Knowing when to focus on push, pull, or pricing marketing strategies can help you most effectively grow your business.
As small businesses, it's easy to get overwhelmed by trying to put together a marketing plan. You want to grow your customer database and begin building authentic relationships, but there is a fine balance between putting your brand out there on display and drawing people in. It's a hunt and gather system, or a push and pull relationship, to use the more common term.
As Tom Klein, CMO of MailChimp said in a recent article on AdWeek,
"How are you going to allocate your time, people and money to customers, value chain partners and distribution points to deliver on business results and build your brand at the same time? That’s our tale of two directions: push and pull. Whichever direction you take, allocating resources effectively—time, people, dollars—across everything that marketing does is key."
Klein goes on to actually define a third area of focus, making it the Three P's - Push, Pull and Pricing.
PUSH
Push marketing is all about putting yourself and your brand in front of other people. It's external - building contacts, networks, increasing distribution or visibility. Investing in push means committing resources towards sales growth, whether that is through advertising, mailings, promotions, trade shows and other face-to-face interactions.
PULL
With pull investments, it's all about adding value and internal growth. If push is the "hunter" phase, this is the "gather". You want to build your customer database, nurture and develop it into lasting loyalty relationships. Targeted mailings and local-focused advertisements like sponsoring events and grass-roots campaigns are great ways to invest in pull marketing.
PRICING
Pricing is almost a subcategory of Pull, focusing on internal efficiency and optimization, but bringing it to a separate category highlights the importance of evolving with your business. If you are asking customers to invest in your business, you should be equally concerned with making sure they are getting good quality and value from your services.
Still curious how and where to focus your marketing efforts? Give us a call today to talk to our customer service team about how AlphaGraphics can help you grow your business through print communications, signage, event marketing and more!