Are You a Push Marketer or a Pull Marketer?

When I was growing up, traveling salesmen were common occurrences at the front door. I’ll never forget the time a vacuum salesman showed up eager to demonstrate how effective his product was. Being polite, my mom invited him in for a demonstration and the first thing he did was take out a container of dirt and dump it on our rug. My mom was horrified. I doubt she ever heard a word he said. It did not matter if he had the best vacuum cleaner in the world. All she could think of was how quickly she could get him out the door so she could clean her dirty rug.

The vacuum salesman embodied a common flaw in marketing: his approach relied on pushing a message rather than pulling the customer in by addressing what was important to them. He had a method that relied on his message and not the customer’s interest. He was a push marketer.

When selling anything from books to refrigerators, we need to be an advocate for the buyer, not for our product. We want to draw people to a conclusion to buy, not push them. We want to be a pull marketer.