This has been a topic of discussion for sometime. Has Digital Marketing taken over Traditional Marketing? Should you, as a business owner, shift towards digital marketing? Let’s find out.
In helping decide which is better for your business, let these questions guide you:
- Which method gives you the most results for your money?
- How will you know if the strategy you have chosen is working?
- What gives you more audience reach?
- How are you able to compete with your competitors?
- What marketing allows you to include important information you want customers to know?
- Which type of marketing gives a lasting impression about your brand?
What is Traditional Marketing?
Traditional Marketing refers to any type of advertising, promotion or campaign which involves the radio, TV and print advertisements such as posters, newsletters, billboards, flyers, brochures, telephone books, magazines and newspaper.
- Traditional Marketing , as the name implies, has been around for years. Thus, people are accustomed to it making it easier for them to understand.
- With the right medium, you can easily reach your target audience.
- Materials can be kept and can be browsed over and over, and they’re physical which is more “real” to the brain
Contrary to what others say, Traditional Marketing is still alive. To give you an example, think of the Super Bowl 50. It’s the biggest day in American sports which also means: a prime moment for TV commercials. 52 companies purchased air time under CBS for a mere 30 seconds to promote their goods before an audience of more than 100 million viewers. Yes, that’s 100 million potential customers for your business. But here’s the thing, it costs a minimum of 5 MILLION DOLLARS. So what are we getting at?
- Traditional Marketing can be expensive
- If you can’t spend big, competing with larger businesses is impossible
- A 30 second television spot is not enough to put everything you want out there. Same goes for other mediums as the space and time allotted is limited.
- The results are not easily measured and there’s no way to find out if your campaign was successful.
- It’s static. It’s more of providing or throwing information in front of people while hoping they decide to take action. This way, there’s no interaction and no way to build a connection with the consumers.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is promoting and advertising your products or services with the use of digital devices. This is marketing is mainly possible through the internet and electronic media where examples of such include websites, social networks, YouTube videos and banner ads.
What’s great about Digital Marketing is that you are not limited to only one medium. You can create your own website, release news online, promote it on social networks, and build a following with your customers, WITHOUT SPENDING BIG! With Facebook alone, you can reach more than you can imagine with their 1.18 billion daily active users! But what does this mean?
- Digital Marketing is way cheaper than Traditional Marketing.
- You can easily target an audience locally or even internationally
- There are many ways on how customers can receive your message. They can choose whether to watch a video or read a blog. And chances are, what they’re already exposed to is a complete detailed information about what you are trying to sell.
- You are able to interact and see for yourself how the public is responding to your advertisement.
- Data are easily recorded and you are presented with real time results. This way, you can also check on your campaign performance and adjust or adapt for improvement
- The online world provides a level playing field for any business. You don’t have to be a large business and spend big to be able to compete. All you really need is a well-thought out plan and high-quality content.
Now, no matter how perfect it all may seem, there’s always a downside and with Digital Marketing, it is the amount of time you have to invest and wait before you see measurable results. But hey, hard work and patience usually pays off, right?
