“Pull Marketing” has always been, and will continue to be the most effective Internet Marketing Strategy at your disposal.
Allow me to explain. Most marketing efforts fall into one of the following three categories:
1. “Push Marketing” or advertising basically screams at the viewer. “Hey Look at Me, BUY MY STUFF NOW!” Since we’re exposed to this type of marketing thousands of times a day we’ve learned to tune it out, hate it or even protest it. Look at SPAM for instance. People are getting arrested for using unsolicited email to “Push” their offers in front of us!
With Push Marketing we have no choice in the matter. We get a sales pitch whether we like it or not. Who doesn’t want a choice in what they see, read or hear?
2. “Permission Marketing” on the other hand, aims to seduce us into giving others permission to advertize to us. They offer up promises of great useful content, special offers and discounts if we sign-up, opt-in or subscribe. It’s effective but loosing ground day by day as we see the content getting more and more diluted with ads.
But at least with Permission Marketing, they were polite enough to ask and offer us something in return.
3. “Pull Marketing” is when people come looking for you, with a purpose.
If I’m seeking the services of a programmer to develop a script for a site I’m working on, the first place I would look is at a search engine or a site like elance.com where I know programmers gather. I actually visit these sites with a purpose and seek out the best person for the job.
Maybe I read an article or a web based tutorial the programmer wrote. Maybe I searched through hotscripts.com and couldn’t find a script to serve my purpose.
The point is, I went looking for them. I took the time and energy to find them and I’m ready to buy now. I’m the most highly targeted prospect the programmer could ever hope for. The key to effective Pull Marketing on the internet is “Visibility”. If that programmer wasn’t visible when I went searching, he would have lost the sale. He effectively used Pull Marketing to his advantage and it was to my advantage as well because I needed his services at the time.
Here are 7 ways to implement Pull Marketing into your internet Marketing Strategy:
1. Make sure your web site is listed in the major search engines. Your site needs to be optimized so that it is listed under the appropriate keywords and phrases in the search results. You’ll be there and visible when your potential customers are ready to buy.
2. Make your expertise memorable by writing informative articles relevant to your industry or niche. Make those articles visible by submitting and syndicating them to sites and ezines for future publication.
3. Contribute meaningfully to online forums where your potential customers gather to exchange their views and opinions and talk about their problems. Leave subtly keyworded links in each of your postings. As soon as the other forum participants know who you are and what you know, they’ll be more inclined to click your link and visit your site.
4. Brand all your email communications with a signature file. This little add on to the end of your email messages is nothing more than a short blurb about what you offer and your URL. Make sure you stress the main benefit of your offers and make it compelling. Write it as if you were writing a classified ad headline.
5. Provide a content rich website that pulls visitors into interacting with you in some way. They’ll have to come back for the newest articles, to see the results of an online survey or poll they took part in. Constantly give your web site visitors a reason to return.
6. Leave your URL and branded signature on any other related site that allows recriprocal linking or submissions. Sign guestbooks, send webmasters testimonials touting what a great source of info their site is. They may publish that testimonial on their main page.
7. List your site in the appropriate category of every online directory you can find. Drill down through the categories as if you were a potential customer looking for the services you offer. Targeted listings do wonders for your Marketing Pull.
The bottom line is: Targeted visibility is the key to effective “Pull Marketing”. You need your listings and URL in the right place at the right time. When your customers are looking for you.
Paul Short is a 7 year veteran of of the Search Engine
Optimization and Web Site Promotion Industry. During that
time he has provided long term strategic internet marketing
services for hundreds of satisfied webmasters. For more
information, visit his site: http://www.top100marketing.com
