A constant theme running through my marketing work for years (at Borland, Red Hat, Agitar, Zend and Sonatype) was the strategy decision whether we should focus on a Pull or Push strategy. “Pull” was defined roughly as the work done to create streams of inbound leads, brought about by giving away something valuable for free (free software, free content, a community to belong to, etc.). In contrast, “Push” was the more traditional form of marketing, interrupting targets with letters, emails, calls, events, etc
It has always seemed self-evident to me that Pull is the superior approach. It engages with potential customers who are expressing a desire to be communicated with, which clearly results in better relations than with potential customers who receive an unsolicited phone call from your aggressive sales rep. The benefits are both tangible (lower costs) and intangible (improved brand value).
The opportunities for adopting Pull strategies are growing fast with the emergence of search and social media. If someone somewhere is looking for information about a product like yours, you are now able to make sure (s)he will find your information. You can do so at low cost and it makes no sense to omit doing that, while dedicating your scarce resources to outbound campaigns to drum up new interest.
So why is it sometimes hard to get an organization to adopt the Pull strategy? There are a number of reasons: companies have a hard time giving things away for free, it does not come natural to them. Or they adopt the Pull strategy, but when the flow of inbound inquiries falls short of plan, they quickly return to the old ways, where they think they can better predict the outcomes. Or they are not very good at the tools of the trade – the tools are technical and highly analytical and are evolving fast.
I will be consulting for some companies on these topics, and in the process I will research and discuss these items here.
Oh and by the way, the industry has converged on the term “Inbound Marketing” to describe this field of activity. So I will drop the Push/Pull terminology in favor of Outbound/Inbound.
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Hi Mark, what do you think about the difference between giving away a free product that has similar (i.e. a subset) functionality of the company”s main product, versus giving away a free product that is dissimilar but attractive to the same customers as the company”s main product?
The former, sometimes called “crippleware,” I think actually turns some customers off or dissuades them from trying the product. They perceive the limited version as being worthless.
But if they get a fully-functional product for free, they may be more inclined to use it, and then subsequently check out the company”s other offerings.
This seems like a subject for Dan Ariely”s book “Predictably Irrational.”
Bill,
I do not think Crippleware creates any positive results. The giveaway should be useful and complete in itself.
But that does not mean there cannot be a free and a commercial product that are differentiated by features. The way that is done most is by drawing the line between functionality that can be used by individuals and functionality that clearly addresses the needs of commercial users.
The free version of Linux is a great product and drives the fast majority of small websites, including commercial ones. But if it has to scale across clusters of servers and be backed by a support organization that can deal with issues if that breaks, than it is a different story.
Customers understand these distinctions well and generally accept them.
Mark