Every piece of marketing you send out is making a choice, whether you've noticed it or not. You're either talking about what your members are running away from, or what they're running towards.

Push vs Pull.

Most membership owners never actually decide which one they're doing. They default to whatever feels natural, and end up leaning hard on one side without realizing it.

Here's what's really going on when you write a sales page, an email, or a social post: you're picking between two distinct types of positioning, and each one comes with its own upsides, downsides, and consequences for who joins your membership and how long they stick around.

What “Push” positioning does

Push positioning focuses on pain. The problems, the struggles, the things keeping your audience up at night. It's the marketing equivalent of finding the spot that hurts and pressing on it.

It works because it's instantly relevant. You're speaking to people who already know something's wrong, so the message lands immediately.

It's also easier to write, since pain points tend to be vivid and specific in a way that aspirations often aren't. And it converts faster, because people act on pain quicker than they act on goals.

I often talk about the idea of being a painkiller rather than a vitamin. Making your membership essential, not expendable. Needling on a real pain point can genuinely make your membership feel like an essential painkiller, especially with a problem-aware audience already sitting in frustration or overwhelm.

But push marketing has a cost.

Members who join because of pain tend to be more prone to refund requests and buyer's remorse, and they'll often stick around only long enough to numb that initial discomfort.

Push-heavy communities can drift into a negative, problem-focused culture too, where members bond over shared struggle instead of shared progress (see also this piece on why people aren't joining your membership site, which digs into a related messaging trap).

Push positioning can feel manipulative if you push a little too hard. Dial the fear up enough and you cross into scare-based marketing, and audiences have gotten wise to it.

What “Pull” positioning does differently

Pull positioning flips the focus to the destination. The goal, the transformation, the person your member wants to become.

It attracts people who are aligned with where they're headed, not just what they want to escape, and those people tend to be a better long-term fit.

Pull-driven members are generally more committed, more positive, and easier to retain, because the relationship with your membership is framed around progress rather than pain. That builds a healthier community and a stronger brand over time.

The tradeoff is that pull is harder to write. Aspirations are vaguer than pain points, and they look different for everyone.

Conversion is slower too; people act on goals over a longer timeframe than they act on escaping discomfort. Get too abstract with it and your marketing risks sounding fluffy, generic, or “big hairy audacious goal” cheesy, and it won't land with anyone who's still deep in problem-aware mode and hasn't even considered what the goal could look like.

Combining both, in the right order

This isn't really a choice between push or pull. It's about knowing what each one is doing and using both on purpose.

Pull positioning is generally better for long-term retention and community health. Push is typically better for short-term conversions. The strongest marketing acknowledges the pain honestly, states the real consequences of not addressing it, and then pivots hard towards the outcome.

The order matters here. Lead with what they're escaping to earn attention and create urgency. Anchor the actual offer around what they're moving towards, because that's the part that keeps someone paying month after month.

For a membership specifically, where you're depending on retention rather than a one-off sale, the pull side needs to be the dominant one (this ties directly into a lot of what's covered in do's and don'ts of marketing a membership website).

Push too hard on the pain and you risk filling your membership with people who churn fast. That's the balance to protect.

The pricing factor nobody talks about

Here's something worth flagging: the type of positioning you lean on changes who joins and what they'll pay.

Push positioning tends to attract more price-sensitive, lower-budget members. They're buying relief, they're cost-focused, and the pain they're escaping is often rooted in a financial constraint to begin with.

Pull positioning attracts members who invest more, because they're buying a future version of themselves rather than a quick fix, and they see the spend as an investment rather than an expense.

That has real implications for your renewal rates, your offer design, and your entire funnel

Audit your own marketing

This is worth actually doing, not just nodding along to. Go through your sales page, your welcome emails, your social posts, and the way you talk about your membership on your podcast or in videos. For each one, ask: is this push, is this pull, or is it a genuine blend?

If everything's push, you're likely attracting the wrong kind of members. If everything's pull, you might be coming across as a little too soft, and missing people who'd genuinely benefit from a bit more urgency (there's more on finding that fit in competing with established memberships in your market, which covers a related positioning challenge).

The goal isn't perfect balance in every single piece of content. It's knowing which lever you're pulling and why, so your marketing gets attention and attracts the members who'll actually stay.

Want help mapping the pain your members are running from and the destination they're running to? Grab the free Membership Messaging Workbook at membershipgeeks.com/484.

And if you'd like a wider view of where the gaps in your membership business actually are, our free Membership Healthcheck is built for exactly that.