Push Marketing Is Alive And Well
May 5th, 2008 by admin
Yes it is. The only thing dead about push marketing is how people use it. Push marketing will always be part of marketing and no one will stop that. But people being interrupted by irrelevant push marketing will and are already ignoring outdated push marketers.
Today, you are spammed with push marketing wherever you go.
- As you drive down the main street you see the bill boards and flashing neon signs.
- At night real estate agents, insurance agents and vacuum sales people keep knocking on your door.
- Direct sales pieces and other junk mail flood your post box.
- The car salesmen sends you sms’s to come and drive the new model.
- Television programs are interrupted with messages from their sponsors.
- The Internet bombard you with advertisements.
- Everyone tries to sell you something by interrupting you.
How can you reduce the risk of being ignored when you use push marketing?
I can think of three ingredients that makes push marketing more effective. They are relevancy, your ability to add value and two step marketing.
Let me explain by defining relevancy and then a few examples:
When you read the definition it is obvious why push marketing, as used in the past, is being ignored today and will be ignored in the future if the message is not appropriate and useful.
- When you use Google to search then Google push you with relevant advertisements. As you may or may not know; Google Adsense is a very sophisticated system that only push you with advertisements relevant to your search term. For example, if you search for “permission marketing” you’ll see ads on the right of the search page with relevant ads. And the more relevant the advertiser’s ad is to the search term the cheaper it becomes to be on top of the list of ads. Read more here on Adsense Relevancy. Therefore Google’s push marketing rules are adding value to your search and by adding value they are making more money and the advertiser can make more as well.
- When you have an email newsletter (or RSS), that people subscribed to, you have an gentleman’s agreement that you will send the subscribers useful and appropriate information. As long as you stick to the agreement you can become successful. But when you start pushing for the sale or you push irrelevant information you are past tense.
- The car salesmen asks you if he should notify you via sms on maintenance schedules or any critical info regarding your car and you agree then he’s allowed to push you. But as soon as he sends you sales promotions he is on thin ice.
- Let’s consider direct mail. The best example is a direct mail piece from Readers Digest. They send you and envelope with amazing offers on the front and a long letter inside. As with all push marketing their success depends on the numbers of letters they send out. But they have learned that specific groups of people are more inclined to subscribe to Readers Digest. The problem these direct marketers have is how to define a relevant list. It’s not easy but the more relevant the list they use the more effective push marketing becomes.
One more point to clarify on why I say that push marketing is not dead. You may be pro-pull marketing and you should be. But when you pull someone towards your website/blog, for example, you have a newsletter, and the reader subscribes then you will become a push marketer as soon as you send your newsletter.