Digital vs Traditional Marketing

Marketing is the backbone of a business and a prominent way to advertise your products and services to a large audience. Marketing tactics are being revolutionized with time and with the launch of new technologies, new methods are being developed to make marketing efficient and easy. Traditional Marketing and Digital marketing are way different from each other and businesses use both marketing methods for brand promotion. This article will highlight the differences between them, which will help you decide between the two.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is a form of marketing that involves the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers through the internet and other forms of digital communication. 

Various forms of digital marketing:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Content Marketing
• Pay-per-Click Advertising (PPC)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Email Marketing

What Is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional Marketing uses classic techniques of marketing. It is a form of marketing that reaches customers through offline mediums, without the use of the internet. It’s an old-school marketing technique and still has importance in the business world. It allows you to reach a diverse audience, to which digital media doesn’t have any access.

Some traditional marketing methods are:

• Out of Home Marketing (OOH)
• Broadcasting
• Print Media
• Direct Mail
• Telemarketing

Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing: Key Differences

Digital Marketing is Dynamic, whereas Traditional Marketing is Static

Traditional marketing gives you no control over your target audience. One can only assume how much attention you’ll get. Digital Marketing strategies on the other hand give full control over the target audience. You can specify the exact audience to whom you want to show the ad. With proper tools, one can also change ad copy, budget, audience, etc.

Traditional marketing is a monologue whereas digital marketing is a duologue

Traditional marketing is a one-way communication as it does not allow direct interaction with the customers, whereas digital marketing allows a high level of engagement and audience interaction through emails, social media, and various other digital channels.

Traditional marketing is expensive and less effective, whereas digital marketing is more effective and less costly

Traditional Marketing is less significant because it lacks features like selecting the target audience or connecting with them at the preferred time. It takes money to put up billboards, banners, and print ads in newspapers and magazines and is harder to scale.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, allows to set a budget for the campaigns and with the analysis of the information collected from online channels, one can personalize advertisements to increase effectiveness.

ROI on traditional marketing is difficult to measure as compared to digital marketing

Tracking digital marketing ROI is easier than tracking traditional marketing ROI, and various tools make it possible. A good digital marketing strategy makes it easier to obtain quick real-time results with the use of reports and web analytics, whereas traditional marketing is much slower and it may take months to observe the results.

Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing Pros and Cons

Digital Marketing: Pros and Cons

Here are some mentioned pros and cons of digital marketing.

Pros:

• Measurable results – The information that you’ll get from your website, social media, and emails will make analysis possible which will help you to draw numerous insights into the data.
• Digital marketing is less expensive and more effective. Sending out an email campaign is cheap and takes less effort than printing and distributing individual postcards.
• Digital marketing provides a focused marketing strategy. With proper tools and techniques, a particular set of audiences can be targeted.
• Provides an opportunity to reach a global audience. As of April 2022, there were five billion internet users worldwide, which is 63% of the world population.

Cons:

• Digital marketing is effective, but it comes with a highly competitive environment. To stand out from the competitors, your products/services have to be up to mark and communication needs to be very unique.
• As the internet is prone to errors, it’s possible that links may not work properly, landing pages may not load, and page buttons may fail. This can turn your customers to other brands.
• Marketing tools used tend to be fast-changing and it is important to keep up with the changes.

Traditional Marketing: Pros and Cons

Some pros and cons of traditional marketing are mentioned below.

Pros:

• Local Targeting – Traditional marketing allows to reach local audiences and penetrate a local market.
• Gives a higher success rate if your marketing strategy is best suited for an audience situated in a particular area.
• It is easier to process and remember, people will memorize what they will read on pamphlets, and magazines, and listen to it on the radio.
• The physical presence of products in native areas brings credibility and increases trust among people.

Cons:

• Traditional marketing is more costly as compared to digital marketing.
• It is difficult to track the information about the methods which bring in customers, thus making it ambiguous.
• Less Focused – You can only target a diverse range of audiences, you can’t target a specific niche and demographics in the market.

Conclusion

When it comes to digital marketing vs traditional marketing it boils down to the purpose for which one will use them. Both are effective in their ways, digital marketing is better if we want to reach wider audiences in less time whereas traditional marketing involves old-school marketing techniques which allow us to reach places where digital media is not possible. Most brands use digital marketing because of the confirmed results they get, traditional marketing is still used if one can handle the expenses.

To make sure that you are using the right digital marketing techniques, Contact us. Brandshark; A creative digital marketing agency that makes sure your products and services reach the preferred audiences. Our digital marketing professionals have successfully put up marketing campaigns that have brought in increased sales, transactions, phone calls, and qualified website traffic.

Reference links:

https://www.simplilearn.com/traditional-marketing-vs-digital-marketing-article
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/traditional-marketing-vs-digital-marketing