Traditional Marketing VS Digital Marketing Which One is Good

Table of Contents

What is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing is any form of marketing that uses offline media to reach an audience. Methods of Traditional Marketing are :

newspaper ads and other print ads,
billboards & Fliers
mail advertisements, and
TV and radio advertisements
Telephone calls and text notifications

Why Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing vs. digital marketing is always one of the most spoken topics. Traditional marketing is defined as marketing that does not need the internet for advertisement purposes. This method has been evolving for a very long time, for decades. However, due to technological advancements, its usage is very limited.

Traditional marketing allows for people to be reached anywhere. Whether it’s a billboard that sits on the side of a major road, an advert in the pages of a widely read newspaper or an advert during their favourite TV show, traditional marketing allows people to be reached in places that digital just can’t touch.

We hear and see many ads daily on the television, in the newspaper, or on the radio while casually starting our daily routine. When we go out, we can see such marketing ads on flyers all over the street. We could also notice huge banners of film ads on every street. Those film ads are also one type of marketing. It helps the movie production company to capture the attention of the people that walk across the street. Therefore, there are ads and banners everywhere in all the nations.

The languages may differ depending on the country or the region. For example, if we take Mumbai, the ads might be in both English and Hindi. So, that is how traditional marketing works. Its main objective is to attract humans in every possible way without using the internet.

Traditional marketing is a very effective type of marketing if one wants to reach the older population. Many reports and surveys prove that people over 50s watch TV and read newspapers twice the time compared to the people in their 20s and 30s.
It is a very useful type of marketing if one wants to establish or develop a business or a firm with the assistance of a larger local audience. Small businesses grow better using flyers and billboards all across the street. It is because it can attain the attention of a local audience who reside in the city.
One huge advantage of traditional advertisements is that they get played repeatedly. But in digital marketing, people can skip them easily.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel. Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing.

Common digital marketing methods include:

These strategies are very popular today because of consumers’ frequent usage of the internet and mobile devices.

Why Digital Marketing?

One of the reasons a digital marketing is so exciting is that because the field is constantly evolving as different platforms are introduced. A digital marketing personal is always scoping out trends and seeing how they impact discoverability

In this fast-moving world, a lot of new technologies have evolved. Digital marketing strategies are one among them. Nowadays, people can do marketing using the internet and smartphones from the comfort of their homes. These strategies are not physical, so they cut out the transportation, inventory, and other related expenses.

Therefore, it makes so much sense to advertise over the internet rather than on any television or magazine.

There are enormous ways to do this marketing. Since they are modern, it is essential to have maximum knowledge regarding current technologies and advancements. They use the latest tactics.

There are a plethora of benefits of digital marketing over traditional marketing. Given below are some of them:

It is simple to track audience involvement and collect their data for future use. You can easily obtain the information when someone uses your site, follows you on social media, or messages you regarding queries.
Businesses can advertise their services for free on many platforms. It is possible to send and receive emails without involving any cost. But in traditional strategies, it will involve a lot of money to print and send individual postcards.
Because digital marketing has a wider scope, it will help businesses acquire a global audience’s attention.

Forms of Digital Marketing

Social media marketing: Social media marketing is getting widely popular among the youths. Many businesses and startups advertise their work in the form of posts, videos, and stories on all social media platforms.
Email marketing: It is one type of digital market where businesses send electronic mail to the target audience.
Content marketing: It helps advertise in the form of storytelling to the users.
PPC – Pay-per-Click: These are paid advertisements. They only stay on the web for a shorter period. Once you stop paying, it will be gone.
Mobile marketing: Provides advertisements on smartphones, laptops, and tablets for the target audience.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the most common type of digital marketing used in many organizations. Its main objective is to show the business on the top while searching it on the web. However, it also needs customers’ support to get high ranks.
Affiliate marketing: Includes advertising a product or a service with the help of a well-known influencer or a celebrity. The major reason companies do it is to improve their brand name.

