How Fitbit Uses Push and Pull Marketing To Rapidly Grow Its Tracker Sales

How Fitbit Uses Push and Pull Marketing To Rapidly Grow Its Tracker Sales

How Push and Pull Marketing Has Made Fitbit a Bestseller

We are living in a wearable world. Wearable technology is buzzing to a tune of an estimated $34 billion by 2020. What exactly is wearable technology? The devices offer functions from tracking, monitoring, and mobile connection.

What connects wearable technology is sensors included in everyday items like watches, shoes, and necklaces. People love them because of their convenience. 

Fitness brands like Fitbit are using both push and pull marketing to connect with people. They recognize the need to both bring products like Fitbit to people and to have people see you when they are looking for what you offer. 

Push and Pull Marketing helped Fitbit go from flab to fab by generating over $700 million in less than five years. Fitbit recognizes demographics like Millennials in their marketing strategies for good reason.

Millennials are 2.5X more likely to adopt technology like wearables. They love connecting with brands that have a purpose and create a community. For all of these reasons, millennials are attractive to fitness and wearable technology brands.

Push and pull marketing is the key to Fitbit's world-dominating wearable strategy. Here's how Fitbit generates hype and turns it into community - and profit.

Push and Pull Marketing

Millennials changed marketing for lifestyle, fitness and technology brands. They prefer to support and buy from brands that are mission and community-based. 

Wearables appeal to businesses because they offer a new product line to serve people and increase sales. They are especially appealing to fitness brands like Fitbit products.

That's why Fitbits push and pull marketing connects well with people. Their social marketing strategy helps them generate hype and turn it into community and profits for the fitness and technology brand.

They didn't always use the push and pull marketing. Fitbit went from almost going out of business seven times to generating over $700 million in five years. Fitbit increased its market share to over 70% by 2015 competing with players like Apple.

Do you have experience selling to millennials? Are you a fitness or wearable brand?  No matter what your industry is, you will learn how to use push and pull marketing for your business.

It's important to know that push and pull marketing is effective no matter what you do. Some people like being reminded about the services that you offer and some people like to look for the services they want and find people that offer what they want.

Pull marketing like social media and influencer marketing may offer a higher return on investment, but that doesn't mean you should abandon push marketing. The bottom line is it's important to use a mix of push and pull marketing to get results.

People love connecting with brands that share mission, vision, and experiences. That's why Fitbit's push and pull marketing strategy works so well. Whether you are a fitness or wearable brand or not, here are ways to generate hype, create a community, and grow your bottom line.

Host Experiences

Fitbit excels at hosting experiences with their wearable technology like challenges and games. This helps motivate users to participate and increase their results. Because of the interactive experiences, the community is easily created online.

People love to feel like they are part of something. Think of ways you may host experiences online with your company and technology. Encourage people to share their experiences both in the community and on social media.

Your business will go far by learning how to generate brand buzz authentically and organically. People will love the interactive experiences and community. Your bottom line and shareholders will thank you.

If you are hosting experiences already, think of ways to increase content creation and social media. Are you sharing stories online? How about IGTV or IG Lives? What could you do to increase your reach to let more people know about you?

Hosting experiences and integrating push and pull strategies will help your business grow. To use the experiences to increase push marketing, you could use the content for placement and retargeting ads.

Increase Recognition

Fitbit places a huge focus on motivating people. Social motivation helps keep people engaged and talking about the brand. One important feature of every Fitbit tracker is that it automatically uploads user achievements onto any social media platform. 

Fitbit automatically has them compare their progress with their peers and share it. This takes sharing out of people's hands since it is done for them when they participate. By doing this, the brand is generating curiosity in other people online.

If someone isn't a Fitbit user yet happens to see their friends achievements, they may get inspired to get a Fitbit too. This easily leads to conversations about fitness and technology like Fitbit.

In any industry you are in, think of ways to automatically share results on social media. This will take the guesswork out of creating brand buzz and a community since it is done for people. A bonus is it makes people feel special by recognizing them for their results.

Sharing Their Experiences

Fitness is a great industry to share progress and results. The day to day actions are shareable. Before and afters are compelling evidence of results. This gets people excited living the experience of the wearable technology,

No matter what business you are in, think of ways to break down activities into smaller pieces generating results for your users and you. Find ways to reward results and retention with giveaways and partners.

Do Good and Give Back

In 2015, Fitbit started a campaign – FitForFood with Feeding America. Fitbit users would burn calories in exchange for donating food to Feeding America, a hunger-relief organization. 

