Campaign Strategy :: The Push/Pull Play

The Push/Pull Play, basically pushes your channel partners to the right buyers and pulls the right buyers to the appropriate channel partners. Sounds easy, but it's one of the trickiest plays you can run.

Selling your product or service through distributors can often be the spring-board to success for many small businesses. The problem, however, is that marketing to distributors, or "Channel Partners" is a completely different message than to the end user.

Begin by marketing to the channel though media that is targeted at this elusive audience.
A good starting point is trade show exhibitions. Every year, distributors and decision-makers attend these events to stay on top of the newest and most promising products and services.

At the show, you'll be surrounded by competition seeking the same shelf-space. Remember, your message here is how your product or service will not just sell, but will provide a high rate of return to the distributor who carries it.

Once you've secured channel partners to resell your product to end users, you must not expect them to do all the marketing for you. You need to "push" the product to end users via these channel partners. For physical products this could be in the form of sales promotions, or a flashy point of sale.

Finally, you will need to "pull" these end users toward the channel distributors. Your message to the end users should be benefit-based and be sure to conclude your marketing activities with a list of your channel partners where the product or service is available for purchase.

In a Push/Pull campaign strategy, the object is to push your distributors or channel partners toward the target end buyer while also pulling that target end buyer toward your channel partners. Unfortunately, this strategy is actually easier to explain than to execute.

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