Why the pull era will be causing marketing disruption
Pull marketing
In his latest book “PULL” David Siegel predicts the change from a lead-push model to a pull-follow model of interacting with customers is coming.
In the pull era customers will pull everything to them on demand: information, knowledge, products, services and advice and be based upon the semantic web. A semantic web has an “unambiguous” structure for its data.
This change implies also the change from:
- Interruption marketing to content marketing
- Pushy boring advertising to entertainment advertising
Disruptive changes in marketing
These changes are dramatics and very disruptive for most marketers as previously they were used to order and pay for:
- Creativity for creating and designing the advertising
- Advertising space
This was almost a straight forward process with a very predictable outcome.
Soon or in some cases already these same marketers have to:
- Create interesting content
- Publish the content preferably in the right context
- Get the attention of the potential customers
- Converting potential customers interested in the content into customers
Inbound marketing which is a much more complex process with an unpredictable outcome.
Whereas previously spending money or more money could solve most problems, in the pull marketing era and the semantic web it is no longer money that is the main factor.
This is due to our complicated real-life social interactions on the Internet. The Internet is changing from a web of documents to a web of human interactions.
Over the Internet people are connected, relate to and influence each other.
The interactions on the web are changing from individuals to communities.
Unpredictability of pull marketing
All these challenges, the different content, publishing the content in the right context, and the interactions with individuals and communities will play an important role and make the outcome very unpredictable.
Most components and processes are beyond the control of the marketer.
No longer can marketers predict the effect of their marketing campaigns which will make it harder to get budgets.
Even in case the marketing campaign was successful for pulling visitors and interested parties to your website, another challenge presents itself: to know who is visiting, their interest and how strong is their interest in your products or services.
The change to the pull era is disruptive; the challenges to book success have become very different and unpredictable. Many marketers will be lost.
Are you ready for the pull marketing era ?
