If you've ever been tasked with determining where to allocateyour online marketing budget to get the best return on investmentbut couldn't decide between the many options available to you, Irecommend going back to the fundamentals. Ask yourself thequestion, “Am I going to use a push or a pull channel?”
Push versus pull marketing is at the foundation of most of ourefforts as marketing professionals. Yet few often pause to thinkabout what type of marketing they are engaging in and howdrastically their campaign results will vary based on the conceptof push versus pull.
Push marketing typically refers to efforts aimed at creating ademand for a product or service. This is effective when a newproduct is launched or when enhancements are made to existingproducts. Marketers are pushing the product from the manufacturerto the consumer. Most traditional advertising channels offer waysto push a company's products and service offerings: televisioncommercials, direct mail, print ads and others. You can typicallyget the best results with push advertising if you are able toexpertly segment to your target audience before delivering youradvertisement.
Pull marketing, on the other hand, refers to a circumstance when aconsumer is actively seeking a specific product or service and goesto a company to obtain it. A traditional example of pull marketingis if a company gets positive press coverage about a product andconsumers actively seek out that product. Additionally, if there isalready good brand recognition or if there was enormous successfrom a push campaign, a company may benefit from pullopportunities.
If you apply the concept of push and pull marketing to onlineadvertising, it can dramatically shift your perception of what toinvest in and when, especially if you have a tight budget or arejust starting out engaging in the online marketing channel.
There are countless options for online marketing, including searchengine advertising, search engine optimization, banneradvertisements on Web sites, online directories, blogs and aplethora of social media opportunities.
Banner advertisements are an example of a push online advertisingchannel. Banner ads are typically designed as a combination of animage, animation or text placed around the regular content of abusiness's Web site. Based on the traffic and visitor type of acertain business's Web site, a marketer may want to advertiseproducts on that site with banner ads. Usually, businesses thatallow banner ads will charge you as the advertiser for a block ofimpressions (the amount of times your ad displays). If you have theoption to pay-per-click for any type of online ad, I'd recommendchoosing that option instead.
Thanks to browser or profile information on many Web sites, it canbe possible to segment towards specific demographic characteristicsfor display banner ads on a much more targeted basis thantraditional push mediums. This means not only can you target byage, gender and location, but also by visitor preferences andbehaviors on Web sites. This then makes it possible to decreaseimpressions and increase the likelihood of engagement. Nonetheless,you won't be positive that you are reaching your specific segment,and they may not be interested in your offer, so you will mostlikely pay more for results than you would with a pullmedium.
Search engine advertising refers to placing paid advertisementsalongside organic search results in search engines such as Google,Yahoo and Bing. This method of advertising would generally beconsidered a pull medium because users are actively searching for aproduct or service, and you as a marketer are given a chance topresent the product and service they want. If you design and targetyour search engine ads effectively, the chances are greater thatyour ad will be clicked on, and your visitor will engage with yourbrand or purchase your product or service.
There isn't always a clear-cut pull opportunity with search engineadvertising. Depending on the user's search term and the person'sstage in the buying lifecycle, the results of whether your ad istruly a pull or push ad may vary. For example, if you are a dog daycare business, a key phrase such as “dog day care in Denver” has ahigh likelihood of resulting in a pull opportunity for you topresent the exact service they want versus a key phrase of “doghelp.” Depending on the alignment between a user's key phrase andan advertisement, search engine advertising can result in hybridsbetween push and pull advertising. Leave it to the online arena tobreak tradition and blur the lines. As long as a user's key phraseclosely matches what you are advertising on a search engine, youhave created a pull opportunity. But if the key phrases associatedwith the ad are more general or indirectly related to your ad, thenit would be considered a push opportunity. Both options have valueand can return results, but the pull opportunities lead to the bestconnection with the online user, and, therefore, tend to increaseyour click-through rates, conversions and sales.
The best feature about online advertising for a business is theability to track, measure, monitor, test and improve the results ofyour campaigns in real time as frequently as you want. Never beforehas it been possible to measure so many stages of engagement as ispossible with online advertising with the help of Web analytics,demand generation and CRM systems. Based on this ability, you'll beable to directly see the results of your online ad spend andbalance out your portfolio as frequently as you'd like.
Today's consumers have much more buying power and influence onlinethan in the past. At the same time, brand preference can decreaseand their online decision-making process can increase in length dueto comparison shopping and exposure to many options. The mosteffective pull advertising techniques use a combination of toolsand techniques from search engine advertising to social media thatallow consumers to engage with a business and thus enhance from acompany's brand preference. Clearly, it's essential to find andleverage pull opportunities whenever possible. Hopefully now you'llbe able to recognize the genuine pull opportunities when you seethem, as they are the gold mines of online marketing.

Ariel Snapp is the web producer at Elevations Credit Unionheadquartered in Boulder, Colo. She can be reached at 303-443-4672x1158 or [email protected]