In order to effectively use marketing you first have to understand the nature of different types of marketing, and so I am going to go over exactly what push marketing is.

Okay, for this I am going to use postcard printing as my primary example, but make no mistakes about this. Push marketing is a technique that can be used with any form of marketing rather than just postcards.

Most marketing involves taking the time to research the marketplace to figure out what it is that people are looking for. The marketer than tries to design their marketing around this information, whatever it happens to be. If people want more sales than they will advertise more sales, just as if people are looking for high quality products, the focus changes to telling people how great the products are.

Push marketing instead is about developing your own marketing message and quite literally pushing it on your customers. So instead of finding out specifically what they want first, you decide on your message and do everything you can to convince people they will like it.

So if you wanted to focus on a certain new or old product you might get a batch of postcard printing done talking up this product and explaining why people will like it.

The drawback to a method like this is you risk people just not taking to your message. They decide that no, they do not care about what you are trying to push, and so they pull back instead.

The plus is that it allows you a greater control over your message than you would otherwise be able to gain. If you focus all of your time on trying to create a message for your customers, you are not able to create the message you want to send as often.

Push marketing also lets you plan out your marketing further in advance. You can create those color postcards well in advance, which gives you even more control over your message, because you have had more time to develop it.

Is this a good form of marketing then?

It depends. I think the best marketing is going to have at least some push marketing. If that is all your marketing consists of you risk alienating your customers if you push the wrong message. Push marketing is often used with something that has a high chance of being accepted. If you have a sale coming up you are pushing the sale, but then, who does not like a sale? So you do not have the same level of risk.

I would not ever cut yourself off from something like this just because of the potential pitfalls. All marketing has potential pitfalls. But the more you know about your customers the more you will be able to do with your push marketing, and the more completely your overall marketing is going to be.