Earning Tip: Push vs. Pull Marketing

I’m in a great teleclass with Lynn Grodzki, who wrote Building Your Ideal Private Practice. (See www.privatepracticesuccess.com.) She is a therapist turned coach, who specializes in working with therapists and other “healing professionals” on their businesses. As I often work with a similar group, I was excited about learning from her. One of the things she discusses is the concept of “push vs. pull marketing”. In “push marketing”, you are pushing yourself on other people. This includes aggressive forms of marketing (cold calls etc) as well as advertisements, where you are selling yourself. This type of marketing doesn’t work well for those in the healing professions. It tends to rub against the grain, especially if you have a hard time with the notion of “selling yourself” in the first place. “Pull marketing” is when you put something of value out there that naturally pulls people towards you. I would argue that my newsletter is an example of “pull marketing”. I put out the content and if it resonates, people contact me. A classic example of “pull marketing” is teaching a class. You focus on delivering a great class or seminar, and you naturally pull people towards you. Interested people seek you out. Of course there are many tricks to doing this effectively, but many business owners would feel better, and do better, by focusing on pull marketing.