Push and Pull Marketing Strategy
As advertisements saturate our online space, engaging with customers has become increasingly difficult. One doesn’t even consider how many adverts they’ve seen in a day, let alone the messages and offerings of the promoted brand. This begs the question, How can we engage with our target audience without pushing our messages in front of the content they want to engage?
Enter Connected Packaging, the integration of digital gateways into product packaging which lead to online connected experiences. The goal of a connected experience is for brands to facilitate engagement with consumers on their own terms. To do so, these experiences must create additional value which pulls the customers attention. The simplest way to create a connected package is by applying QR Codes like Klu into your package design. Therefore, the only requirements to engage with a connected package is a smartphone, internet access and curiosity.
Marketing Strategy
Whilst traditional online advertisements and connected packaging both require an online medium to share branded content, these forms of marketing are distinguished by how and when they capture the audience’s attention. This represents two fundamentally different forms of marketing strategy: Push and Pull marketing.
Push Marketing
Push Marketing involves taking proactive measures to deliver marketing messages towards target audiences. In terms of consumer purchasing process, push marketing aims to create a recognition of need within their target audience. Efficient Push Marketing requires selecting the correct channels and a concise message to reach the desired target market. In doing so, a Push Marketing strategy can help: gain brand recognition, expand into new markets and generate sales revenue. The biggest drawback of this strategy is that it’s costly to maintain, especially when marketing across multiple channels.
Pull Marketing
Pull Marketing aims to create marketing content catered to the target audience’s needs and wants. This content should be easily accessible and entices the target audiences to engage with the brand’s offering. The most common form of Pull Marketing is Search Engine Optimization. Comparatively, connected packaging and SEO are pull strategies that operate at opposite ends of the consumer purchasing process. SEO assists consumers during the search for information, whilst connected packaging creates value during the post purchase evaluation process. Effective Pull Marketing will assist businesses that seek to: organically increase brand awareness, develop customer loyalty and maintain a cost-effective long-term growth strategy. One weakness of this strategy is that the brand must fully understand how their product differentiates from competitors.
Conclusion
Whilst both of these strategies have strengths and weaknesses, push and pull marketing’s effectiveness is best interpreted over a timescale. Push marketing focuses on short-term lead generation, exposing mass audiences directly to marketing messages to create recognition of need. Pull marketing focuses on long term growth, creating points of access where potential customers can engage with brand offerings on their own terms. Therefore, incorporating aspects of both to develop a marketing strategy is the most effective method to expand a brand’s reach.
