The push and pull model is popular for optimizing sales tactics. E-commerce, manufacturing, and branded goods marketers in particular must employ a mix of both push comms an inbound pull factors

What is push and pull distribution strategy?

Push and pull distribution strategy is all about directing your promotional route to market. Either by the product being pushed towards customers or your customers pulling the product through the retail chain towards them. This method is crucial for supply management for manufacturers, brands, and online retailers planning promotional strategies. Here are the tactics associated with push and pull distribution strategy:

How to use the push and pull distribution model

There are many advantages and disadvantages of both models, as it depends on your business. For instance, manufacturers tend to use a push strategy for finding distributors to promote their products. For example, …

A practical tool for linking business or digital vision with goals, objectives, strategies and KPIs

What do you want to achieve and how will you get there? OGSM is a widely-used approach for getting focus to translate a vision into business and marketing strategy.

What is OGSM?

OGSM stands for objective, goals, strategies and measures. It's a way of defining what you want to achieve, and how you will get there. The model divides your aims into broad objectives, fixed and measurable goals, strategies to guide your actions, and measures to give you a direct way of monitoring your progress. Here is how the parts of the OGSM model link together. Here's a more specific definition of OGSM: Objective: Defining an over-arching breakthrough vision Stable, concise and linked to company mission Goals: Stepping stones to achieving the higher level objective Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Compatible Strategies: the choices we make to…

Do you know your 4Cs from your 4Cs? Read more about these two marketing models, plus find practical examples to apply to your marketing strategy

What is the 4Cs marketing model? Two groups of marketers have created the 4Cs marketing model. This often leads to confusion about what’s being discussed and where! Let’s clarify the two models:  The 4Cs to replace the 4Ps of the marketing mix: Consumer wants and needs; Cost to satisfy; Convenience to buy and Communication (Lauterborn, 1990).  The 4Cs for marketing communications: Clarity; Credibility; Consistency and Competitiveness (Jobber and Fahy, 2009).

Lauterborn’s 4Cs: Consumer wants and needs; Cost to satisfy; Convenience to buy and Communication

What is it? In 1990 Bob Lauterborn wrote an article in Advertising Age saying how the 4Ps (he didn’t address the 7Ps) were dead and today’s marketer needed to address the real…

Examples of applying the Pareto principle to marketing

The 80:20 rule, equally well known as the Pareto principle, is widely used and abused in business, but how does it apply to marketing and digital marketing? In this post I review some marketing applications. Wikipedia tells us that the Pareto principle is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Apparently Pareto developed what would later be known as his principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas! Although there is some doubt whether he mentioned the 80:20 principle as such, it is known formally known as a specific power-law distribution and named as a Pareto distribution based on an analysis in the 1940s of production quality / flaws by…

Tool for structuring thinking about one of the crucial 4Ps of marketing: The Promotion Pyramid

The Promotion Pyramid is a strategic marketing model digital marketers use to plan marketing activity in relation to the breadth of audience targeted and the resource required (financial and staff time). McCarthy's 4Ps of the Marketing Mix famously highlights 4 of the most crucial elements of marketing strategy: Price, Product, Place and Promotion. There is much discussion of the relevance of the 4Ps today which we cover here, but suffice to say we think these are still key strategy considerations for businesses of all scales - that's where the Promotion Pyramid comes in.

[si_monthly_campaign_blog_cta_banner id=156432]

When thinking about promotion online, digital marketers all too often try to rush into starting campaigns without properly analyzing the merits of different tactics and channels. The resulting approach wastes resources in the long run because the lack of a proper…

Learn how the PESTLE analysis model can help you assess your business’ place in a variety of environments

PESTLE is one of a well-known series of acronyms used in business and marketing planning which summarizes how to review the broader forces, sometimes known as the 'macro-environment', that can shape a business.

What does PESTLE stand for?

PESTLE stands for:

Political Economic Sociological Technological Legal Environmental These are the contexts that a business should assess itself against to review competitors, markets, and the situation in which an organization finds itself. Environment Factors affecting a business - Source: Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick - Digital Marketing, Strategy, Implementation, and Practice [si_guide_block id="65204" title="Digital marketing models guide" description="We rate PESTLE analysis as one of the top 20 marketing models which we feature in our digital marketing models guide. To learn about more models you can use to effectively assess your…

The 5Is model from Forrester can help to structure your digital marketing

Forrester is a well-established market research company focusing on business applications of digital technology and media and over the years, the team from Forrester have developed a number of models that we can apply to digital marketing. Occasionally they extract insights from their research and share in the form of a blog article. In 2007 they created a measure of engagement which was termed the 5Is although their focus was on 4 specific elements beginning with the letter ‘i’.

What are the 5Is?

The 5Is stand for the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence an individual has with a brand over time. The concept was based on research conducted by Forrester where they concluded that the traditional marketing funnel was dead and they proposed ‘engagement’ as a new metric. Engagement as a term had been discussed by many scholars as far…

An example of reviewing your marketing capabilities using the McKinsey 7S framework

The McKinsey 7S model is a useful framework for reviewing an organization’s marketing capabilities from different viewpoints. Developed by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman during their tenure at McKinsey & Company in the 1970s, this model works well in different types of business of all sectors and sizes, although it works best in medium and large businesses. The 7S model can be used to: Review the effectiveness of an organization in its marketing operations. Determine how to best realign an organization to support a new strategic direction. Assess the changes needed to support digital transformation of an organization.

What are the elements of the McKinsey 7S model?

In summary, the McKinsey 7Ss stand for: Strategy: The definition of key approaches for an organization to achieve its goals. Structure: The…

Chart of the Day: Strategies and practical factors that support growth of a business - new research

The Ansoff matrix growth drivers

The Ansoff matrix model is a classic marketing model featured in our free top marketing models guide. Although developed in the 1960s, Ansoff is still useful for considering, at a top level, the strategic initiatives that a business is taking to increase its competitiveness in a sector through identifying new revenue opportunities. This new research based on the views of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in large US organizations is interesting since it translates the theory of Ansoff into practice, showing how businesses are investing in the four quadrants of Ansoff. You can see that a market penetration strategy of selling existing products or services into existing markets has the largest investment. This is building on existing strengths and is fine, with the…

A review of different frameworks covering the customer journey, brand and content

Today, consumers do not search, engage and consume information within individual channels while making purchase decisions. Their journeys are fluid and choices are influenced by multiple channels, devices and screens, and a vast array of content, both online and offline. Therefore the challenge for businesses today is to understand how their customers behave and to establish a multichannel marketing strategy to effectively communicate with prospects in the right channel, at the right time. The frameworks and digital marketing models I review in this post can help build communications around the consumer rather than a product. With the advent of the internet and the ongoing evolution of the media landscape, businesses are having to continuously play catch-up whilst the gap between consumer behaviour and business-readiness has never been greater: …