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Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

With a user base of over 700 million people in 200+ countries, LinkedIn isn’t a social media platform to be overlooked. This is a fact that B2B businesses have known for years, which is why so many companies have been investing time and effort into perfecting their LinkedIn marketing strategy. Now, B2C businesses are starting to pay more attention to the social networking platform as it begins to adopt features, like hashtags and stories, found on other platforms.

So, whether you’re a small business, working in B2C or working in B2B, LinkedIn has a place in all marketing strategies. Not only can brands reach highly targeted audiences when using LinkedIn for business but doing so also has a positive impact on recruitment, brand credibility and positioning. 

If you’re yet to create a LinkedIn marketing plan, or you’re wondering how to use LinkedIn for business, you’ve come to the right place. During this post, we’ll offer a step-by-step guide to getting an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy off the ground, plus a few tips to help with daily LinkedIn management!

Think about your LinkedIn marketing goals and objectives

Create a LinkedIn content marketing strategy

Consider the best time to post and optimum post frequency

A business profile establishes your public image on a global scale and helps your organization seem more reputable and trustworthy. The first step towards creating a LinkedIn marketing strategy is setting up a LinkedIn company page. When building a LinkedIn company page, page admins have access to a number of features including:

Having the option to list any open positions at your business 

Having the ability to create specific pages for products, services, and events known as ‘LinkedIn Showcase pages’

Being able to create a career page, which assists marketing teams with telling their company’s story and engaging with prospects, customers and talent

Having the option to run targeted LinkedIn ads that support wider sponsored content advertising campaigns from your business profile

Not sure how to go about setting up a LinkedIn company page? You can find out here. 

Once the marketing team has created the business page, next they need to optimize it by adding all the relevant company information and media. LinkedIn states that a company page with a complete profile gets 30% more weekly views, so it’s important not to overlook any fields if you want to increase the chances of getting in front of your prospects, customers and prospective employees. 

Take a look at this resource which offers tips to help you get the most out of your company page, including crafting a strong company description and how to use the right keywords to make your LinkedIn profile SEO friendly. We’ve also detailed the correct image sizes for media uploaded to the network below.

What are you setting out to achieve with your LinkedIn marketing strategy? If you, as a marketer, don’t have clear strategic goals in mind, it can be easy for you to focus on the wrong things. Typical LinkedIn marketing goals include brand awareness, website visits, job application infills, engagement and lead generation. Once you know what your strategic goals are, you can put the right objectives and tactics in place and ensure you stay on track. 

Following on from the above, your profile goals and objectives will also influence the messaging of your content marketing strategy. When the time comes to start to post on your profile, it’s important not to jump straight in without understanding the type of content that works on this specific channel. Like all social media networks, messages should be made relevant to that network’s user intent, LinkedIn’s algorithm, the platform’s image dimensions etc. With this in mind, consider the following when building your content marketing strategy and let this guide your status updates.

Unlike Instagram, LinkedIn isn’t the place for memes or sharing pictures of your freshly baked banana bread, it’s also not the place for giving a running commentary of your favorite Netflix show like most do on Twitter. Instead, user intent, regardless of whether it’s inside or outside of business hours, comes from a professional place and your messages need to reflect this. 

This channel is where most Fortune 500 decision-makers and c-level executives like to spend their spare time, which makes it a perfect channel for B2B marketing pros. It’s also where people develop (professional) social relationships, collaborate with like-minded people, represent their company, or seek new business opportunities. Taking this into consideration, content that tends to work well on the platform include:

Behind the scenes clips of a standard day in the life of your team

Original long-form content, like articles

Insights on the latest trends and predictions

Tips, tricks, how-to’s and lessons learned

Pages that post weekly see a 2x lift in engagement, but for the best results, LinkedIn advises posting daily to establish a connection with your audience.

When it comes to the best time to post, that really depends on when your audience is active, as such, the time varies from company to company. There are of course moments in the week that are hotspots for driving engagement, like lunch hours and while commuting to and from work. As HubSpot explains, even though there isn't a one-size-fits-all for the best time to post, marketers have found success on LinkedIn by posting Tuesday through Thursday, typically between the hours of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Use this as your foundation and A/B test different times throughout the week. Make sure to document your engagement so you can identify the pockets throughout your audience’s day where they’re most active.

