Push or pull marketing? A plain-English guide for small businesses
I was talking recently to the owner of a small Suffolk-based business who was keen to look at their marketing and possibly outsource some of it. They'd started reading up, and two terms kept coming up: push marketing and pull marketing. They weren't sure what either meant, or whether it mattered. It's a fair question and a common one. Marketing has a habit of giving simple ideas complicated labels! In very simple terms below, I have jotted down the basic tactic a small business could use to kick-start their marketing activity.
What is push marketing?
Push marketing is when you take your message to people, whether or not they're looking for you at that moment. You decide who sees it and when.
Examples include email campaigns, leaflets and direct mail, paid social media ads, exhibition stands and picking up the phone to a potential client.
The big advantage is speed. If you have a launch, an event or a seasonal offer, push marketing puts it in front of people now. It's also easy to control and measure. You know what you sent, who received it and roughly what happened next.
The catch is that it stops when you stop. Pause the ads or skip the newsletter and enquiries tend to dry up too.
What is pull marketing?
Pull marketing works the other way round. You make your business easy to find and easy to trust, so people come to you when they're ready.
That includes your website, search engine optimisation (SEO), helpful blog posts, your Google Business Profile, online reviews, press coverage and word of mouth. More and more, it also means being the business that AI tools such as ChatGPT point to when someone asks a question about what you do.
People who find you this way are usually further along. They have a problem, they've gone looking and they've chosen to get in touch. Those enquiries tend to be warmer and easier to convert.
The downside is time. Pull marketing builds slowly, often over months rather than weeks. Once it's in place, though, it keeps working in the background.
The simplest way to tell them apart
Ask who starts the conversation. If you do, it's push. If the customer does, it's pull.
That's why the same channel can be either. A LinkedIn ad promoting your workshop is push. A LinkedIn post answering a question your clients always ask is pull, because it's there to be found when that question is on someone's mind.
| Push marketing | Pull marketing |
Who starts the conversation | You | The customer |
Speed of results | Quick | Slow to build |
What happens when you stop | Results stop | Keeps working for a while |
Why most small businesses need both
Push and pull work best together, because each one feeds the other.
Push marketing creates interest, and interested people usually go and look you up. If they find a thin website, no reviews and nothing that answers their questions, that interest leaks away. Your pull marketing is what catches it.
It works in reverse too. Pull marketing struggles when people don't yet know they need you, or when you're launching something nobody is searching for. That's when a push gets you noticed.
The same applies to charities. An appeal email is push. Being easy to find when a volunteer, funder or supporter searches for causes like yours is pull.
Making both work with limited time and budget
You don't need to do everything. Pick one or two tactics from each side and do them consistently.
For push, try:
Emailing your existing customers or supporters regularly with something useful, not just offers
Running one small, focused paid campaign around a specific offer or event, then checking what worked before spending more
Drawing up a shortlist of ideal clients or partners and getting in touch personally
Going to local networking events or offering to give a short talk.
For pull, try:
Completing your Google Business Profile and asking happy customers for reviews
Writing one helpful page or blog post a month that answers a real customer question
Sharing a genuine story with your local paper or trade press
Making sure your website says clearly what you do, who it's for and how to get in touch
One tip that saves time: let your push activity feed your pull content. The questions people reply to your emails with, or ask you at events, are exactly the ones your website should answer.
Frequently asked questions
Is push or pull marketing better for a small business?
Neither works as well on its own. Push brings quicker results and pull builds lasting visibility. Most small businesses do best with a mix, leaning towards push when they need results quickly.
Is social media push or pull marketing?
It can be both. Paid ads and promotional posts are push. Helpful content that people find, save and follow is pull.
Are push and pull the same as outbound and inbound marketing?
Broadly, yes. Outbound marketing is another name for push and inbound marketing is another name for pull. Inbound and outbound marketing are terms you are likely to hear bandied around now-a-days but the pricinples of push and pull are the same.
If you're weighing up where to start, or whether outsourcing some of your marketing makes sense, I'm happy to talk it through. Book a free 30-minute chat at bluelizardmarketing.com.
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