Push/Pull Marketing Drives Engagement with Target Audiences

Home improve­ment brands like yours know the strug­gle of reach­ing and engag­ing three tar­get audi­ences — home­own­ers, con­trac­tors, and deal­ers. Each is essen­tial to dri­ving your sales numbers. 

In a high­ly com­pet­i­tive indus­try, con­nect­ing with these groups takes mar­ket­ing that goes beyond the usu­al B2B and B2C campaigns. 

Instead, home improve­ment brands need an inte­grat­ed, B2B2C push/​pull mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that com­bines your chan­nel cam­paigns with ongo­ing demand gen­er­a­tion, up and down the dis­tri­b­u­tion chain. 

At Brun­ner, we use push/​pull mar­ket­ing to dri­ve results for home improve­ment brands, includ­ing Yella­Wood brand pres­sure treat­ed pine and Owens Corn­ing roof­ing prod­ucts and roof­ing systems. 

Here’s how it works. 

Understanding Key Audiences for Home Improvement Brands

The three key audi­ences for home improve­ment brands play dif­fer­ent but inter­re­lat­ed roles in dri­ving sales. 

• Home­own­ers. As end users, they buy your prod­ucts for DIY projects or hire a con­trac­tor to han­dle their job. You want them to buy your prod­ucts or request them by name. 
   
• Con­trac­tors. As direct cus­tomers, they pur­chase your mate­ri­als for home­own­er projects. You want them to rec­om­mend your prod­ucts to their customers. 

• Deal­ers. As dis­trib­u­tors, they sell your prod­uct to DIY­ers and con­trac­tors. You want them to car­ry your brand and rec­om­mend it to customers. 

What is Push/​Pull Marketing and Why Is It a Fit for Home Improvement Brands? 

Push/​pull mar­ket­ing merges B2B and B2C to dri­ve demand through uni­fied brand mes­sag­ing that reach­es mul­ti­ple audiences. 

• Push mar­ket­ing (B2B) push­es your prod­ucts in-mar­ket in ways that cre­ate vis­i­bil­i­ty with con­trac­tors and deal­ers, who can bring your prod­uct to the end user. 
   
• Pull mar­ket­ing (B2C) cre­ates demand for your prod­ucts from con­trac­tors and home­own­ers by build­ing brand aware­ness and height­en­ing brand val­ue, so your prod­uct is the one they request.

By blend­ing these approach­es, your brand can reach mul­ti­ple audi­ences across your product’s dis­tri­b­u­tion chain and con­trol your brand mes­sage at every point in the sales journey. 

That reach is espe­cial­ly impor­tant as the U.S. home improve­ment mar­ket rebounds from a post-pan­dem­ic decline. HIRI’s June 2024 home improve­ment prod­ucts fore­cast calls for a slight increase in 2024, then an aver­age of 3.5% growth from 2025 – 2028, up to $642.3 bil­lion dur­ing that timeframe. 

Push/​Pull Marketing Drives Results for YellaWood 

YellaWood’s approach to push/​pull mar­ket­ing empha­sizes three key areas:

1. Con­sis­tent brand mes­sag­ing across push and pull tactics 
2. A media cam­paign that over­laps deal­ers, con­trac­tors, and homeowners 
3. A long-term com­mit­ment to brand build­ing and influ­enc­ing pur­chase behavior 

The brand’s cam­paign fea­tures a charm­ing, rag­tag team of ani­mat­ed beavers (nature’s mas­ter builders), who’ll stop at noth­ing to get their paws on the best mate­ri­als for their build­ing projects. 

• Push tac­tics to engage deal­ers (new and exist­ing rela­tion­ships): Point-of-sale retail sig­nage, email cam­paigns, sales enable­ment con­tent, trade adver­tis­ing, and deal­er promotions 
  
• Pull tac­tics to build brand affin­i­ty and prod­uct demand with home­own­ers and con­trac­tors: TV, audio, social media, the brand web­site, DIY project con­tent, and OOH advertising 

While Yella­Wood works direct­ly with deal­ers, loy­al con­trac­tors play a key role in dri­ving demand with deal­ers. Those con­trac­tors, in turn, offer Yella­Wood prod­ucts to home­own­ers who are already famil­iar with the brand and may request it by name. 

The push/​pull cam­paign has been ​“extreme­ly effec­tive” for Yella­Wood, says Rob Pon­go­nis, CMO of Great South­ern Wood Pre­serv­ing. Yella­Wood results include: 

• 27% increase in home­own­er unaid­ed aware­ness over their clos­est competitor 
• 30% increase in pro con­trac­tor unaid­ed awareness 
• 19% increase in pro con­trac­tor pur­chase intent 

Focus on Roof Color Connects Homeowners, Contractors with Owens Corning

For Owens Corn­ing, push/​pull mar­ket­ing focus­es on shin­gle col­or, from Aged Cop­per to Williams­burg Gray, as a key aspect of their brand and an essen­tial top­ic that con­trac­tors and home­own­ers discuss. 

At kitchen table con­ver­sa­tions about roof­ing projects, Owens Corn­ing wants home­own­ers to know about — and request — its prod­ucts, and in-net­work con­trac­tors to rec­om­mend those products. 

To influ­ence those dis­cus­sions, Owens Corn­ing and its part­ners, includ­ing Brun­ner, run cam­paigns on mul­ti­ple channels. 

Brun­ner han­dles pull mar­ket­ing cam­paigns on a num­ber of chan­nels. Our work includes:

1. Cre­at­ing audi­ence mes­sag­ing maps that posi­tion Owens Corn­ing prod­ucts and col­or options as the solution. 
   
2. Lay­er­ing the mes­sages via a com­mu­ni­ca­tions frame­work across key chan­nels to reach home­own­ers where they are active. 
   
3. Shar­ing tools and resources on chan­nels con­trac­tors will see because we know they look to man­u­fac­tur­ers for infor­ma­tion and resources they can share. 

By reach­ing home­own­ers direct­ly, Brunner’s cam­paigns make it eas­i­er for con­trac­tors to win the job because the home­own­er is already aware and impressed. 

Interested In Learning More About Push/​Pull Marketing?

Done well, push/​pull mar­ket­ing can influ­ence pur­chase deci­sions made at the kitchen table, when a home­own­er asks a con­trac­tor for your prod­ucts by name, or in a dealer’s home improve­ment aisles, where a con­trac­tor looks for your materials. 

If you’re ready to learn more about push/​pull mar­ket­ing, look for us at the HIRI Sum­mit, hap­pen­ing Sep­tem­ber 18 – 19, 2024 in Chica­go. We’d love to chat! 

About Brunner

Brun­ner, a 2024 strate­gic part­ner of HIRI and a spon­sor of the HIRI Sum­mit, is a lead­ing inde­pen­dent inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing agency that’s proud to have Good Peo­ple, Cre­at­ing Great Work for Our Clients. Brun­ner sim­pli­fies the com­plex­i­ties of mar­ket­ing by lever­ag­ing data insights to devel­op cre­ative solu­tions for clients’ mar­ket­ing chal­lenges. Brunner’s client port­fo­lio includes notable nation­al brands like The Home Depot Rental, Great South­ern Wood Pre­serv­ing, Mit­subishi North Amer­i­ca, Owens Corn­ing, and Rin­nai, among oth­ers. Brun­ner is head­quar­tered in Pitts­burgh, PA, with addi­tion­al offices in Atlanta, GA.