2/3) say they have experimented with social media, but not done that much. Various stats suggest businesses are starting to get to the place where they view social media as crucial, however. For example, the vast majority (90%) say they expect social media to take up more time internally "in a year's time," while only 8% expect it will take up the same amount of time, and 2% expect less time to be spent on social media next year.
Some other highlights from the report:
- The majority of companies have difficulty measuring the return on investment (ROI) from social media. Almost two-thirds of respondents (61%) say their organizations are “poor” (34%) or “very poor” (27%) at measuring ROI.
- Increased traffic to Web site is the business goal that marketers are most likely to be trying to influence through social media marketing. Three quarters (74%) of companies say they use social media to increase traffic.
- Direct traffic to Web site is by far the metric most commonly used to measure the impact of off-site social media, measured by just under two-thirds of company respondents (63%).
- More brand recognition (64%) is the second most important business objective in terms of impact of social media. A similar proportion of respondents (62%) cite better brand reputation.
- Despite the widespread recognition that social media marketing impacts brand reputation and brand visibility, only a quarter of all respondents (25%) surveyed use online brand mentions and brand awareness as a metric for measuring off-site social media success. Just 15% use brand perception as a metric.
- Just over half of companies (56%) say that they try to achieve increased sales through social media activity. But only a quarter of companies (24%) use sales as a metric for measuring social media success.
Facebook is the Web property mostly commonly used in social media, with 85% of companies surveyed using it as part of their marketing strategy. This is followed by Twitter (perhaps more closely than expected, given Facebook's much larger user base) at 77%, LinkedIn at 58% and YouTube at 49%.
Over two-thirds of company respondents say that the amount of money spent on social media has increased since last year, while 30% say it has stayed the same, and 81% of companies expect social media budgets to increase over the next year, while 18% expect spending to stay the same. So while companies are still experimenting, they must be generally seeing good enough results to keep at it, or see the potential to use it on an expanded basis.
Do you have a concrete social media strategy or do you simply experiment? Discuss.
Internet Plays Vital Role For Auto Dealers
February 13, 2010
Auto dealers say the Internet has provided them with the highest return on investment (ROI) over the last five years, according to a new survey from Autobytel.
The majority (96%) of dealers predict the Internet will play a larger role in their marketing in the next five years. Internet leads continue to play a critical role, with 93 percent of dealers reporting that new and used third-party leads are an important part of their marketing mix. One hundred percent of deal respondents reported their Internet strategies helped them through these challenging times, with the majority (79.5%) reporting the Internet has been their highest ROI. In contrast, traditional media (TV, newspapers and radio) only ranked first for 7.5 percent, 6.5 percent, and 2.5 percent of dealers respectively. Dealers said being able to reach customers beyond their immediate market is a key advantage of the Internet, as well as the fact it is more cost-efficient and targeted medium than traditional media like TV & radio. Ninety-three percent of dealers have increased their Internet marketing budgets in the last five years, with more than half (56%) boosting their Internet budgets by 50 percent or more. Third-party leads continue to provide benefit to dealers for the following reasons, according to 93% of those surveyed:
Social Media Changing Marketers Approach
September 29, 2009
Social media is causing organizations to rethink and evolve their marketing strategies, according to a new study by Alterian.
The research indicated that 60 percent of organizations think that personal one-to-one engagement with consumers requires a new way of creating content and on-demand services, while 60 percent also feel the existing strategies for understanding consumers needs can be improved significantly.
Mike Fisher, Alterian
"The research clearly evidences that there needs to be major changes implemented in marketing organizations across the globe. The engagement of so many individuals across social networks, blogs and other online channels has meant that organizations need to increasingly treat consumers as individuals - both in order to recruit new customers and to retain existing ones," said Mike Fisher, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, The Americas, Alterian.
"Conversations can now spread across the web in seconds that can have both a dramatically positive or negative impact on a brand dependent on their content. Businesses need to evolve their monitoring and marketing techniques to offer one-on-one engagement with the customer and act on these conversations in real-time."
Social media was identified as the channel which has had the most influence on the customer experience in the last twelve months (27%) and, is the channel which businesses expect to have the greatest effect on the customer experience in the next year (48%).
In terms of return on investment, over a quarter of respondents (28%) cited email as the channel that offered the greatest ROI and the second most popular channel (20%) for investment in the next twelve months.
Other key highlights include:
- 46% of respondents felt that strategy was the most important factor in defining the customer engagement agency
- 25% stated that the top obstacle to overcome in online marketing was the integration of online with database marketing and offline channels
- The lack of ability to assess or manage internal infrastructure and culture challenges (25%) and the integration of all the technology to power the cycle (20%) were identified as the biggest factors in implementing the customer engagement cycle.
