Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing : Which is better?

Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

What’s the difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing, and why does it matter? The real answers may surprise you.

Many small businesses struggle with deciding which kind of marketing to do because their budget will only bounce to one or the other. 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? Who should I trust with my marketing? Should I do it myself? The answers may surprise you.

The use of print ads in newspapers and magazines is a simple example of traditional marketing. Other examples include flyers that are put in mailboxes, commercials both on Tv, radio, and billboards. On the other hand, when a business invests in building a site, advertising the brand name through different social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, this kind of strategy is sent for digital marketing.

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 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.

Direct mail was easier to process mentally and tested better for brand recall.  According to the report,

Direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media (5.15 vs. 6.37), suggesting that it is both easier to understand and more memorable. Post-exposure memory tests validated what the cognitive load test revealed about direct mail’s memory encoding capabilities. When asked to cite the brand (company name) of an advertisement they had just seen, the recall was 70% higher among participants who were exposed to a direct mail piece (75%) than a digital ad (44%).

The Downside to Traditional Marketing

There is very little interaction between the medium used and the customers. It is more of providing information to the public that the brand exists with the hope of these people patronizing the brand.

Print or radio advertisements can be very costly. Printing materials can be expensive and you need to hire people to distribute these.

The results of this marketing strategy cannot easily be measured. Was the campaign successful?

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Global reach –

A website allows you to find new markets and trade globally for only a small investment.

Trackable, measurable results –

Measuring your online marketing with web analytics and other online metric tools makes it easier to establish how effective your campaign has been. You can obtain detailed information about how customers use your website or respond to your advertising. Web analytics can be set up to show you exactly how much money you make from each digital tactic.

Personalization –

If your customer database is linked to your website, then whenever someone visits the site, you can greet them with targeted offers. The more they buy from you, the more you can refine your customer profile and market effectively to them.

Openness –

By getting involved with social media and managing it carefully, you can build customer loyalty and create a reputation for being easy to engage with.

Social currency –

Digital marketing lets you create engaging campaigns using different types of rich media content. On the internet, these campaigns can gain social currency – being passed from user to user and becoming viral.

Improved conversion rates –

If you have a website, then your customers are only ever a few clicks away from completing a purchase. Unlike other media which require people to get up and make a phone call, or go to a shop, digital marketing can be seamless and immediate.

Brand Development –

A well-maintained website with quality content targeting the needs and adding value to your target audience can provide significant value and lead generation opportunities.  The same can be said for utilizing social media channels and personalized email marketing.

 So What kind of marketing is better?

Well, we would recommend both. Obviously, we are passionate about digital marketing, because we know that it works. But we do use traditional marketing materials, too.

A 2009 study conducted by Bangor University and branding agency Millward Brown also used fMRI to study the different effects of paper and digital media.

Some of their key conclusions were:

• Physical material is more “real” to the brain. It has a meaning and a place. It is better connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks.
• Physical material involves more emotional processing, which is important for memory and brand associations.
• Physical materials produced more brain responses connected with internal feelings, suggesting greater “internalization” of the ads.

How We Use Both Digital & Traditional Marketing

Contrary to a popular belief Digital & Traditional marketing can easily work in combination and if utilized properly they even complement the results of each other. These marketing traditions can be used to solidify your brand identity in the mind of your targeted audience very easily. Let me explain this with 2 different scenarios that can occur when you use digital and traditional marketing together.

Traditional support Digital Marketing

Suppose a scenario where you decided to run paid ads on your Social media and many people see your ads but didn’t engage with, your ads just went past their view. But then these same viewers were going maybe shopping or going on a family day out and while on their trip they come across your hard copy banner ads or maybe pole ads.

Their brain will immediately remind them that they saw an ad about your product or campaign on social media. This will reinforce their belief in you and then it is more likely they would at least engage with you in some way.

Digital support Traditional Marketing

Consider another scenario. Suppose you have started a campaign of hard copy pole banners. Many viewers view your pole banner ads while they were driving on the road but as they all were busy concentrating on their journey, they didn’t focus on your ad. But some of them did manage to read the name of your product or project. Then these viewers came home and tuned into social media for their daily dose of dopamine.

While scrolling down the social rabbit hole they came across your paid social ads. This will immediately trigger their memory responses and if they are interested in your product. They will be more inclined towards researching about your product instead of wasting their time scrolling.

Final Conclusion

I hope you understood both cases. In both cases, Traditional and Digital Marketing supported each other. This may be a complicated topic for beginners or you may be a businessman and just want to grow your business and have no time to focus on these new skills. Then I believe it will be much more profitable and convenient for you if you would hire a digital marketing solution.

Why? you ask because the Digital Marketing Solutions provider has been helping many people just like you in growing their business online and IRL. They have years of experience, a proper team to carry out the job, years of research from past case studies, the right tools to carry out the project, and more. To understand how you can make the best of your Digital Marketing investments Tune in to our Digital Marketing Blog.