Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is not the most common but most preferred methods of marketing today. It involves marketing which is done online through social media posts, advertisements on social networks, blogs, Youtube videos, email marketing, pop-ups, click bait URLs, and a lot more.
These marketing methods are extremely effective and with businesses competing in a race to make their online presence more influential, new channels of digital marketing are coming every now and then.
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing is still the most commonly used marketing method for businesses. This marketing method makes use of print media like newspapers and magazines, TV, radio, flyers, brochures, banners and hoardings.
Benefits of Traditional Marketing
Easy access to local audiences– Using FM radio and local newspapers, businesses can easily target the potential customers in a particular city. Flyers in the mail are another effective marketing method in some suburbs or nearby areas.
Your customers have hard copies– Advertisement materials like flyers and magazines can be kept as hard copies which your customers can go through repeatedly.
Easy to understand– As these are all offline methods, anyone without internet access can be easily reached through this approach. As people are well aware of these marketing methods, it gets easier to understand the message.
Disadvantages of Traditional marketing
Less engaging– It is one of the major drawbacks of traditional marketing as there is little to no engagement between business and its customers. Due to lack of any proper channel for receiving feedback, there is no sure way to know what customer feels or thinks about the product.
More expensive– Traditional marketing is not the cheapest means of advertising. Displaying your ad on TV, newspapers, and radio can be pretty expensive. No wonder why TV ads last just a few seconds.
Less expertise required – You don’t have to rely on other web design company for your content and marketing. In traditional marketing, things are well under your control.
Difficult to keep track of ROI parameters– It is really difficult to measure how successful or otherwise your marketing campaign was as there are no channels to gather the data.
Advantages of Digital marketing
Vast outreach– It’s not just the number of people that matters but their geographic location is of value as well. Digital marketing connects you to them regardless of their geographical location. Your one blog can be read by someone beside you or by someone who is thousand miles away.
Opportunity in new markets– Digital marketing provides you opportunity to explore and benefit from the undiscovered and untapped markets.
Create customized content– Depending on the mood and choice of the customer, you can create customized content that suits your customers the best. You can design your content according to their age, gender, preferences, likes and dislikes, fears, goals etc.
More engagement– With the help of social media, chat bots, AI and email, you can significantly increase your engagement with your target audience which is not the case with traditional marketing. Customer’s response in the form of likes, shares and comments on social media platforms, rating and reviewing products and services on review websites are some of the ways in which they can communicate with you.
Cost effective– Advertising through the digital media is way cheaper than advertising through traditional methods. Even if you go for paid advertisements or hire the best website development company for marketing, it is going to cost you way less and the results are more profound.
Disadvantages of Digital Marketing
Negative feedback– This is one of the main disadvantages of digital marketing. Negative reviews left by unhappy customers are visible to the general public and they have the potential to affect your customers’ decision making.
Need in-depth knowledge– In order to utilize digital marketing to its fullest, you will need the service of someone who has the required expertise in this field and understands your business well.
Limitations imposed by search engines– Digital marketing is largely dependent on search engines like Google, they issue guidelines on a regular basis as to what is acceptable and what is not. New algorithms for page rankings may leave your work unusable and you make have to make significant changes in your marketing strategy.
What to choose?
After going through the advantages and disadvantages of both digital and traditional marketing, the question that could be haunting your mind is what to choose?
To answer this question, you need to have a full knowledge of your business and target audiences. You need to conduct surveys to get an idea on how each method is contributing to your business.
If you are a business that has most of their customers with limited to no access to digital media, then traditional marketing will be the preferred choice for you. But if your target audience spends most of their time on the internet, then digital marketing will be more suited to your business.