Forms of Traditional Marketing

The following are some of the traditional marketing methods:

Television commercials: One method of traditional marketing is broadcasting advertisements using TV commercials. There are millions of ads that benefit due to this form of marketing.
Radio commercials: Radios played a vital role in the late 20th century. People who could not afford television opted for radios and CD cassettes those days. There are many different varieties of advertisements that could be broadcasted with the assistance of radios.
Flyers: Many companies and businesses are still printing flyers to promote their services. Flyers are also called handouts.
Billboards: Billboards contain pictures of the advertisement. They are usually found on the highways. Mostly, billboards are placed by top companies and businesses to promote their services.
Magazine and newspaper ads: Newspaper magazines acted as one of the finest sources of obtaining information regarding anything. There are tons and tons of ads posted every day.
Telephone and SMS marketing: These mostly include phone calls and text messages of advertisements for various businesses and their services.
Referral: Referral is when the organization asks its employers and customers to recommend their products and services to their friends and family or neighbors.
Direct mail: Many businesses mail their ads in postcards or notices to the people in the company’s target area or city.

Pros and Cons of Traditional Marketing

Depending on the business and target audience, traditional marketing methods may be the better choice. To help discern if traditional marketing is right for your business, here are some pros and cons.

Pros

It Connects You with Your Local Audience

When we talk about connecting with the customers at the personal level, then traditional marketing plays a significant role in approaching the local audience. In today’s world of consumerism, establishing a relationship with customers has become more significant than ever. That’s why customers choose such businesses that have a valid interest in the well-being of customers.

Billboards, local TV commercials, and newspapers are some of the main traditional promotional techniques that companies employ to connect with the local community. Approaching customers through traditional ways is a less corporate and more organic method.

Traditional Marketing Builds Credibility

Psychologically speaking, when customers see something physical, then it offers the company more credibility than just an online advertisement. It is no doubt digital media allows you to reach more people in a short time, but people don’t trust the company as well-established and reliable.

People consider print media and printed material more trustworthy than online digital advertisements. One of the main reasons behind this is that companies allocate a much larger budget for the traditional advertisement campaign. However, when you see the ads of a company on radio, TV, magazines, or other commercial platforms; it implies that the company has got a lot of financial resources. It creates the perception that the company is stable, growing, and successful.

Promotional Materials are Reusable and Recyclable

The drawback of digital media is that you have to run advertisement and promotional campaigns in order to retain the attention of customers. In fact, it’s a daily job for them like they have to have to post pictures or videos via email or social media 3 or 4 times a day.

The printed ads leave a much better and longer impression on the minds of target customers. You would receive more mileage from the brochure, business cards, flyers, and TV commercials. You won’t have to develop ads repetitively for the promotion of your business. Most importantly, you can reuse and recycle the hard printed copies for many other purposes.

You Can Appeal to a Diverse Audience

If your brand or business needs to reach a much wider and diverse range of audiences, then targeted and niche marketing of digital media would be useless. The target audience of some businesses is diverse and they need to target all of them for their growth. In such a case, traditional marketing is a very good choice.

Traditional Medium is familiar and Undertakable

It’s such marketing and promotional material that people could easily understand them. They don’t need to acquire any new material or learn it in order to access the material. However, the older people would recognize a marketing message, whenever they receive the pamphlet or flier. Digital marketing and advertisement aren’t easy for them to understand.

Cons

Costly as compared to Digital Marketing

When it comes to launching the marketing and advertisement campaign via pamphlet, flier, or newspaper; then you would have to pay for it every time you run it or change your plan. If you have to make any changes, then you won’t have to pay any extra charges.

Along with flexibility and low cost, traditional advertisements require distribution and you have to pay the distributor. Once you publish the on the internet, then it becomes available to the entire world.

Customization is Not Possible

It only allows you to target a diverse audience, you can’t target the specific niche and demographic in the market. For instance, you develop an advertisement for ladies’ handbags and styles and launch it via traditional media. Digital media allows you to check whether people are evaluating your product and suggest a relevant product to them.

Less informative Medium

Traditional marketing doesn’t allow you to offer complicated pricing options of the product to the customers. TV and print media offer you limited time and space to include only limited information about the product and price. However, online and digital media offer you a variety of options.

Traditional marketing is Losing Interest

People have started to lose interest in the traditional media by skipping and not paying attention to the banners, billboards, and newspaper ads. They only show interest when they view something on the digital screen like smartphones or TV.

Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing strategies are always evolving with new technology and trends like voice search and social media usage. These strategies include the most modern and latest tactics. But, as with traditional marketing, there are some areas where digital marketing thrives and others where it doesn’t.

