Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing

Marketing online seems to be the standard way to reach new and existing customers. Has traditional marketing lost all its flair, or are there still advantages to the old fashioned way of marketing?

 

Traditional Marketing: Pros

Ease of connecting with local customers
When placing leaflets and adverts through local mail, it is much more likely someone will browse over it. It’s a physical product that can be held and say, if placed on a coffee table will potentially be read my multiple people, increasing exposure.

Another example are radio adverts. If you have a service that is more suited to local customers (e.g. plumber, or even carpentry), your ads will be targeting a more concentrated area. Phone marketing is another useful tool and is dirt cheap to execute – but you need to be a smooth talker.

 

Traditional Marketing: Cons

Information is brief
You can only fit so much text onto a piece of paper. Pictures are nice but complete demonstrations (such as video testimonials or presentations) are impossible. Furthermore, if someone wants to know more information they will need to either call, visit your store (if you have one) or go to your website. This goes for radio ads too. Only so much can be said within the time frame you’ve been allocated promote your product/service. Printing ads and radio time can be costly as well.

And concerning Phone marketing, 70% of the time when you call the person on the other side is likely to either hang up or start abusing you; you have to be able to get your point across in literally the first 10 seconds.

You cannot measure performance 
How do you know if your marketing strategy was a success? There is no concrete way to be sure. You could ask every customer that comes in where they heard of you but do you really want to deter them like that?

 

Digital Marketing: Pros

You can reach out on a global scale
If you want the whole word to know about your product or service, you can. And depending on what type of online marketing strategy you are using, you can even target a specific audience (e.g. location, gender, interests) so you can really fine tune your promotions for specific groups.

Customers have a variety of ways to view your goods/service
One person may stumble across your business when searching on Google or Bing. Another may see an advertisement video you have on YouTube. And another might hear from you through a blog. Traditional marketing just doesn’t provide that kind of scope. With phone calls, you never know what the person is doing; a lot of the time they will be busy and receiving a phone call trying to sell them something is the last thing they want to hear. When advertising online, the audience choose when they want to see what you have to offer. And because of this they are more likely to opt in to your offer because it was their intention to find you first and foremost.

Reaching Customers
Connecting with customers is easier and more frequent. Social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter give you the opportunity to interact with customers regularly. This goes with emails too. Got a new product you want to promote? Post it on Facebook. You’ve instantly reached out to all your customers on that platform. Have a monthly promotion? send out an email. It takes less than 5 minutes and you’ve instantly informed all your customers. With this you can even prompt customers to look through your existing offers and even get feedback to help you grow your business.

Inexpensive
The overheads of digital marketing are much more smaller than those of the traditional way. Emails cost nothing to send. This goes with posts on Facebook and Twitter too. Pay per click ads do cost, but you can scale it right down to a couple cents a click if you wish.

Accurately measure the effectiveness of each ad campaign
Most webs builders (e.g. WordPress, Squarespace) offer data on how much traffic you receive to your website. Google Ads and Bing Ads offer in depth stats on what keywords were clicked, and even which ones converted. You can literally see straight away if your campaign is working or not and fine tune on the fly to improve the success rate.

Equal Opportunity
In the real world a small family owned business will always struggle against a huge company. But online can level the playing field. If you have a well done, thought out website that’s user friendly then you can attract visitors just as well as a big company. Furthermore your reaction time will be faster. When you email a big business you’re likely to get a reply within 24 hours. If efficient enough, a small business can reply back within minutes.

Potential of viral marketing
Going back to the leaflet on the coffee table, only a few people are likely to see. 1 or 2 of them might find interest in your offer and tell others. When online, you may create an ad on Facebook. 2 people like this offer so they share it on their page. One of their friends may see it and do the same thing. The average Facebook user has around 200 friends. So just there you’ve reached out to 600 potential customers without having to do anything.

To close, which method is better? Traditional or Digital? Both have their advantages but personally I would pick digital over traditional any day of the week.

© OBM Resource