Check out our blog about when to post on social media for more detailed insights.

You can spend months crafting a well-structured strategy, but as soon as you post an image that isn’t optimized for the network’s image sizing, you’ll look like an amateur. To help save you any embarrassment, we’ve curated key LinkedIn image dimensions to use when posting. If you’re interested in sizing for other channels, check out our Full Guide to Social Media Image Sizes for 2021 blog.

This image will appear right next to your company or brand name on your LinkedIn homepage. This image also appears in the “Companies you may want to follow” section, so the more enticing and high quality this image is, the better to attract your target audience to your company page.

Personal image types are limited to JPG, GIF or PNG

Cover photos take up the entire top space of the company page. The cover, or header image, will appear larger than the personal dimensions, which gives companies a bit more space to showcase themselves.

Cover photo image types are limited to JPG, PNG or GIF

This photo is where you can provide a more in-depth look at the day-to-day experiences of your company’s staff. The hero photo also sits as a banner at the top of your company page and is usually larger than other LinkedIn photos.

Image file types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF.

This is the company or brand image that appears when you are being searched, and because it is a smaller size, you want to make sure that the photo you use is still recognizable and eye-catching to your target audience or potential job candidates.

Image file types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF

This image resolution works for LinkedIn posts that share a photo or contain a link to a blog post or news article that has a photo.

Shared image or link phototypes are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF

These types of images are more prominent to use because they appear whenever a user visits your company page. With this image located on your homepage, it is a great way to engage with your user, who has most likely been actively searching for you. 

Usually set to a landscape layout. Image file types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF

Tip: Remind your marketing team that creating great content is a journey and not the destination. You should constantly be striving to improve and become more relevant while increasing engagement. Looking at your LinkedIn company page analytics and adjusting content based on insights will significantly help here.

Large and cool brands tend to have the luxury of a big following, but if you’re a small business, you’ll likely need to work harder to build your follower base – here are our tips to do just that!

Like most social networks, LinkedIn has an algorithm in place that sifts through hundreds of thousands of posts shared on the network each day with the idea of serving users with content that’s more relevant to them. While you can’t ‘hack’ the algorithm as such (it updates on a regular basis, just like Google), the social media giant has nodded to actions that are favored by the algorithm. In particular, they live by the mantra “people you know talking about things you care about.”

‘People you know, talking about things you care about’
 Engaging with your connection’s content is vital for boosting your profile’s visibility via the ‘people you know’ priority. In addition to this, the more people you engage with from the same company, the better, as this signifies a genuine relationship. 

For the ‘talking about things you care about’ part, LinkedIn explains, “there’s a lot of sophistication that goes into understanding a good conversation. As a rule of thumb, better conversations are authentic and have a constructive back and forth.” Taking this on board, we’d recommend you avoid generic comments like “great idea,” “nice,” etc., and instead asking questions or sharing an opinion when you engage with your community’s post. 

Any successful marketer will tell you the more you mix it up with still images, video, links etc – the better! Videos in particular tend to stand out better in the feed, helping your brand get noticed. In fact, video content is 5 times more likely to start a conversation than any other content type, and posts with images get twice as many comments as text posts. To help ensure a healthy mix of media types, use a content calendar. Most social media management tools come with built-in content calendars, but if you’d prefer to create one from scratch, you can learn how to create a social media content calendar in 7 steps here!

It goes without saying, if someone takes the time to comment on your company page, it’s only polite that the brand replies. Obviously, this can be difficult for large brands with high engagement, and not every comment warrants a reply, but your marketing team should aim to reply to every thoughtful question, contribution, and complaint. Not only does this help drive higher feed visibility, but members are also more likely to follow a company page that actively engages its community. If you keep ignoring your audience, eventually, they’ll start ignoring you back.

The algorithm rewards engagement — especially posts that inspire conversations. And the faster your post starts raking in the interactions, the more likely LinkedIn is to include it in the feeds of others. So ask questions, tag companies/ prospects/ customers, use keywords strategically, and include relevant hashtags!

