Do traditional marketing solutions complement digital marketing solutions?

The world of digital marketing has an important impact on how we behave as consumers and how we do business. Do traditional marketing solutions complement digital marketing solutions? The debate continues. It is still too early to say that one is better than the other but then we cannot deny the fact that digital marketing has surpassed traditional marketing in the last few years. But, as a matter of fact, it is still difficult to say whether digital marketing is more advantageous than traditional marketing. How do we differentiate or compare the two?

Difference

Traditional marketing includes various mode of marketing. It includes print advertisements in newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, magazines. Posters, billboards, TV and Radio ads are other forms of traditional marketing. And lastly, it also includes the mode of marketing verbally, through telephone or through referrals. On the other hand, digital marketing solution is the mode of marketing through the means of digital technology or devices that include websites, e-stores, mobile apps, emails, display ads, social media platforms, videos etc.

While in traditional marketing, it is more of outbound marketing, which means the products and services are made visible to the consumers, digital marketing is inbound marketing where consumers have to find your products and services.

Comparison

There is still a section of our society, who is not technologically much advanced and still used to traditional marketing, where purchasing decision is made on the basis of print ads in newspapers/magazines or by reading ads in billboards. However, when we talk about the disadvantages of traditional marketing, we can say that it is limited, usually specific to a particular region or locality, expensive than digital marketing solutions, less interactive as you are not connected to the audience and most important of all, results cannot be measured.

When we talk about digital marketing solutions, the best part is that the results are measurable. Also, you are connected to a wider audience, in fact all across the globe. It is more interactive as you are more connected to your users through the various social media channels, getting to know their likes and dislikes, their feedbacks which help you to improve your business further. The biggest challenge in digital marketing is that it takes time to get to know the actual measurable success.

Is there a balance between the two?

Today, the world is moving towards a digital environment. Digital marketing is preferred more and more by consumers and businesses. The reason being digital marketing solutions are measurable through proper reporting and data analytics and this in turn solves the problem of optimization of ad campaigns. Also, everything is going digital, right from printed magazines and newspapers becoming digital to education to most of our works being done online.

While we might say that traditional marketing is diminishing, we cannot completely ignore it.

Traditional marketing is still valuable in this digital world. You can integrate traditional marketing solutions along with your digital marketing strategies to achieve greater success. Businesses that utilize both the traditional and digital marketing solutions are in a much better position when compared to their competitors who are relying on a single mode of marketing. There are some fruitful and beneficial traditional marketing strategies which work best when targeted to a local audience, but at the same time, it is also very essential to take advantages of digital marketing solutions so as to keep pace with today’s digital world.

HockyStick Growth is an end-to- end growth marketing agency founded by a team of ex-Googlers with several years of Digital Marketing Experience. HockyStick has core expertise in Adwords and Facebook ads management.