After the emergence of the digital market, people are constantly in confusion between traditional and digital marketing that which marketing is better for their businesses and in which market they should invest in getting maximum returns on their investment. Marketing is an important aspect of every business, and no business can afford to ignore it.
Only a smart businessman will always keep a certain amount of budget separate for marketing. In the present times, both types of people exist one that does all transactions online and spends most of the time of their day online and the others who have no or a little knowledge of using the internet.
Therefore, it becomes difficult for a businessman to decide whether to spend in digital marketing or traditional marketing. However, thinking thoroughly and getting the opinion of your marketing team will help you to choose between digital or traditional marketing.
To do this, you be aware of advantages and disadvantages of both marketing styles and see how those can be beneficial for your business. in this article, you will learn about both marketing style, their advantages and disadvantages and key differences between both of them.
What is traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing is all old types of marketing that we have been viewing since the emergence of marketing.
It is a conventional type of marketing whose purpose is to make even semi-targeted audience well-aware of your business. This is done using offline advertising as well as various promotional methods.
You will find one or another method of traditional marketing around you; therefore; it is kind of impossible to ignore traditional marketing plus all traditional ads that we come across on a day-to-day basis. Followings are some common examples of offline marketing tactics.
1) Broadcast
- Television
- Radio, etc.
2) Print
- Magazines
- Newspapers, etc.
3) Telephone
- Telemarketing
- SMS marketing, etc.
4) Direct Mails
- Catalogs
- Postcards, etc.
5) Outdoors
- Billboards
- Fliers, etc.
Traditional marketing has grown tremendously in the past few decades, but the fundamental features of traditional marketing are the same. The Selling techniques in the present times still largely depend on the famous four Ps of marketing, which are Price, Product, Promotion, and Place.
Everyone businessperson is well-aware that how important it is to establish proper sales funnel. By proper use of four Ps of marketing, the prospects of a business rise and sequence customers through various sales funnels and observe favorable outcomes.
Let us learn about four Ps of business in brief
1) Price:
The cost of a product depends on how well a businessman knows it. Price is an important factor in the case of things such as demand, supply, margin, profit, etc.
2) Product:
A Product can be marketed effectively if its worth is understood properly. A product can be a tangible thing which serves and fulfill the needs of its consumers, or it could provide an intangible service.
3) Place:
In traditional marketing, placing your product at the right time and the right place so that your customers can reach is easily and whenever they want. Placing is also mean pricing your product rightly. The place has huge importance in the market world; if the product is placed rightly, then there are high chances that your prospects will convert into customers.
4) Promotion:
Promotion is letting people or your audience to know about the existence of your product. Any technique used to increase the visibility of the product and all efforts to promote falls under promotion. It can be advertising on Facebook or advertising on billboards.
Digital marketing looks quite different from traditional marketing because it focuses only on the fourth “P” of marketing. However, digital marketing is quite effective, and it does not overlook any single P of marketing; rather, it choices unique ways to use them. Therefore, digital marketing is even more effective than traditional marketing.
Advantages of traditional marketing
1) Reach Local Target Audience:
It reaches the local target audience of a particular city by advertising in local newspapers and radio station. By sending flyers through mail can also let local customers know about your business.
2) Save Hard Copies:
Your local audience can save hard copies of your advertising material such as magazine ads, flyers, and pamphlets, etc. because of the invention of really cool graphic designing software and apps, it has become easy to design attractive flyers that will surely grab the attention of your intended audience.
3) Easy to understand:
People who are not well-versed with computers and the internet find it easy to get to know about something through traditional ways as they are more comfortable with to learn about things in old ways.
According to a study done by a neuromarketing firm in Canada shows that traditional marketing requires 21% lesser cognitive power.
Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing
1) Less Engaging:
Traditional marketing is a passive form of marketing, and it has very little engagement of the audience. It just provides information to the audience in the hope that they will act on it and buy the advertised product.
2) Expensive:
Advertising on Television, newspapers, and Radio shows is very expensive, because of this reason most ads on television is only a few seconds long.
