Push and pull marketing are the two core principles for guiding your marketing strategy. Before choosing which of the marketing strategies to go for, you have to identify what the long-term and short-term goals of your business are. This will guide you in choosing whether to use the push marketing strategy or the pull marketing strategy.

In simple terms, pull marketing involves putting in place and implementing strategies that automatically draw consumer interest to your products and services, while push marketing means pushing your brand in front of your potential customer or making it available to the general audience.

While this simple definition will familiarize us with what the two core principles of guiding your marketing strategy are, it is important to give a detailed breakdown of push and pull marketings alongside their differences.

What is Push Marketing?

Push marketing is a form of a promotional strategy whereby business owners and brands try to take their products and services directly to the customer. Push marketing involves all the tactics that a seller deploys in pushing their goods and services to the potential consumer. With this strategy, you as the seller create awareness for your brand and, at the same time, place the product directly in front of the buyer. A push notification tool can be used to get your product across to the buyers.

Business organizations use the push marketing strategy whenever they want to launch a new product, or when they want to stand out and get special patronage in a crowded market, they can use the push notification feature. For example, an electronic showroom can use the pull marketing strategy to get a buyer to purchase a new gadget. Let's say a new washing machine has just been launched and introduced to the market; the sales department is approached to help push the new washing machine to customers. So when a customer comes into the showroom, even when they do not inquire about the washing machine, your salesperson stylishly rolls out the mouth-watering functions of the washing machine and its advantage over other types of washing machine, this arouses the interest of the customer, and they may eventually buy it. The sales department gets a sales incentive in return for pushing your product onto customers.

Most times, push marketing is good for new products and customers with a first-time experience.

What is Pull Marketing?

Pull marketing is a marketing tactic whereby you get the customers to come and patronize your products and services. Pull marketing ensures that some conditions are put in place to ensure that customers come looking for your brand. I.e., you attempt to pull customers into making purchases.

Pull marketing tactics include advertising, mass media promotion, sales promotion and verbal referrals. Pull marketing is focused on a long-term consumer-manufacturer relationship; it attempts to create brand loyalty and ensure customers keep patronizing the brand. Pull marketing requires a lot of advertising to create enough awareness and get potential customers interested in your products and services.

For example, an automobile industry can advertise its product on the television by showing how fast it can move, how economical it is in fuel consumption, how strong it is in case of accident or a head-on collision, and how comfortable the interior is with beautiful aesthetics. This advertisement is not targeted at a particular person or audience; it is for the general public, but a larger percentage of those that watch this advertisement will be interested in the automobile brand, and whenever they want to buy a new vehicle, your brand would top their list. Sometimes, it might be the car features that will pull the customers to your brand and purchase the vehicle.

Differences Between Push and Pull Marketing

It is important to know that there is not much difference between pull marketing and push marketing. However, the few ones are;

1. In pull marketing, the tactics are deployed towards pulling your customers to patronize your products and services, while in push marketing, the tactics deployed is to push your products and services to these customers

2. Pull marketing involves a wider approach and is capital intensive because you have to ensure the awareness about your brand gets as far as possible, while push marketing, on the other hand, involves a minimal approach and less cost. Once the customer comes into your store or enquires about the products or services, you make it available to them.

3. Another difference between push and pull marketings are that the pull marketing strategy is geared towards long-term goals and continuous patronage, while the push marketing strategy is geared towards short-term and immediate patronage of the goods and services.

Business organizations tend to achieve their desired result and actualize their goals by focusing on a multi-channel approach. Brands that adopt the push and pull marketings strategy get their return on investment and are always successful. In a tweet by mention share, “71% of consumers prefer the pull marketing techniques, including recommendations, reviews, social media and online search.”

What is a Push Notification?

A push notification is a web-based or in-app message that pops up on the screen of your mobile device or personal computer. Apps majorly use mobile push notifications to engage users and provide more value.

You can enable the push notifications on your devices and disable them. The apps seek your permission to access your notification server and always send a push notification, and when you grant the access, the application can send you push notifications at any time. It is not only applications that use push notifications; business organizations with a web page or mobile app can also use the push notification feature.

Importance of Push Notifications

There are several reasons why push notifications are important. They include;

1. To Attract User Attention

These statistics show that one of the best-proven ways to attract user attention is push messages. Even so, the statistics also show that the amount of push notifications you are likely to receive in a day is quite high, and you might not be able to check them all before clearing them.

2. Increase Users Engagement

Push notifications help to increase user engagement. When users are going through their devices and a push notification pops up, their attention is focused on that new notification, and they are likely to click on it. This way, they engage with the brand and carry out the command prompt displayed on the push notifications.

Also, push notification increases engagement by using the opt-in feature. Opt-in is an inbound marketing approach in which a marketer solicits a potential customer’s permission to access their notification server and send them promotional or other types of content about a brand. PushNinja is a push notification software with an opt-in feature to set up your push notification service.

3. Traffic Drive and Generation

Another way to drive traffic to your website or generate traffic on your mobile application is push notifications. When you send out a personalized, captivating and time-sensitive push notification, the users that receive it will be tempted to click on it, and it will redirect them to your webpage or web store. When a large number of those that receive the custom notifications click on it, enough traffic is generated to your website.

4. Increases Conversion Rate

Most times, people do not remember to visit a web store or check out an application after downloading it and this way, they do not know what your brand is all about or the products and services you are offering via your mobile app. However, when they receive the push notifications, it serves as a reminder to check the web store, and when they see what interests them, which is the reason for downloading or checking it in the first place, they can make a purchase. This leads to a conversion from a potential customer to a real customer and also retaining your existing customer who might have patronized your brand in the past and is coming back as a result of the push notification.

5. Improved User Experience

Push notifications are used to improve user experience; they are displayed on the lock screen while your phone is locked or inactive, and as soon as you pick it up, it pops up on your screen. Applications that are frequently used or needed for day-to-day activities use push notifications to send timely updates and useful tips to their customers on the go. These tips and updates can easily be clicked on and will help to improve user experience in using an app or web store.

Having discussed the importance of a push notification to your business and brand, it is essential to highlight the two types of push notifications. They are;

In-app Push Notifications: The in-app push notifications are also called mobile notifications. Mobile phone users who downloaded a mobile app and granted access to the apps to send them notifications receive the in-app push notifications.

According to RubyGarage, in-app push notifications show three times better retention rates and an 88% higher level of user engagement with the app.

When you click the in-app push notifications feature, it directs you to specific tasks such as accessing timely updates, receiving brief instructions regarding the mobile app, new message notifications and a host of others.

Web Push Notifications: The web push notifications are also called browser push notifications. These notifications pop up on your personal computer or desktop screen.

Like the in-app push notifications, the web push notifications also require the user to grant access or give permission before your notification server can allow push notifications from the brand. Web push notifications are mostly used for marketing purposes.

Promotion coupons, new stocks, updated education materials and articles are some of the messages displayed via the push notifications. Also, you can add images, personalization and other extra features to the web push notification using the PushNinja, a push notification software.

Conclusion

The main difference between push and pull marketings lies in how you approach the customers. The push notification is another smart innovation that allows you to send a message-like notification that pops up on your mobile device or Personal computer screen. To build customized and personalized notifications, schedule them, track the response and conversion generated by your push notification, software such as PushNinja developed by 500apps is the best to deploy.