Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Push vs. Pull


tug of war I vividly remember being asked a question about push marketing vs. pull marketing in a college marketing class and getting the answer wrong; I wasn't paying attention, hadn't studied the material, and was talking to a classmate when I got called on. Unfortunately I don't remember the content of the question, but I didnt' actually agree that I was wrong, the teacher simply told me that I was because the push and pull rules were very clearly defined.



Here's the thing: the traditional world of push vs. pull has been flipped upside down. Seth Godin summarizes it this way:




RSS transforms blogs from pull to push. The web transforms TV from push to pull.



This isn't trivial. It changes everything about the way you market
what you market. I'd spend some time thinking about whether you push or
pull, about whether you can flip that, and about whether your posture
matches your message.




The new paradigm is about opting in. Chances are good that you are reading my blog because you opted into receiving it in your feed reader of choice every day: my content or knowing more or some other reason pulled you to my blog, but the choice you made to subscribe to it know pushes the content to you.



If you find yourself in a marketing class and you're not paying attention, you may wish to remember that what you're being taught about push and pull has very likely fundamentally shifted and the rules aren't so clear cut anymore.



Link -- Seth Godin



Tug of war picture by ~AJ



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