They launched the campaign using influencer marketing with featured comedian, Joel Hale. Together with Feeding America and Fitbit, he helped spread the word to over 3 million followers on Twitter. 

The results of the campaign were about 5% conversion with over 106,000 users participating in the campaign reaching a billion-calorie mark in less than a month. Engaging people in a meaningful cause motivates them even more. 

Partnering with cause campaigns and including social media will increase positive brand press and engagement. Who could you partner with? What partners would be helpful for the campaign? How could you launch the campaign? What platforms would be best for buzz? 

Build Brand Buzz

All of the ways Fitbit used pull marketing helped them build brand buzz. People talking gets more people talking. The best brands in the world get people to talk about their experiences to their circles of influence.

To create more brand buzz, share success stories from your own community. Not only will existing users feel appreciated, but more people will gravitate towards your business.

Who has gotten results this month? How could you feature them? What ways could your brand spotlight them? These are all buzz-worthy ways to help build brand buzz.

Creating a brand buzz will help you increase retention, new customers, and brand awareness. People will share your business because they love how you share stories and appreciate your users.

Fitbit, and lifestyle brands, know this first hand so they and sharing wins along the way. Keep in mind that it takes 30-90 days of consistency for things to catch on. Don't quit before you start to build a brand buzz. Before you know it, people won't stop talking about you.

There are many ways to do this in today's online world. Every brand is on a journey. Don't compare your start to someone's finish line. No matter where your brand is, think of ways to share stories and results online.

It's important to build brand buzz of your community, as well as a founder. People want to know about the founder of a brand. Share your story and what you overcame to build the brand.

People will admire the value you provide, as well as your journey as an entrepreneur. Authenticity and integrity go a long way to build brand buzz.

Remember that many overnight successes took 7+ years including Fitbit. Don't forget they had 7 years of losses before five years of wins. Take action consistently and track results. Fitbit wasn't built overnight and your business won't be either.

Stand Out from the Rest

Whether you are a fitness or a lifestyle brand, or not, stand out from the rest. Think of ways you may differentiate yourself via fun and exciting campaigns with your products and services. Fitbit and others may inspire you, but don't be afraid to innovate.

For example, Fitbit didn't invent social media, they reinvented how they were used to showcase their brand. They included recognition and creating a community to share with others. They weren't afraid to stand out with their strategy with push and pull marketing.

How could you take your existing services and technology and make them stand out? What ways could you leverage social media to create more brand buzz? What ways could you use the content for your pull marketing?

How could you disrupt your industry? What could you learn from other industries to bring to your own? How do you share your products, technology, experiences regularly? Start with where you are and build on it daily.

Innovate or Die

Many iconic brands share this sentiment regularly. Innovate or die. All you have to do is take a look at brands like Blockbuster to get the point. Have an idea of what current trends while seeing into the future.

Step outside the box and set trends. Fitness and lifestyle brands set the trends they don't follow them. FitBit and other trendsetting brands pursue excellence and innovation relentlessly.

Improvement never ends. The best leaders know that technology and delivery may change. The impact and influence of Phil Knight continue on Nike. The same goes for other iconic brands.

Dream big. Challenge yourself and your team. Ask your community for input and feedback. Create a collaborative community who celebrates differences.

The best brands and leaders understand the power of community. Are you taking risks regularly and innovating? Is your community giving you input? Are you setting trends in your industry? 

Marketing Has Made Fitbit a Bestseller

Push and pull marketing made Fitbit a bestseller. Their relentless drive for creativity and community both on and off their platform set them up for success. They understand that fitness and technology are tied to social, interaction, and innovation.

90% of millennials will share about brands they love without being paid. That's why creating a culture that celebrations a community leads to bottom line impacts.

These push and pull marketing strategies work no matter what industry you are in. 

Start with where you are today. Choose 1-3 ideas in the push and pull marketing to apply in the next 90 days or less. Make sure you track your results.

Fitness, technology and social media are changing how to market to people. Brands can't keep marketing traditional ways. The experience and the community are what matter most.

What action will you take next to improve your marketing and your business?

Learn more about top fitness trends on our blog.

Back to blog

1 comment

I participated in a Fitbit challenge with co-workers within the company that I worked for back as recently as 1 year ago. We signed up and could monitor how many steps we each took on a daily basis. There was no prize for doing so and the only reward was to be the one with the most steps on any given day. The act of competition was simply fun.

Vincent Douglas

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.