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The terms push and pull refer to the main sales strategies that eCommerce businesses can implement to promote customer acquisition. The choice of one strategy or another will depend on the company’s objectives. While the push strategy looks to nudge the clients towards purchase, the pull tactic seeks to attract customers to the brand. We’ll explain the differences between these two sales strategies in detail as well as when to apply them. In addition, to speed up the decision-making process, you can analyse the competition’s strategy and their results.
Characteristics of the push strategy
To implement a push strategy, it’s necessary to identify an unmet need in your potential customers and exploit it. This strategy is more intrusive since it seeks to achieve the direct sales of certain products and services. This is mostly related to traditional marketing campaigns with calls to action focused on executing the sale.
The implementation of a push strategy implies an effort to contact all of your potential customers and insist that they need your products. This has proved to have greater effectiveness in highly competitive markets where companies need to stand out from the competition to attract the attention of users. You can also return to it at specific times, such as during sales periods, when all companies put forth a huge effort to increase their conversion rates.
Benefits of the push strategy for eCommerce businesses
- Doesn’t require excessive preparation
- Helps to differentiate small or newly-created eCommerce businesses
- Achieves results more quickly
- Has a wide reach
On the downside, this could be considered unwelcome or annoying advertising for users. This is why eCommerce businesses now tend to use push strategies for specific campaigns at certain times of year while continuously giving greater prominence to the pull strategy.
Characteristics of the pull strategy
The pull strategy, on the other hand, is based on reinforcing the eCommerce brand image to increase customer engagement. In other words, it seeks to generate greater trust to boost sales indirectly. This will be the context surrounding your products, along with your pricing strategy, that will capture the attention of your users. It involves the continuous work of content creation in blogs or social media, for example, with the goal of achieving greater prestige.
This type of strategy is related to inbound marketing campaigns in which the eCommerce business makes itself available to customers. For these campaigns to be successful, you must put a lot of effort into planning the actions to be developed in the short and medium term, and have a thorough segmentation of your audience based on their demographic characteristics and interests.
Benefits of the pull strategy for eCommerce businesses
- Better positioning in the minds of potential customers
- Higher user loyalty rate
- Database optimisation through lead capturing
- Better organic positioning in search engines
- Progressive growth in sales levels
The choice of one strategy over another doesn’t have to be static. You can alternate between them based on the needs of your eCommerce business at any given time or based on the characteristics of the different products. You can find one example of this in the design of push strategy campaigns to promote sales of seasonal products or products with surplus stock. Thus, an adequate annual or semi-annual marketing plan along with a pricing strategy that is attractive to your clients will be key to increasing your sales.
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