Push Pull

5Oct/08Off

Push Pull

Pulling Your Business Web Site into the top 5%

Putting your business web site in the top 5% is going to be relatively straight forward and it will require little more than basic search engine optimization and basic web marketing techniques that "pull" instead of "push."

Pull Marketing separates you from competition

Pull marketing is a 180 degree turnabout from traditional push marketing techniques. Just as the name implies, pull marketing is about attraction and pulling your market into your web site. Pull marketing is accomplished through various means but before you can begin to attract your market your business web site has to lay claim to a place on the web.

To claim a place on the web your business web site needs to have a unique identity that says where it is. This is not a physical address because a physical place on the web is just a domain name and DNS server location - - and this is meaningless for marketing purposes.

People find you because they search with specific search terms -- the same words that match your keywords. This means that your biggest decision about search engines will be about the keywords you choose.

Keywords are the signals your web page sends out

In order for your keywords to be effective you will need other components of your web page to be layered. These considerations are explained in the "Search Engines Part 1" document so this won't be repeated here. Layering is a simple process that involves some thinking from a business perspective on how you want to be identified.

The choice of keywords can be seen in two ways:

Popular keywords for traffic volume
Distinctive keywords for marketing a unique business

Popular Keywords
In a push marketing campaign this would be a good choice and you would want to analyze a keyword strategy and choose the keywords that would bring you the most traffic. This is what many small business owners are attempting to do these days.

The downside of push marketing is four fold:

Your web site loses its uniqueness and becomes just one of many using the same keywords
The cost of running a push campaign is very high
You cannot afford to "push" just a little, it is ineffective and unproductive
The moment you stop paying for ad space your marketing also stops

A push marketing strategy has an upside that is twofold:

You can quickly achieve your short term marketing goals
You acquire instant traffic in large volumes

Distinctive Keywords:
In a "Pull Marketing" strategy your business web site is going to own a place on the web. It is a unique but out of the way place, and there is not much traffic coming to your little corner of the web until we start pulling your market in. This is referred to as "Organic Marketing", and it is a lot like farming a homestead.

With pull marketing you can go at your own pace and it will take some time for results to show up. Just the same, your web site can gain visibility for unique keywords that send out a signal to your market that describes the uniqueness of your business.

The downside of pull marketing is twofold

It takes time to establish your business' web presence
A different approach to marketing that needs to be learned

When you have long term goals in mind, such as establishing a web presence then a pull marketing method would work the best, but if your goals are for short term gain then a push marketing campaign would work better.

The upside of pull marketing is also two fold:

The cost is much less than that of push marketing
Your marketing efforts accumulate and do not stop working

The biggest factor in putting your web site in the top 5% is that 95% of your competition is pushing in a pull market. Not only that, they are not pushing all the way, and so the push campaign fails. It is simply easier for small business web sites to attract their market by taking care of basic search engine requirements and basic marketing requirements. It's not rocket science it's more like common sense.

About the Author

Edward Cannell is the Marketing & SEO Manager for A Better World Business Club which is a web marketing support site for small business owners that are making a difference in the world. Read more articles for small business owners.