I spend a portion of my week consulting businesses on how to use podcasting and social media to communicate with their market. Right now my docket is more than full with clients. I don’t do any marketing in the traditional sense to find these clients. A regular streams of prospects call me and many of them become clients.
Each month I also have hundreds of people who optin to my email newsletter on podcasting. Again, these people are all coming from “attraction methods.” This is also called pull marketing.
What is Pull Marketing
Pull marketing is about engaging your prospects/clients/customers in a meaningful way that attracts them towards you. Interruption marketing no longer works. People have more power than ever to filter you out. They’ve learned to look right past banner ads. They skip commercials with TIVO. They click to another site in a matter of seconds if they don’t see what they’re looking for.
If you don’t want to be ignored, pull marketing MUST be part of your strategy.
How I Use Pull Marketing
I pull clients, site visitors and email subscribers towards me by creating “must have” content and getting it in front of those who need it. Four examples of content I do this with are:
- Podcasting Underground (my podcast)
- My podcasting and social media tips blog
- My tutorial on how to podcast
- My book
How People Find My Content
In order for my “attraction” content to be found, it needs to appear wherever my ideal prospect is looking for that kind of information. Here are four ways I do this:
- Optimize the content to rank for commonly searched terms in Google (take a look at this search for “how to podcast” and you will see my tutorial at the top)
- Optimize my blog posts in such a way that they are found in social media searches such as Technorati
- List my podcast in popular portals such as iTunes and optimize it to get maximum exposure
- Ping popular blog/podcast listing services whenever I post new content
And that is just to name a few.
The Bottom Line
Provide quality content and interactive experiences that attract your ideal prospects. Make it easy for your ideal prospect to find your content to attract him, engage him and pull him into your sales funnel.
This is not to say that you should get rid of all forms of “push marketing”. The proper balance of the two will ensure that you’re not ignored in the current marketing landscape.
How have you used pull marketing in your business?
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