Pros

Wider Reach: Digital marketing helps improve awareness about products and services through an online platform to reach a wide base of customers across the world. This strategy allows even the start-up companies to have equal access to the customers while competing with big enterprises in the traditional market.
Brand Development: It is necessary to establish a brand image for the product or services through the marketing campaign so that customers consider it a reliable and trusted name. Digital marketing helps to build the brand in various ways of direct campaigning and personalized approach. This technique makes customers more engaged and allows them to experience the unique selling proposition and value of the brand. This leads to a sense of positivity among the customers towards the brand.
Personalization: The strategy of digital marketing is more effective because of its ability to interact with prospects and get feedback. Bringing the audience closer and approaching them with the product that meets their requirement, helps to create brand loyalty and reputation. Digital marketing provides a platform for personalized marketing by designing specialized content for customers. The purpose is to make customers feel that the brand is addressing their individual needs.
Accessibility: Marketing methods using digital platforms provide the opportunity for both sellers and buyers to get easy access with the flexibility of time and location. The potential customers get an experience of a virtual shop with information about services and availability of product range. The customers can leave reviews and recommendations that guide the organizations to plan their marketing strategies accordingly to respond to customer requirements more effectively.
Better Engagement: Digital marketing allows the brand to create better awareness among the customers and get recognition from more people. A suitable promotional strategy using blogs, social media content, and promotional offers allow the brand to get a hold of the customer’s attention and build credibility.
Lower Cost: The popularity of digital marketing is attributed to its cost-effective way of handling business activities. The cost involved in digital marketing is much less in comparison to traditional marketing campaigns. The digital marketing methodology is easier to implement with a limited budget and infrastructure which is beneficial especially for small businesses.
Trackable results: The digital analytical tools and other online metrics help to track how effective the marketing campaign has been in terms of customer reach and response. It provides necessary information about the extent of customer engagement and response to your website and advertising.
Improved conversion rates: The digital marketing process creates a seamless and immediate connection with potential customers with the convenience of making a purchase just with a few clicks on your website. This leads to better chances of making a purchase in response to marketing campaigns.

Cons

Skills Requirement: There is a need of gathering the right knowledge and expertise on the digital platform to carry out the marketing activities successfully. With regular advancements in technology, it is essential to remain updated on tools, platforms, and methods to quickly respond to any changes.
Time-consuming: We need to plan and implement various tasks related to optimization of online advertising and creating suitable content for promotions that can take up a lot of time. It’s also important to regularly track the results and modify strategies accordingly to ensure a return on investment.
High competition: A wider reach to the global audience with digital marketing also requires building capabilities to face global competition. It can be a challenge to establish the brand against more competitors and to grab attention among the many digital channels campaigning in real-time.
Complaints and feedback: The digital platforms allow for feedback or criticism by anyone about your product or services that can be visible to your audience through social media networks and review channels. Any negative review can create an adverse impact on some part of your customers unless you have a strong foothold through brand loyalty and efficient customer service. There is a challenge to maintain the brand reputation by responding to negative feedback effectively.
Dependability on Technology: Digital marketing is purely based on digital technology and internet access. There can be instances of failure when the links may not work, the website may not respond, and user access gets hampered. This may create dissatisfaction among the prospective customers that forces them to switch to other brands. A regular checkup or maintenance of the website is necessary to cope up with the constantly changing technological environment.
Security and Privacy Issues: The more use of online platforms demands better security and website protection. For a digital marketer, securing and safeguarding the network connections by using firewalls and good antivirus is always desirable. The legal formalities for protecting and using customer data in digital marketing strategies need to be completed to avoid any complaints on data breaches.

Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing: What’s the Difference?

Difference between Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing
Traditional Marketing	Digital Marketing
In this marketing technique, traditional modes of conversion are used.	In this, digital channels are used as the mode of marketing.
The nature of this marketing technique is static.	The nature of this marketing technique is dynamic.
The conversion rate is less.	The conversion rate is high.
Engagement is less or low.	Engagement is higher than in the traditional model.
ROI is less.	ROI is high.
It is more expensive than digital marketing.	It is less expensive.
Tracking is not possible.	The tracking is possible and done easily.
Have local reach.	Have global reach.
Results are delayed.	Results are instant.
Communication is only a one-way process.	Communication is a two-way process.

Conclusion :

So, which strategy wins when comparing traditional marketing vs. digital marketing?

The short answer: it depends.

The long answer:

Althoough everything is this world comes with its pros and cons. Digital Marketing moreover can be highly benficial for brand owners and newly established firms who want to grow their business and perform better compared to their rivals.

We’d like to hear some of your perspectives on digital marketing. Make comments to us down below!