LinkedIn advertising helps businesses of any size achieve their goals. Whether your goal is lead generation, brand awareness, or event registrations, LinkedIn ads can help. 

LinkedIn advertising is extremely useful for B2B MarCom pros running account-based marketing campaigns since the network holds a vast amount of information about audience’s working lives. For example, you can target LinkedIn ads based on job title, function, industry and more to ensure you reach the people who matter most to your business. Not only this, but 4 out of 5 members drive business decisions, which makes LinkedIn ads even more attractive to those working in the B2B space compared to, say, Facebook ads that are more geared towards B2C than B2B.

Below we’ve listed some of the different types of LinkedIn ads you can run to help meet your LinkedIn marketing strategy goals more quickly. 

The platform’s sponsored content feature allows you to run native LinkedIn ads in the feed across desktop and mobile. Sponsored content ads come in different formats including single image sponsored content ads, video ads and carousel ads. Before choosing your ad type, take a look at this sponsored content best practice tip sheet. 

This particular ad format allows you to deliver direct, one-on-one-native ads to your target audience's direct message inbox. Lots of marketing pros prefer to use this format due to interactive features like lead gen forms and automated calls-to-actions. Sponsored messaging LinkedIn ads come in two different formats, conversation ads, which let you start quality conversations with your audience through a choose-your-own-path experience, and message ads, which allow you to send direct messages to your audience to spark immediate action.

Text ads take an easy, self-service, pay-per-click (PPC) ad format and take minutes to set up. Once your text ads are live, read this useful guide to optimizing text ads so you can improve your results and expand your marketing and ad campaigns to attract more of the right customers.

How to Build A Successful LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

When you think of social media, I’m sure you immediately think of addicting TikTok’s, or catching up with your friend’s Instagram stories, and maybe even if you ‘should tweet’ (then wondering if that’s even still a thing to do). Despite all of this, I bet social media governance is never at the top of your list – but if you’re managing social media channels, it should be. 

Optimizing Risk Management with Social Media Governance

Social media for business has tremendous benefits. Through an online presence you can:

Generate targeted awareness of your brand

Allow your brand to have a voice – for (relatively) free!

Today, as larger more risk-averse organizations start to proactively develop social media strategies to garner audience interest, the benefits of the channel are undeniable — but there are also some risks.

Social media governance is well-beyond having a Social Media Policy. It’s day-to-day practices that marketing & communications teams should embed in their social media strategy to help optimize risk management and mitigate the inherent risks that come with having an online presence. 

While the risks involved in leveraging social media for business are vast, I’ve summarized the top three companies should be aware of when these 24/7 online communication channels:

Reputational Risk: A rogue tweet, a comment or post that is "off-brand", little to no response to customer complaints, or poorly vetted influencer collaborations. 

Breach in Confidentiality: Posting commercially sensitive details, account log-in breaches, or revealing private internal information.

Regulatory Infractions: This includes GDPR, copyright, fraud.

Such risks might leave you with a sinking feeling, wondering if it is even worth using social media for your business, but all isn’t lost. To mitigate these risks, we have social media governance. 

4 Pillars to a Strong Social Media Governance Model

If you haven’t kicked off your social media governance model just yet, don’t sweat — it's not too late. Use the 4 pillars below to guide you and protect your brand when using social networks. 

Consideration of Brand Guidelines in an Online Space

Brand and employee social media guidelines play a critical role in mitigating reputational risk as they can help you identify logo infringements, respond to customer complaints and address imposter social media accounts in an online space. Some common ways to ensure these risks are being identified include:

Daily social media monitoring practices by your social media team using a social listening tool

Having an online community management process in place to ensure social media risks are identified early on and addressed immediately. A murmur can quickly become a full-blown crisis, so the earlier you catch wind of risky conversations, the better.

Being vigilant with due diligence on a continuous basis. For example, catching infringement allows your teams to ensure no false messaging is put out in the market without your consent. 

Integrating Compliance and Legal Regulations

Some businesses wouldn’t think of putting compliance and social media teams together, and honestly, it can be a very awkward conversation at the beginning. Compliance will tell you “here are the terms & conditions to put on your advertising” and your marketing team will likely look at them and say, “these will not fit in our 280-character limit”. Then there will likely be an awkward silence… 

Regardless, once the awkward phase is over — having compliance be a part of your social media team will lead to tremendous security for your organization. 

