Traditional vs. Digital Marketing: How Do They Differ?
There is a major shift from traditional marketing to the digital era. Nonetheless, that does not mean that traditional advertising is no longer effective. The primary difference is the medium used to pass the message to the audience. Traditional marketing uses newspapers and magazines, while digital marketing utilizes methods such as emails and websites.
Both of them are important and play an integral role in business marketing. What differs is the target and the medium of communication. The other difference is that digital marketing relies on the internet to transmit these messages. The crucial thing is to find a balance between the two and choose the most suitable one based on the nature of your business. Indeed, traditional marketing is still effective. However, businesses also need to adopt digital methods in order to capture a wider audience. The following are the specifics between the two to help you understand how they differ.
What is Traditional Marketing?
Unfortunately, some marketers undermine the impact of traditional marketing. This method still has its place in the market based on various segmentation factors like demographic and location. As much as you would like to focus on digital marketing, it is also wise to focus part of your marketing campaigns on traditional marketing by using magazines, TV advertising, newspapers, handouts, telemarketing, billboards, and others. Talking of TV advertising, are you aware that more than 70% of the people in the US watch TV daily? With this large number, it is vital to understand the concept of connected tv vs linear tv advertising and see the impact of both. Remember, connected TV advertising is more of a digital method since it relies on an internet connection, but the consumer has the freedom to choose what to watch.
Even though traditional marketing is still effective, it has some benefits and downsides.
The Perks of Traditional Marketing
Easy to Understand
Some of these aspects are part of people’s lives. It is very easy to understand a billboard or a TV commercial. Furthermore, most of them are entertaining.
Permanent Materials
Most materials like newspaper ads stay for long until the material is recycled. Having a billboard hanging as long as you want it to is possible.
Memorable
It is easy to remember something you saw more than something you heard. Therefore, the visual beauty and impressiveness of displays in traditional marketing make them easy to remember.
The Downside of Traditional Marketing
Expensive
Unfortunately, most traditional marketing methods are expensive. You must pay a substantial amount to get a section in a famous magazine or a TV advert.
Difficult to Measure
You need to measure your ROI to know the impact of your marketing. However, it is hard to measure this impact in traditional marketing methods.
No Direct Interaction
Traditional marketing does not give room for direct customer interaction. Therefore, you may never know how they react to your campaigns.
What is Digital Marketing?
Today, there is a massive shift to digital interactions where many people and businesses depend on the internet. Digital marketing has provided a lucrative opportunity for businesses to interact with their customers and reach a wide scope of their audience. Some platforms for digital marketing include social media, content marketing, websites, SEO, PPC, email marketing, and others.
Here are the benefits and downsides of digital marketing.
The Perks of Digital Marketing
Easy to Measure
Unlike traditional methods, it is easy to measure the impact of digital marketing. Measuring your campaigns makes it easy to know your marketing efforts.
Direct Engagement
It offers more room for customer engagement. You can respond to customers on social media, interact through email, and other forms of interaction. It makes it possible to check the progress of your campaigns.
Room for Creativity
Customizing your content to make it interesting depending on your target audience is easy.
The Downsides of Digital Marketing
Not Permanent
Most of these efforts are temporary and are only effective for some time. For instance, you have to change your ads on Google, update your social media status, banners, emails, and so on. Furthermore, since they are intangible, it is easy for consumers to ignore them. For example, it is easy for someone to ignore an ad on Google if it has nothing to do with what they are looking for.
Prone to Evolving
Businesses must stay up-to-date with the changes in digital marketing since its aspects keep evolving.
The Key Takeaways!
Now that you know the distinction between digital and traditional marketing, it is vital to know how to adopt them into your marketing strategy. Both can bear results if you understand what our target audience needs.