There are three main strategies when it comes to your Marketing communication plan, and they are the three P’s; push, pull and profile. From my experience these can be, and arguably should be, used as a blended communication strategy rather than just one, however this can depend on a number of things which are mentioned below.

So what’s the difference between a push, pull and profile strategy?

Push Strategy

A push strategy is a more direct form of communicating with your clients; it’s about ‘pushing’ your products to them with as little advertising as possible. An example of this would be direct selling and exhibitions where a great deal of personal selling is involved. This is a useful strategy for when there’s low brand loyalty, many good substitute products available, or perhaps for impulse buys.

Pull Strategy

A pull strategy is a softer, but potentially more costly approach, where you encourage customer demand through things like advertising and promotions, such as free samples, coupons and competitions. This is a good strategy if product demand is high, customers use the brand as part of their purchase decision, or you can differentiate your product based on emotional feelings.

Profile Strategy

This is a very different strategy to the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ strategies; it’s about sustaining dialog with your stakeholders and keeping them up to date with progress. This can take many forms, for example e-mails, newsletters and progress reports.

As previously mentioned, a mix of these is often the best strategy. The communication channels used in the push and pull strategies can be categorised into two and are explained in our Above The Line and Below The Line Communication article.

To make it easier, download our free Digital Marketing communications plan template.

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