Compliance and legal help safeguard your social media team in lots of instances, for example, preventing them from running false advertising messages or protecting your brand from threats made against the institution and employees. Furthermore, their strategies for capturing all online critical comments and review processes can assure your teams that they are adhering to industry regulations — even in an online space where rules are far from few. 

Getting Comfortable with Social Listening

Social media monitoring also plays a critical role in proactively mitigating many corporate risks that can arise in a day-to-day news cycle. It’s important to monitor your brand, monitor competitors, senior executives and any critical accounts daily. 

Monitoring is also critical to have in place before, during and after a crisis situation. When a crisis arisies, there should always be a designated person monitoring constantly and reporting every 2-3 hours. Having a social media monitoring tool to track key conversations, pull reports that can be sent to key stakeholders, and document any critical engagement is the foundation of all social media teams.  

Getting Familiar with Your Business Continuity Plan

I'm confident that your company definitely has a Business Continuity Plan, but I bet not everyone knows about the documented procedures.

From winter storms to tornados, I’ve been through them all, and I can assure you that as the social media manager of KPMG, I’m always the first call they make. In critical situations, your online channels often become the first-line of communications when getting key messaging out to staff and customers. It’s priceless in these times to know exactly who to call for your messaging and posting.

Speaking of storms, the preparation before the (crisis) storm is always the best time to ensure that in the storm – your teams can weather through. I strongly encourage you to connect with your communications teams and your continuity plan owners to ensure they know your social teams are here to support. Having regular conversations around critical incidents and messaging can make things a lot easier for you later.

Overall, I’d say social media governance isn’t the most ‘exciting’ topic when it comes to social media (because you know we’d all rather do a TikTok dance), but it’s by far the most integral part of your social media strategy that will consistently ensure your company recognizes the value (and impact) of social media channels. If you would like to learn more about the 4 pillars to a strong social media governance model in more depth, listen to the on-demand webinar I did with Meltwater here.

Push and pull marketing are key elements of the promotional mix strategy, yet sometimes these terms leave marketers feeling puzzled. Marketing strategy expert and author, Terence Shimp, describes push-pull marketing as "physical metaphors characterizing the promotional activities manufactures undertake to encourage trade channel members to handle/ merchandise brands and persuade consumers to purchase them.” 

If you're not too sure what’s meant by pull vs push marketing, or how these two methods work together, then you've come to the right place. Use this article to develop the foundations of your own push-pull technique!

What Are the Pros and Cons of Push Marketing?

What Are the Pros and Cons of Pull Marketing?

The synergies: How push and pull marketing work together?

A push marketing strategy, also called a push promotional strategy, is a technique used by manufacturers to “push” intermediaries (like wholesalers and resellers) to increase inventories of their brand versus competitor brands. Following this, wholesalers also often turn to push marketing in order to persuade retailers to sell the goods through a number of tactics including:

In general, companies use a push marketing strategy when launching a new product or operating in a niche market. While this strategy does have its benefits, it also has some drawbacks that must be considered before deciding if this is the best option for you. Let’s explore both sides of the coin so you can base your decision on a well-rounded view.

Let's take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a push marketing strategy:

Economies of scale are cost savings that occur as a result of making more of a product. If organizations are successful in their push strategy efforts and intermediaries put in a big enough order, companies get to benefit from larger cost-savings. 


When a push strategy is involved, demand is more forecastable and predictable as manufactures are able to produce and push as much or little as they wish. This production control has a significantly positive impact on supply chain management as technically, the demand should exceed the supply.


When using a push marketing technique, the time it takes to generate sales is often faster due to the force in which you present your products and services to the end customer. 

Since a push promotional strategy relies heavily on outbound sales, the model needs to be supported by a strong salesforce that's able to build opportunities by networking actively with retailers and distributors in the market – and this takes time.


Companies using push promotional marketing are at the mercy of the negotiating power of retailers and distributors. For example, if the product is new, it’ll likely be seen as riskier since it’s less profitable and is therefore less likely to be stoked.


