Update: We originally published this article in 2012 with examples of manufacturers using retailers, advertising, and promotions to create demand. This updated guide focuses on push vs. pull marketing for eCommerce, including how online businesses can combine paid promotion, direct outreach, content, search, and customer demand without overwhelming inventory or fulfillment.
An eCommerce business can create demand in two broad ways. It can place a product or offer directly in front of customers, or it can build enough interest that customers seek out the product themselves. These approaches are commonly known as push and pull marketing.
Push marketing helps a business reach customers quickly through advertising, promotions, email, marketplace placements, affiliates, or direct outreach. Pull marketing builds longer-term demand through search visibility, educational content, customer reviews, referrals, and brand recognition.
Most eCommerce businesses need both. The right balance depends on the product, audience, sales cycle, competition, inventory position, and what the company is trying to accomplish.
What Is Push Marketing in eCommerce?
Push marketing places a product, promotion, or message directly in front of a defined audience. The customer may not have been actively searching for the product, so the business creates the opportunity for that person to notice and consider it.
Paid social advertising, promotional email, SMS campaigns, marketplace ads, affiliates, influencers, retargeting, wholesale outreach, and limited-time promotions are all common examples. Push marketing is especially useful when a business needs to introduce a new product, enter a new channel, reach an unfamiliar audience, or generate demand within a specific timeframe.
The main advantage is control. The business chooses the audience, timing, message, offer, and budget. It does not need to wait for customers to discover the product through search or word of mouth.
That control comes with a cost. Paid campaigns can become expensive, and traffic may slow when the business stops spending. Push marketing also becomes less effective when the audience is too broad or the offer reaches shoppers with little interest in the product.
What Is Pull Marketing in eCommerce?
Pull marketing creates reasons for customers to seek out a product, piece of content, or brand. Instead of placing an offer directly in front of the shopper, the business becomes visible while that person is researching a problem, comparing options, or looking for a specific product.
Search engine optimization, educational articles, product guides, comparison pages, reviews, referrals, tutorials, organic social content, and brand-building efforts can all support pull marketing. These assets help customers discover and trust the business without requiring the company to pay for every individual visit.
Pull marketing often takes longer to produce results, but the demand can be more durable. A useful article, strong review profile, or trusted brand may continue bringing customers to the business long after the original content or campaign was created.
The tradeoff is that the business has less control over timing. Search visibility, referrals, and brand recognition develop gradually. They require consistent effort and may not produce the immediate response needed for a short product launch or seasonal promotion.
Push vs. Pull Marketing at a Glance
| Push marketing | Pull marketing |
|---|---|
| The business initiates contact | The customer initiates the search |
| Often produces faster traffic | Usually builds demand gradually |
| Commonly relies on paid promotion | Often relies on content, search, and trust |
| Useful for launches and promotions | Useful for long-term visibility |
| Results may slow when spending stops | Strong assets may continue producing traffic |
| Requires precise targeting | Requires useful, discoverable information |
Neither strategy is automatically better. Push marketing can create immediate momentum, while pull marketing can make that demand more sustainable over time.
When Push Marketing Makes Sense
Push marketing works best when the business has a clear offer, a defined audience, and enough operational capacity to support the response. A product launch is a common example. A new item may not have existing search volume, reviews, or brand awareness, so the business cannot depend entirely on customers finding it organically. Paid ads, email campaigns, marketplace placements, affiliates, and partnerships can introduce the product while the company begins building longer-term demand.
Push marketing can also help a business enter a new sales channel, promote seasonal products, reach wholesale buyers, or move aging inventory. The campaign works best when the audience is chosen carefully. Sending the same message to every available customer may produce traffic without producing enough qualified demand.
Our guide to eCommerce market segmentation explains how businesses can group customers by behavior, location, purchase history, and value before deciding who should receive an offer.
When Pull Marketing Makes Sense
Pull marketing is especially useful when customers research before purchasing or need time to compare their options. A business selling specialized, expensive, or unfamiliar products may benefit from content that answers questions before asking for the sale.
Search-optimized guides, product comparisons, demonstrations, customer stories, reviews, and tutorials can help the brand become part of the customer’s decision-making process. These resources may not create an immediate order every time, but they can build trust and bring more qualified shoppers to the business.
Pull marketing can also reduce dependence on paid acquisition. Advertising may still support growth, but organic search, direct traffic, referrals, repeat customers, and branded demand create additional paths to the sale.
Strong brand equity makes this strategy more effective. Customers are more likely to search for a business by name, return directly to its website, or recommend it when they associate the brand with a dependable experience. Our guide to eCommerce brand equity explains how product quality, fulfillment, communication, and customer trust build that value over time.
Use Push and Pull Marketing Together
The strongest strategy often uses push and pull marketing as parts of the same customer journey.
A paid advertisement may introduce the product, while an educational article helps the shopper understand why it matters. A promotional email may generate the first purchase, while reliable fulfillment, follow-up content, and strong service encourage that customer to return without another paid ad.
A product launch might use advertising, email, affiliates, and marketplace promotion to create immediate attention. At the same time, the business can publish product guides, improve search visibility, collect reviews, and create useful content that supports discovery after the launch campaign ends.
Push creates momentum. Pull gives customers additional reasons to find, trust, and return to the business. The two strategies should support the same positioning rather than communicate conflicting messages. A premium brand that relies constantly on deep discounts, for example, may weaken the value its content and branding are trying to establish.
Match the Strategy to the Customer Journey
Customers respond differently depending on where they are in the buying process. A shopper who has never heard of the company may need a direct introduction through advertising, a partnership, or a marketplace placement. Someone already researching the product category may be more influenced by a comparison article, review, demonstration, or search result.
