DIGITAL MARKETING VS TRADITIONAL MARKETING

Advertising has been around for over 60 years. But in the last 20 years, the pace at which marketing has evolved is outstanding. Marketing is the aspect of the business a wise entrepreneur cannot ignore. A serious businessman will set aside a separate budget for marketing alone. Running a successful business is not just about having a high-quality product. It’s about leveraging the right marketing strategies to reach out to your target audience and convert them into customers.

Next, if an entrepreneur acknowledges the need for effective marketing, he gets stumped by the whole digital marketing vs traditional marketing debate. The reason for this confusion may arise because the role of digital marketing in today’s world is steadily increasing, even if a lot of marketing is done traditionally. Though many people do not use the internet for any transactions, the majority of the population today is regularly using the internet for various reasons in their daily life.

Before we get into the detailed discussion of digital marketing and traditional marketing difference, let us first look into some of the basic ideas you need to understand clearly.

What is traditional marketing?

The simplest way to explain traditional marketing is any form of advertising which is outside of online marketing. This includes everything from TV, radio, billboards, flyers, newspapers, magazines, etc. Traditional marketing is one of the most researched and oldest forms of marketing. Few marketers have an inclination towards traditional marketing than online marketing because it’s tried and tangible.

While traditional marketing is still effective, it is losing its importance because today technology has grown and is enabling businesses to connect to their audience like never before. This is the reason you need to consider the drawbacks of the traditional marketing concept before investing in it.

• Little or no interaction

In traditional marketing concepts, there is little or no interaction between the customers and the medium used for marketing. It is a one-way medium to provide information to the target audience.

• No control over changes

Traditional marketing is once executed cannot be updated. For instance, you will have to place a new ad to replace the old one in case of any change or an update that can make a significant impact on the sales figures.

• Very expensive

The recurring costs in traditional marketing are very high and the worst part is the results may or may not give a good return. Your ad in the newspaper or a commercial on the radio will only be effective if it is seen/heard by your target audience on the day it lives. But how can be one be sure that would happen for sure? Hence frequent ads and campaigns are required to increase brand recall or for that matter even increase the probability of getting noticed by the target customers.

• Limited customization changes

Traditional marketing offers limited options for customizing and targeting specific customers. Even if you use traditional marketing concepts to market to certain segments, you cannot run after your targeted customers to make sure you tap them.

• Cannot measure results

As a marketer, it is essential to know how effective a strategy is to ensure you’re not investing in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, results from traditional marketing cannot be measured easily and efficiently unlike in digital marketing strategy.

What is digital marketing and ways how digital marketing can help you to promote business?

The promotion of products or brands via the Internet, social media, mobile phones, emails happen in digital marketing. Digital marketing has become important and wildly popular due to the cultural, technological, and societal shifts around us. As most people today are spending most of their time online, connecting with them via social media marketing, blogging/content marketing, Email marketing, makes sense. Digital marketing strategies ensure consumers find you and your products online as well as the company gets better exposure and visibility. Digital Marketing is relatively easy and cost-effective than traditional marketing. It is a better and direct way to connect with target audiences globally.

Let’s discuss the components of digital marketing and the benefits.

1. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing can help a business get direct sales. It is one of the most widely used and important ways in digital marketing to promote business online and is one effective way of boosting your online presence and promoting your product/service. Search engine marketing (SEM) consists of two components- PPC (Pay per click advertising) and SEO (Search engine optimization).

2. Email marketing

Email marketing connects you with customers within their mailboxes. The importance of email marketing in 2020 cannot be underestimated as it is one of the oldest types of digital marketing and still very successful. Email marketing helps to increase brand loyalty and upsell to existing customers. Over 90% of consumers check their emails daily and nearly two-thirds of customers have made a purchase as a direct result of an email marketing message.

3. Social media marketing (SMM)

Social media is the most important type of digital marketing you need to focus on — especially if you want to promote a B2C business in the 21st century. Social media marketing is no longer optional. It helps you to engage with your community through different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, and many others.

4. Content marketing

Today’s digital marketing is about content-driven customer experience — and how to develop content that earns the ability to be organically shared is the main focus for every marketer. Content is the foundation of every digital marketing strategy, it is the basis for search engine optimization and catalyst for pay per click advertising.

5. Influencer marketing

An Influencer is someone who has an audience’s attention and can influence their audience to buy the products and services they recommend. In simple words, influencer marketing is a form of collaboration. As a start-up or a running business, you can gain by engaging in Influencer marketing working with the right influencers as it can have positive effects on your business.

What do the stats say?

After our Prime Minister emphasizing ‘Digital India’, even the brands have shifted their efforts towards digital marketing. Here are some of the stats that will help you understand digital marketing is preferred over traditional marketing:

• More than 80% of buyers research online before investing in any product or service.
• Almost half the adults of this country use Facebook regularly.
• According to a survey report, there will be around 8 lacs jobs created in this particular domain.
• India has seen 20 x growths in search queries in the last 5 years.
• 90% of B2B marketers are actively using LinkedIn for marketing and getting effective results
• 90% of B2C businesses say that social media is one of the best and most effective content marketing tactics.

Benefits of Digital Marketing over Traditional marketing

• Low cost

While traditional marketing mediums like newspaper ads, radio ads cost a lot, marketing online is quite affordable.

• Real-time results

Digital marketing gets the edge over traditional marketing concepts since it can give quick measurable results. One can view everything from the number of visitors, conversion rate, the busiest period of the day, and bounce rate too with ease.

• Non-intrusive

With digital marketing, you can choose to see an ad, participate in a discussion, or read or ignore an email. Hence you can target your audience by segments. By being non-intrusive and non-annoying to your audience, unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing strategies have more potential to generate leads. You can ask the customers to sign up for newsletters and request to subscribe and stay in touch with them.

• Higher exposure

As opposed to traditional marketing methods, online marketing can reach out to a wider population, even the whole of the world.

• Far better customer engagement

No traditional marketing method allows you to interact with your audience and really engage them with your brand as social media marketing does. With digital marketing strategies, you can interact with your audience in real-time and take quick feedbacks. You do not need to additional invest in a PR team, unlike traditional marketing.

• Works for all businesses

Digital marketing allows small businesses and start-ups with limited resources to market themselves and increase their brand presence which otherwise through traditional marketing methods isn’t possible.

• Easy Analytics

With digital marketing, you can instantly see which strategy is working and which isn’t through Google Analytics, besides other aspects too such as general trend, inbound traffic, conversion rate, interested audience, bounce rate, and profit.

All these benefits make the digital marketing vs traditional marketing debate to an end by clearly putting the former in a win-win situation. There is little risk and great reward through digital marketing. However, traditional marketing is still indispensable for the audience that is itself still traditional.