Push strategies rely heavily on discounts and offering them to resellers can be expensive - so expensive that your business may struggle to recoup. Sometimes companies are even forced to sell each unit for less than their own manufacturing or acquisition cost, which makes push marketing unaffordable for some companies. Leading on from this, the longer you apply push marketing, the more difficult it becomes for you to get resellers to pay your regular prices.

Pull marketing is the polar opposite of push marketing. So what is an example of market pull? Well, it involves stimulating demand for a product or service and persuading consumers to ask for the product in retail outlets. The goal of this type of promotional marketing strategy is to “pull” customers into store or have a product “pulled” off the shelves, so to speak. Rather than trying to sell to a wholesaler, the manufacturer instead uses a market pull promotional strategy to focus its promotion on the customer and motivates them to want it. They do that using tactics such as:

It’s also worth noting that a modern-day pull marketing strategy tends to use various pull media channels, from social media to pay per click, since the modern-day customer journey is fragmented. This means companies need to be present on the various channels that the audience are using to discover and research. Want to learn more about optimizing your customer journey strategy? Take a look at our ebook, “Demystifying the B2B Online Customer Journey”.

Let's take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a pull marketing strategy:

Long term success is ultimately determined by the interest of the end buyer. Applying a pull strategy helps you to be more audience-focused and relevant. For example, unlike push marketing, pull marketing allows you to add an element of personalization to your marketing strategy. And with 80% of customers now saying they’re more likely to purchase a product or service from a company that provides personalized experiences, this is now something that is needed to survive in this day and age. Not only this, but personalization also puts you in a better placed to drive brand loyalty and brand equity, both of which are key advantages of a pull strategy.


A pull strategy model can be a powerful way of understanding how a new product is received. Say you’re a new brand and don’t yet know the scope of your audience, based on interest from customers, marketers can test and identify whether their audience has accepted a new product in the market and how large buyer pool may be.


When audiences want your goods, naturally, brands have stronger bargaining power with distributors in the market. You see, distributors don’t want to let customers go, so they’re more willing to negotiate with brands who’re benefiting from pull marketing success. 

Companies that solely focus on pull strategies often miss the market penetration trick. Since the pull marketing strategy model relies on people who already know they have a need, those that have a strictly inbound organization are losing out on market share by excluding people that aren’t yet aware of their brand. Basically, it's almost impossible to build brand awareness by only using a pull strategy as the attention is on consumers already interested in your product or service.


Creating high demand using a pull technique can be difficult in a competitive market. Interest doesn’t just appear, any marketer will tell you that a lot of time and effort goes into generating content that facilitates it.


Expanding on the point above, pull marketing strategy efforts can also be difficult to measure. While quantifying marketing ROI has come a long way in recent years, it still has some way to go, especially when it comes to attributing acquisitions.

Now we understand the benefits and drawbacks of solely using a push or pull strategy, let’s take a look at the synergies between them. 

There are a number of elements at play that influence decision-making around whether a marketer leans more on a pull or push marketing strategy, including goals/ objectives/ KPIs, the type of product/ service they offer (industrial or consumer?), type of buying situation and more. Having said that, blending elements of push-pull marketing together is where the sweet spot is at, after all, push and pull models naturally align. Here's an example of how push and pull marketing work together: 

In order to boost sales of a newly launched product, a manufacturer decides to promote to the end consumer (pull). Knowing the importance of balancing promotion with intermediaries too, they decide to simultaneously offer trade discounts (push) in order to 'move' their products through distribution channels.

As marketing professionals, we need to create market demand (awareness) and then help develop the lead pipeline (sales). Initially push marketing helps generate the need and a pull marketing strategy offers a way for users to satisfy that need. Because of this, companies rarely exclusively use either approach at a given time, instead, they integrate push-pull marketing so they can benefit from the advantages and limit the drawbacks of each push and pull technique.  

An integrated marketing communication strategy (ICM) refers to the process of creating a unified and seamless experience for customers. The model attempts to meld all aspects of marketing communication, such as advertising, promotions, direct sales, public relations, social media, etc., so that all align in harmony as a unified force. While a push marketing strategy deals with resellers, the resellers ultimately interact with consumers on the brand's behalf, so it’s important that marketing professionals cultivate seamless experiences with both intermediaries and the end customer. This is when integrated push and pull marketing become paramount. 

