Is digital marketing taking over traditional marketing?

Many brands struggle with deciding which kind of marketing to do because their budget will only stretch to one or the other, not both. You're not the only one. Especially during these surreal times [thanks COVID-19], where some businesses have made the difficult choice to pull back their marketing spend or even cease their marketing efforts to survive in the short term.

The decisions that must be made are not easy: which method of marketing will give me the most bang for my buck? How do I know if my marketing is working? Will it reach my target audience?

The debate between traditional and digital marketing is long and lasting. It ultimately comes down to which one fits the needs of your brand. When trying to choose between traditional and digital marketing, let’s take a look at both.

What is traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing essentially refers to any type of marketing that isn’t online.

It can be broken down into five main categories: 

  • Print Marketing - magazines, newspapers

  • Broadcast Marketing - radio, television

  • Direct Mail Marketing - pamphlets, brochures

  • Telephone Marketing - cold calling telemarketers

  • Outdoor Marketing - billboards, posters.

Benefits of traditional marketing

  •  You can easily reach your target local audience. For example, a radio ad might play in one location: your city or region. Or mailbox flyers will go to households in a select number of suburbs.

  •  The materials can be kept. The audience can have a hard copy of materials of which they can read or browse through over and over again.

  • It's easy to understand. It can be easily understood by most people because they are already exposed to this kind of strategy.

Disadvantages to traditional marketing

  • Businesses have little to no interaction with the consumers they are selling their products to in real-time.

  • You can’t edit a print ad once it’s been distributed. Or if you recorded the wrong sale discount on the tv advertisement you recorded, you can’t change it.

  • Can be much pricier. For example, it can cost between $2,000-$160,000 to run a print ad.

  • Results are difficult to measure - how do you accurately measure your ROI or audience reach and impressions from a billboard?

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing focuses on the advent of the internet, and a company’s presence on it. It includes some of the following types of marketing strategies: 

  • Search Engine Optimisation

  • Social Media Marketing

  • Paid Search Advertising

  • Website Optimisation

  • Affiliate Marketing

  • Marketing Automation

  • Email Marketing

  • PPC and SEM Marketing

Benefits of digital marketing

  • A higher level of customer engagement. Whether it is through social media comments or email messages, your target audience is instantly connected with you through various digital marketing channels.

  • Ease of measuring results. You can receive endless amounts of information from a campaign, regardless of the type of campaign you are running.

  • Easy to adjust a digital campaign. Based on your incoming stats, you can tweak an ad copy, boost a well-performing ad, send an email campaign to a certain segment of your audience, and so on.

  • Reach a larger, target audience, because it can be on a global scale.

  • More bang for your buck. Digital marketing is much more cost-effective when compared to traditional marketing campaigns.

Disadvantages of digital marketing

  • Digital marketing depends on technology and, sometimes, technology breaks. When social media sites go down, the only solution is to wait it out.

  • Uncertain security and privacy. Since the Facebook scandal of leaked information, other platforms have taken strict measures to make sure users’ information is private. But businesses have to keep in mind the legalities of their marketing, too. 

  • Every update to a social platform means a new learning curve for developers and marketers.

So, what is the verdict on traditional marketing vs digital marketing? 

Traditional marketing still has its place in business, however, as we as a society have shifted towards digital interaction, many people are spending more time online than in the actual real world. Thus, digital marketing has quickly become the most popular and effective form of marketing for most businesses - it is an increasingly important revenue driver. In fact, businesses reported that half of the revenue is influenced by social selling.

Moreover, 50% of marketers said they believe digital marketing has an edge over traditional because of the interaction digital marketing opens up with customers. Businesses can have full control of their audience growth and see real-time results of their campaigns. And with inbound marketing, consumers find the business, not the other way around.

It’s easier and faster to reach a larger audience as well as being able to better target the audience you want.

Digital is by far the most rapidly growing sector of marketing and crucial for businesses both big and small.

If you want to chat about which digital marketing channels you and your brand should focus on, we can help! Reach out to have a discussion in the best in iso/social distancing way - over the phone.

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