How Digital Marketing is Better Than Traditional Marketing
Is Digital Marketing Better Than Traditional Marketing?
To analyze the efficiency of digital marketing and traditional marketing, we need to check all their pros and cons. The oldest way to promote was printing ads in the newspaper, now it's gone digital. With that, people thinking that traditional marketing is dead but it is still working for businesses. Both the form of marketing walking head to head. Compare some of their highlights:
Traditional Marketing
Expensive: Tv advertisements were considered the costliest way to promote business. Only big brands who are already earning in crores could afford to purchase a place on Tv. The small-scale business owners were not able to promote on Television due to its heavy costing. In those back days, Tv was considered to reach the largest audience in comparison to any other form of channel available at that time. Traditional marketing was often annoying because it is usually forced upon the consumer. Mailing through direct mail was an expensive thing. Printing hard copy brochures, business cards, and mailers were a costly expense. Now, public interest has shifted from Tv to mobiles. So, spending money on Tv ads nowadays seems less effective. It can be afforded only by high profile brands, after spending money on Tv ads it does not guarantee a quick response from customers.
Limited Audience: Traditional marketing reaches some people only, targeting certain locations and demographics. Tv ads reach was limited to Tv owned homes only. Through traditional methods, it is easy to do marketing locally or even nationally but not at the international level. It does not allow global reach, basically, it fails to narrow the market.
Low Conversion Rate: All the traditional marketing tactics specifically focus on branding rather than sales. It advertises at a wide scale. It takes up much longer time to see the impact of advertisement and campaigns. Due to vague targeting in the market, it results in a low conversion rate. The traditional channels lack at showing the right advertisement to the right person at the right time. It is one of the biggest drawbacks. In a traditional market, a business waits for the customer to take action. Like in a shopkeeper waits for a customer to come. A shopkeeper cannot jump to the house where the product is demanded.
Result Non-trackable: This was really close to impossible to track which marketing activity has resulted in a higher sale. Measuring the result of the traditional marketing tactics is very difficult. Which part of your marketing campaign has performed well, you cannot tell. One can only make guesses, which marketing effort has generated results. Measuring and tracking the results of a marketing campaign is also an important thing that can save a lot of money and can help further in taking better decisions.
Communication Gap: Traditional marketing communications are one-sided, lacks personal touch with their customers. Earlier there was a huge communication gap between the business and the consumer. Traditional marketing targets the mass, a particular set of people cannot be targeted. There was no way to directly respond to a customer, not even customers had any communication platform where they can raise the issues they are facing. Instantly reaching the customers to solve any query was not possible.
Digital Marketing
Cost-Effective: All sizes of businesses can visibly see the positive results after spending funds on this marketing. You can find many cost-effective strategies under this to attract an audience towards your business, its products, or services. There are so many ways through which you can reach the public at a large scale like social media, business websites, or any other channel. Digital marketing strategies can immensely maximize your branding and profitability than any other traditional form of marketing. There is another reason for which you can call this cost-effective in nature, here you connect with potential clients. This form of marketing is narrow targeting to attract only the interested persons. In this case, the business didn't spend money on advertising in front of someone who does not even need it.
Large Audience: Digital marketing allows you to reach a wide population. The whole world is connected through the internet, any small business can reach overseas with just mobile. Even a home business that can dream to export to other countries can make a connection online and interact and make professional deals over it. It seems easy to involve and engage globally.
Various Sources: There are so many online marketing channels through which businesses reach the audience to offer their products or services. It can be categorized as Search Engine Optimization, Pay-per-Click, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Marketing Analytics. Each of these sources serves a different purpose to the business and marketing. And each of these functions independently and differently. Search Engine Optimization is a process to rank a business website on SERP for a particular keyword (high searches). By ranking on top of Google Search Result Pages your business has the privilege to get the initial attention of people searching for something related to your business. Social media plays vital role in branding services , later running an ad. Content marketing is used to offer information related to a business and its product. Mobile Marketing is to target mobile users through SMS, ads on the app, pop-ups, or virtual ads. Email marketing is to introduce a brand to new people and providing information regarding deals and offers to exist customers. Through Pay-Per-Click one can run ads in every possible place on the web to achieve direct conversions. And analytics is the way to track and examine the performance of marketing campaigns.
High Conversion Rate: Conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who have visited your website and gone on to complete an action. The main purpose of any successful digital marketing plan is to regular traffic. Later, that can be converted to leads. The higher the traffic is produced, the speedier will be the profit. It is very easy to monitor and analyze the impact and result of digital marketing strategies through various advanced analytics tools. That helps in understanding the response of the public towards your brand, which location shows more interest, what kind of people are likely to purchase. Rank your website through SEO, which is part of online marketing because the higher you rank on Google SERP higher will be the chances to gain potential customers. Generating more and more organic traffic to your website increases the chances of business profitability and higher return on investments. Even a new person who visits your website just to explore the products and services that person's data is beneficial for further marketing. It is like a chance to grow your database. A new visitor could just sign up for emails, which helps in further targeting.
Instant Communication: Social media has quite a few more than 2.1 billion online active accounts around the world. This has drastically changed the way buyers, suppliers, representatives, and local area individuals speak with brands. Social media is altering correspondence since it carries another degree of effectiveness in affecting social change. Any individual person, philanthropies, NGOs, government, or organizations can drive social media channels for branding, marketing, addressing social issues, natural concerns, and social causes. Best of all, online media likewise empowers two-way discussions. Purchasers can associate with brands in an online public platform, and communication builds trust in brands.
Digital marketing has taken over traditional marketing. But in some circumstances, traditional marketing is bringing results. After all, you cannot deny the power of the human touch.
- Hoardings working well, to popularize the brand and raise awareness.
- Employees' direct interaction with customers in the banking sector develops human connection.
- Selling high-value services requires customer calling and face-to-face meetings for conversions.
- It's not possible to fully ignore the traditional marketing methods.
Conclusion:
Due to hassle-free fast internet connectivity and rising mobile users, traditional marketing seems less impactful and outdated. It's a gadget-prone era, new technologies and software attract a young audience. Every business has adapted itself with the advancement of marketing strategies. But businesses are making balanced use of traditional as well as digital tactics. However, there is still a place for traditional marketing. If you need to contact a more seasoned crowd or a nearby crowd, customary promoting techniques might be more useful and stand apart better compared to online advertising strategies. However these techniques might appear "old," actually they still give results to the business.
While taking into account what kind of marketing is best for your business, think about your audience, where they belong, and utilize that information to make the best choice. Some places do not have internet, targeting that area needs a traditional approach. When settling on traditional versus digital advertising, it's not really a fact that one is just better compared to the next as they fill various needs. Most importantly you need to completely comprehend your business and your audience to pick the best for your business.