Push vs. Pull Marketing is a big dumb debate.
Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing has been grossly misinterpreted by a generation of online salespeople. His book says that it’s most effective to do permission vs. interruption marketing. A church formed around this and took it too far. Push marketing and pull marketing (where the customer is pushed around or pulls toward you) are two waring factions. The advocates of pull marketing believe pull marketing (or permission marketing) is moral, just and somehow superior to anyone that uses push marketing. There are more reasonable voices that see a place for both push marketing and pull marketing.
Push vs. Pull marketing confusion means that most people–particularly “professionals” trying to sell online have horrible habits. The pull marketers have created a belief in social media sales that it’s acceptable to sell people if–and only if-they jump through a million hoops and PROVE that they’re interested. This means that the customer has to opt in, stay on a list, click something else, and beg to buy. Works fine if you’re selling an e-book on freelancing. Works fine. But if you’re a palm beach realtor, it’s lacking. The customer shouldn’t have to be boxed in and railroaded on a path that you’ve made to buy. It’s a privilege to sell, not one to buy. And to make someone fill in forms–when they want to pick up the phone and have a real person helping–is an insult.
Yet pure permission marketers make this accusation: if you don’t have “perfect permission marketing” people call you spammy. And we don’t want to be spammy.
I call BS. Yes, it’s good to automate, but…hell yes, it’s good to make it possible to buy at any time. Someone expresses interest? Go after ‘em. Call ‘em up, help ‘em out. Use the permission you have! I sell a lot of blog services. I sell sites, social media propagation and other things. Someone leaves a comment on one of my blogs? Their blog is screwed up every which way from Sunday? Do you think I’m not gonna call and offer to help out? Sure, you get some people there that clo Don’t hesitate because if you–like me–are proud of the service you provide, and provide a better deal than the other guy…if you let ‘em get away, you’re allowing them to get worse service. Assume that you have what’s already yours: permission.
Seth Godin would agree with this: when you help your customers get what they want more efficiently, you’re doing them a favor. I don’t think there’s a ton of question there.
So, what are the action steps:
- Every blog comment: look at their blog. Look at their site, look at them as people. See if they can be helped.
- Every opt in: Google ‘em. See who they are and write a 2-3 sentence human-generated email.
- Every Social Media Add: ask what they need, and offer to help.
This sounds basic, but if you only sell to the customers that beg and plead for you to make sales, then you’re going to have very few customers to help. You can connect with email, the phone, hell–it doesn’t matter. EVERY TIME someone contacts you, upgrade the relationship and engage, and wire that into your soul. Then you’ll know if your site is a tool that works.
[Edit: you need to make your services good enough that you recommend them to people for THEIR benefit. You have to crush mediocrity.]
