Balanced Approach to Push and Pull Web Marketing:When it is Good and When it is Not.

Businesses need markets and markets thrive on businesses. However, does either of them dominate the equation? Is too much marketing being pushy or is too little of it suicidal for the product?

A very interesting concept has arrived which is the ambient advertising and which has gone mainstream. Some web marketing strategies are more ‘pull’ driven whereas the others present a ‘push' driven marketing approach. Some are of the opinion that there exists a middle path implying that an equal amount of pull and push are necessary for effective marketing. The ‘push and pull are interdependent opposites that cannot exist alone’ .Too much push carries the risk of alienating the user .Too much pull runs the risk, of consumers not knowing the availability of the product, and hence, having a vague idea about product existence.

The weakness of this model lies in the absence of the SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis. A perfect instance, would be when certain terms used to push a certain website A (strength for website A), when entered in a search engine, pulls a competitor’s website B (opportunity for website B and threat for website A).

Another weakness of the model is that it does not consider the product lifecycle stages. A product or a website which has been recently launched may actually need more push than pull. A product which is in its maturity may be better off with a pull strategy. Balance may not always be the key to successful marketing, for certain stages of the product lifecycle.

Although, the model has some flaws from a strategic marketing perspective, it still has relevance to certain contexts. An already established business like Google, may actually benefit from the balanced approach model. Google does not need to push the search engine as it has already created a pull in the market. However, it continues to push its brand name through innovative technologies like Google checkout. A concept such as Google checkout flourishes only, because it has the Google brand name attached to it. If this concept were to be used by a new merchant, balanced push- pull approach would not be successful.

Another application is for organizations, or websites, which have no literally no competition in the market, or is definitely deemed more reliable than others. .An IRS website offering tax advice is a good example. This website does not need to push itself through marketing, as the user is guaranteed to find the most reliable tax advice here, and is automatically pulled to their site. The IRS website simply needs to push itself through search engines .A balance is achieved here, owing to no competition.

Further research in the design of context aware websites would lend support to the balanced approach model. Context-aware websites have already been selected or pulled by their users for different reasons and been personalized or made context aware through a different system.. Thereafter, they can continue to push new concepts, new products and new ideas. Unlike spam, which alienates the user, this kind of context aware design, is of interest to the user. The information systems, which function in various languages could be extended to include colloquial terminologies.