For integrated marketing communications to be successful, the marketer must ensure push and pull strategy messages communicated across all push and pull channels are aligned. As mentioned, when all channels work in synergy, it manifests a unified force – one not to be reckoned with! The most common disconnect between a push and pull strategy occurs between personal selling and other elements of the promotional mix, so pay close attention to breaking down the silos and creating sales enablement material that can support integrated communications. If sales and marketing are singing from different hymn sheets, it's easy for the message to become blurred and confusing for the consumer.

So there we have it, how to identify the difference between a push and pull strategy, why both models are needed if you’re to successfully balance the process of creating market demand and sales and how to integrate your push pull technique. If you’re in the process of launching a new product, consider the points given in this article before deciding on the best push-pull model and approach to take. We're always here for a chat, so if you'd like to learn more about creating a push pull model that works for your business, fill out the form below and we'll be in touch! 

Push and Pull Marketing: Differences and Synergies

While it seems that every company understands the importance of social media in today’s world, few B2B companies use their social media accounts on a regular basis. In fact, while 95% of B2B marketers have created corporate social media accounts, half of them aren’t active on social media. 

Social media isn’t just a powerful outreach and engagement tool — it is also at the forefront of product research, peer recommendations, and brand discovery for B2B decision-makers. As such, it is imperative that B2B marketers get cracking on their social media strategies. However, that too can seem like a daunting task.

In this post, we break down the essentials of B2B social media marketing, showing you how you can utilize your social media accounts to their fullest potential.

Getting on the right social media platforms for your business

Optimizing your advertising budget for social media

1. Choosing the right platforms for your brand

If you’re not already on social media, the first step that you should take is to decide which platforms to use. There are loads of social media platforms for you to choose from.

Top tip: Find the balance between being present on several social media networks without spreading yourself too thin.

As a starting point, get yourself on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

LinkedIn is the most popular network among B2B marketers and is a great way to generate leads. LinkedIn B2B marketing helps you to target professionals within your industry as well as potential prospects and customers outside your industry. However, social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are also beneficial because they help build brand awareness and allow you to direct traffic to your website. Most B2B companies are on 4 or 5 different networks.

Top social media platforms used by B2B marketers

One way to decide which social networks to use is to have a look at the social pages of the competitors in your industry. Never assume that a certain platform won’t work for you just because your competitors may not be on it. Have a look at your target audience and decide if your content can be reworked to reach out to new bases on these platforms.

IBM uses its Twitter page to highlight its research efforts and product offerings, while its Instagram page highlights its stance on social issues and focuses on more visual content

Tip: Learn how to use Instagram for Business and take a look at the best B2B Instagram profiles.

Make sure that your social media profiles are consistent with your brand. This involves using the same profile image (preferably your logo), a straightforward username, and strong bio copy. This means defining your brand’s values and mission in a way that portrays the right message for your target audience! 

Content, the key to a successful marketing strategy

Two common misconceptions held by B2B businesses include: 

The idea that social networks are just an opportunity to generate more leads

The idea that B2B sectors are too boring for social media

However, a company that only posts promotional publications with a call-to-action (CTA) may soon find itself talking in a vacuum. As for being “too boring” for social media, check out our last post, where we dispel this myth for good.

Just like B2C marketing, great content lies at the heart of B2B social media marketing. Great social accounts rely on quality content that is of interest to their target audience. This content can include relevant graphics that provide audiences with top tips or articles that help them address common pain points.

Here are some great content ideas for your social posts:

The Meltwater Blog

How to Build A Successful LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

4 Pillars to a Strong Social Media Governance Model

Push and Pull Marketing: Differences and Synergies

A Beginner's Guide to Social Media for B2B

A Data-Driven Analysis: The Future of eSports in the Middle East

10 Facebook Messenger Marketing Ideas

Media Monitoring in Dubai and the UAE

Dark Post and Organic Posts Explained: What Works Best

The Top 3 Things to Know About the Future of Marketing

Social Listening in Dubai and the UAE: A Wealth of Opportunity for Marketing, PR & Comms

Trends shaping the virtual banking industry in Hong Kong

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?