At the purchase stage, clear product information, shipping expectations, pricing, and trust signals help the customer make a decision. After the sale, dependable fulfillment, helpful follow-up, loyalty efforts, and relevant recommendations encourage the customer to return.
Push and pull marketing can appear at every stage. The difference is whether the business is placing the message directly in front of the customer or making it easier for that customer to find and trust the company independently.
Avoid Using Discounts as the Entire Push Strategy
Discounts are one of the easiest ways to push an offer, but they can create problems when they become the main reason customers purchase.
A promotion may increase order volume while reducing the contribution margin earned from each sale. If shoppers begin expecting frequent discounts, they may delay purchases until the next offer appears. That can weaken pricing power and make full-price demand harder to evaluate.
Push marketing can create urgency without relying entirely on lower prices. Early access, limited availability, product bundles, loyalty benefits, exclusive content, upgraded shipping, and time-sensitive launches can also encourage action.
Each offer should still be evaluated against its full cost. Our guide to eCommerce pricing strategy explains how product cost, shipping, fulfillment, fees, and customer value should influence pricing and promotional decisions.
Make Sure Inventory Can Support the Campaign
A marketing campaign can succeed at generating demand and still fail operationally. Before promoting a product to a large audience, the business should confirm how much inventory is available, how quickly it can be replenished, and whether the fulfillment team can support the expected order volume.
The campaign plan should account for:
- Available and committed inventory
- Incoming purchase orders
- Supplier lead times
- Expected campaign demand
- Fulfillment capacity
- Sales channels sharing the same stock
Accurate inventory is especially important when the same products are available across several channels. A campaign may drive a sudden increase in orders while other storefronts continue selling from the same quantity.
Our guide to eCommerce inventory management explains how purchasing, receiving, stock levels, sales channels, and fulfillment work together as demand grows.
The business should also decide what will happen if sales exceed expectations. Ads may need to be paused, delivery estimates adjusted, order quantities limited, or the campaign shifted toward products with greater availability.
Prepare Fulfillment Before Creating More Demand
Marketing often focuses on what happens before the sale, while fulfillment manages what happens afterward. A successful push campaign connects those two parts of the business very quickly.
A sudden increase in orders can expose weak points in picking, packing, label creation, tracking communication, customer service, and returns. Campaign-specific bundles or packaging may add more steps, while aggressive delivery promises can place additional pressure on the warehouse and carrier network.
Before a major promotion, the team should review expected order volume, package requirements, handling times, carrier services, tracking communication, and the number of customer questions or returns the campaign may generate.
Integrated systems make it easier for marketing activity to become a manageable order workflow. Our guide to integrated eCommerce operations explains how connected orders, inventory, purchasing, shipping, and fulfillment can reduce manual work as volume increases.
Measure Push and Pull Marketing Differently
Push and pull marketing may support the same business goal, but they should not always be judged using the same timeframe.
Push campaigns often produce immediate data. Businesses can review clicks, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, contribution margin, and return on ad spend while the campaign is active or shortly after it ends.
Pull marketing usually requires a longer view. Organic traffic, search visibility, branded searches, direct visits, referrals, content-assisted conversions, repeat purchases, and customer lifetime value may develop over several months.
A balanced review may include:
- Conversion rate and customer acquisition cost
- Average order value and contribution margin
- Organic, paid, and branded traffic
- Repeat purchase rate
- Inventory consumed
- Return and cancellation rate
- Fulfillment cost per order
The most visible result is not always the most valuable one. A paid campaign may generate many first-time orders but weak repeat purchasing. An educational article may produce fewer immediate conversions while influencing customers over a much longer period.
Avoid Common Push and Pull Marketing Mistakes
Push and pull marketing become less effective when the business treats marketing as separate from pricing, inventory, fulfillment, and customer experience.
Common problems include sending the same message to every customer, running promotions without checking inventory, measuring campaigns by revenue alone, depending too heavily on discounts, and creating demand that the fulfillment team cannot support.
Pull marketing can also fail when content is published without a clear customer question or search need. More content does not automatically create more demand. The information must be useful, discoverable, and connected to the products or problems the business serves.
The balance between push and pull should change as the product and market develop. A new product may require significant promotion at first, then attract more organic demand as reviews, content, and awareness grow.
Push vs. Pull Marketing FAQs
What is the difference between push and pull marketing?
Push marketing places a product or offer directly in front of customers through tactics such as advertising, email, and promotions. Pull marketing builds demand through search, content, reviews, referrals, and brand recognition so customers seek out the business.
Is social media push or pull marketing?
It can be both. Paid social advertising is generally push marketing because the business selects the audience and delivers the message. Organic social content can support pull marketing by helping customers discover, follow, and search for the brand.
Is email marketing a push strategy?
Promotional email is generally considered push marketing because the business initiates the contact. Educational newsletters and follow-up content can also support pull marketing by building trust and giving subscribers reasons to return.
Which strategy is better for eCommerce?
Most eCommerce businesses benefit from using both. Push marketing can generate faster awareness and sales, while pull marketing builds long-term visibility, trust, and customer demand.
How can a business avoid overwhelming inventory with a promotion?
Review available stock, open orders, incoming purchase orders, supplier lead times, and fulfillment capacity before launching the campaign. Monitor sales as the promotion runs and adjust it if demand begins exceeding supply.
Create Demand Without Losing Control of the Operation
Push and pull marketing give eCommerce businesses different ways to reach customers. Push tactics can create faster attention, while pull tactics build the trust and visibility that help customers find and choose the brand over time.
Both strategies work better when the business is prepared for the demand they create. Inventory, orders, shipping, and fulfillment need to stay connected so a successful campaign does not turn into stockouts, delays, or additional manual work.
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