3) No base to measure ROI:
Traditional marketing provides no method to measure the “Return on Investment (ROI).” Therefore, it is difficult to say whether an advertisement was a failure or a success.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is also referred to as online marketing, and it is a method of advertising your business through internet and reach your customers through their mobile phones or laptops.
All small, as well as big businesses, can make the use of digital marketing to reach their target market base and convert more and more prospects into customers.
There are various types of digital marketing, such as Facebook marketing, search engine marketing, content marketing, email marketing, website marketing, affiliate marketing, inbound marketing, etc.
These all come under the digital marketing umbrella. Internet is the most used tool of present days. More and more people use the internet to do their day-to-day work, such as paying electricity bills, interacting with friends, reading newspapers, purchasing goods and services, etc.
Digital marketing has grown exponentially in the past few decades. So, when people compare digital marketing with traditional marketing.
Digital marketing has far more benefits compared to traditional marketing. Successful marketing is the only one that let you connect with your prospects and also let you measure your “Return on Investment.”
As you are aware that a majority of people are spending their time on the internet; therefore, it is an excellent platform to advertise your business to reach more and more people.
New ideas have been developed every single day, and with that new digital technology being introduced because of which the digital world is growing.
Other than that, digital marketing is a kind of inbound marketing, which means you don’t go out to discover people; instead, they come to you. Whether you run advertisements on Google or you publish content on your website related to your business. This all is known as digital marketing.
Advantages of Digital Marketing
1) Opportunity to target a vast audience:
Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to reach your target audience regardless of geographical location. Advertising online makes you reach your customers who are living a block away or an ocean away.
2) Tap New Markets:
Digital marketing is a great place to try new markets.
3) You can tailor Content:
It is easy to make your content ideal buyer persona on the basis of age, profession, gender, preferences, income, fears, dislike, goals, etc. You can personalize content to get more customers.
4) It is more Engaging:
It is easy to engage your target audience through live chat, social media, email, etc. which can’t be done through traditional marketing. You can make your customers promote your business to other prospects by sharing, like, and writing their experience in comments.
In this way, you can interact with your audience and also get ideas to make your business better.
5) It is Cost-Effective:
Digital marketing is quite inexpensive (Including paid ads and marketing agencies) as compared in traditional marketing.
6) Freedom for the audience to choose the medium:
People have different choice to be able to consume content. Some people like to get information through articles on blogs, some like to get information through emails, and some like to grab information while going through their social media handles such as Facebook and Instagram.
On the other hand, there are high chances that people will miss your flyers you use them to pick their dog’s shit.
7) Instant Publicity:
Online marketing can get you instant publicity because when you post on social media like YouTube or Facebook, your audience can see your post almost immediately.
Whereas, in traditional marketing, you will have to wait for ads to get published on a specific time, and you have no way to know how many people have seen your ad.
Whereas on social media because of the statistics analytical tools and like and comment options, you can immediately know how many people have viewed your ad and what are their views about it. Digital marketing has the edge over traditional marketing because of the increasing number of users who spends most of the time of their day on social media.
8) Measuring ROI is easier:
Like I told you before on social media there are various tools that let you know about how many people have interacted with your post for example, Google Analytics and various other tools let you know about how many people visited your website, how many people clicked on the ads, how much time did they spend there, how many people bought something from your website, and so on.
This all makes to measure your ROI easy and instantly, you can know what worked for your business and what did not and where do you need to make improvements.
9) Instant results:
You will need only a couple of weeks to boost your business and know whether it will work for you or not or what changes or improvements you are required to make to have a successful business.
10) Brings everyone to the same level:
Even a small business can give competition to giant companies if they know how to make use of digital marketing, which is not possible in traditional marketing as small business usually don’t have enough resources to advertise on traditional platforms like newspapers, television, radio, etc.
11) Brand Building:
Meaningful and informative content and creative posts can help you make people aware of your brand’s existence and build their loyalty towards your business.
If you provide valuable things to your customers, then they will keep coming back to you. However, building a brand is very expensive and difficult. Only big businesses can make use of traditional marketing to build their brand image.
12) Not Intrusive:
Unlike traditional ads on Television and radio, ads on digital media don’t interrupt people from viewing what they want to view. Sometimes people get annoyed rather than getting encouraged by the interruption.
However, on digital media, people have a choice whether to engage completely with the advertisement or skip it. Therefore, digital ads are not intrusive like traditional ads.
13) The possibility of virality:
In traditional marketing, the concept of virality exists in the form of mouth publicity. No one passes of flyers or pamphlets that they have received from a business. However, in digital marketing, there is a huge scope of your posts getting viral and your business becoming popular over-night. If your ad is creative or funny or contains a serious social message, then there is a lot of possibility of your ad getting viral and bring instant publicity to your business.
14) Suitable across Industries:
Almost all type of industries such as finance, education, retail, healthcare, hospitality, or any other industry can take advantage of digital marketing. Digital marketing methods are suitable for all business irrelevant of their sizes and how long they have been operational.
15) Round the Clock Availability:
Whatever you post on the digital platform will stay there for all the time, and your audience can use that information whenever they want to or as per their convenience. This is not possible for television ads which get telecasted on a specific time for a limited period.
Disadvantages of Digital Marketing
1) Negative Feedback:
The main disadvantage of digital marketing is that your unhappy or dissatisfied customers can leave negative responses on your website or social media platform. These negative comments are also visible to the general public and which can turn away your prospects.
2) Requisite experience in the field:
To get the most advantage of digital marketing, you will need to hire experts to deal with your marketing business.
3) Regulation by Search Engines:
Digital marketing depends heavily on search engines like Google. These platforms have certain guidelines to follow to advertise your business. The search engine algorithms keep changing regularly, and it requires drastic changes in your strategies to promote your business.
Traditional Marketing versus Digital marketing
| Traditional Marketing | Digital Marketing |
|---|---|
| Traditional marketing is marketing through traditional methods such as television, radio newspapers, etc. | Digital marketing is marketing through digital media such as Social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), websites, YouTube, etc. |
| Traditional marketing is quite expensive. | Digital marketing is significantly less expensive. |
| Basic segmentation of target audience. | Advanced segmentation of target audience. |
| The reach of the campaign depends on the marketing investment and style, chosen media and size of the audience. | The reach of the campaign is irrespective of geographical location and size of the audience. |
| Traditional media is unilateral communication. There is no real interaction between consumers and businessman. | Digital marketing is bilateral communication. You can know the reaction and response of the audience instantly. |
| Traditional marketing does not offer you flexibility. That means once your content is published it cannot be revoked. | Digital marketing offers you flexibility. You can modify or even remove your content whenever you want. |
| You can’t calculate your return on investment. | It is easy to calculate your return on investment using various statistical analytical tools such as Google analytics. |
| Advertising through traditional marketing can be invasive. | Advertising through digital marketing generates value for customers as well as satisfy their needs and resolve their problems |
| The advertisements in traditional marketing remain on air for a limited period of time and as long as you pay to keep running it. | The advertisements in digital marketing are omnipresent and permanent. However, there are categories too. The content you upload on your personal social media handles or on your own website stays forever. Whereas, the ads that you run on Google or on YouTube runs for the period of time that you pay for. |
| The only limited target audience can be reached. | The huge audience can be reached irrespective of geographical boundaries. |
| Zero or low scope of viral popularity. | High chances of viral popularity. |
Conclusion
Traditional marketing has been around us from a very long time, and on the other hand, digital marketing has become popular from the past one or two decades.
In this article, we have learned that digital marketing has quite an edge over the traditional marketing and especially if you are an entrepreneur or starting a small business and have low budget then digital marketing is the right type of marketing to make your business reach your target audience.
It will cost you less and will provide you an opportunity to compete with giant competitors.
In the end, we can say that both marketing styles have their advantages and disadvantages that we have learned in this article. Choose your style of marketing based on the requirements and budget of your business.
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