Traditional marketing vs digital marketing. What works better?

Growth and development are the requirements of every organization. This can be possible when the organization has successful marketing strategies. A successful and huge client base is what they all require; which they can get if they have effective marketing plans. The overall marketing umbrella covers advertising, public relations, promotions and sales. Your organization may offer the best products or services in your industry, but without marketing, they won’t be able to reach your potential customers.

Marketing is majorly divided in two segments-

• Traditional marketing
• Digital marketing

So before deciding what kind of marketing suits best for your business, you need to understand both the segments.

Traditional Marketing

As the word suggests, traditional marketing refers to the conventional methods of marketing that have been used ever since the concept of advertisements or marketing came into existence. Traditional marketing includes various types of promotional activities and advertising campaigns. Initial forms of traditional marketing include print advertisements such as, newsletters, billboards, flyers and newspaper print ads. Later, with development, traditional marketing also had television commercials, as well as radio advertising. Traditional marketing revolves around the 4 Ps of marketing, they are:

• Product: A product is a tangible good or an intangible service that fulfills the requirements of the consumers. It is very important to have a clear grasp of your product or service for better marketing.
• Price: After knowing your product thoroughly, the cost is decided. Price will determine the factors like profits, supply, demand and further marketing strategy. The other two Ps are dependent on the price elasticity.
• Promotion: Promotion means figuring out the ways to marketing your product. Promotion includes elements like: advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more.
• Place: Marketing is all about putting the right product, at the right price, at the right place and at the right time. Placement is done after evaluating the ideal locations to market your product; so that the potential clients can be converted into actual clients.

Importance of traditional marketing

Traditional marketing has a higher success rate, as it is more personal form of media. Big organizations still look for traditional ways of marketing when it comes to developing the most effective strategy for their clients. Traditional marketing is necessary because:

• A personal touch causes high returns- Personal interactions with potential clients build relationships with clients that yield higher returns for business. There are more chances of referrals from the existing customers. Follow-ups are majorly required in traditional marketing.
• Cost effective- Traditional marketing has less expensive options available. For example, if there are personal invites that need to be sent, it can be hand- written, which will have comparatively more impact.
• Reaching every type of audience- It is hard to believe, but it is true that not every person of your target audience is online. It may be a small percentage that’s offline, but there is still a target market out there. Hence, traditional marketing reaches out even to those strata of your audience.
• Larger access- A large percentage of your target audience has access to TV or radio in some form. Be that at work, home, car or even in-store. The reach of these mediums is huge and unavoidable. This invasive nature of the audience makes them extremely effective when it comes to traditional marketing.
• Easily accessible- Everyone has access to the traditional form of media in one-way or the other. Therefore, traditional marketing has an easy access to its potential market.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the promotion of products, brands and services via one or more forms of electronic mediums. Digital marketing uses different digital technologies, mainly on the internet, to market the products. Other mediums include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc. Digital marketing is so pervasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place they want it. The development of digital marketing is inseparable from technological development.

Digital marketing uses various marketing methods like:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): This is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages. This increases the amount of organic traffic for your website.
• Content marketing: This term denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. This includes- blogs, e-books, e-brochures etc.
• Social media marketing: This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business. Various websites that can be used for this purpose are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
• Affiliate marketing: This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website.

And various other methods of digital marketing are available.

Importance of digital marketing

Digital marketing is the most widely used marketing in today’s world. It is considered an effective tool of marketing. It not only works in the favor of marketers, it also works in the favor of the customers.

Opens options for small scale organizations

With digital marketing in trend, even the small scale organizations can flourish. They can select their marketing method and can reach their selected audience at a lesser cost.

Wider reach

As more and more people are consuming all kinds of information online; digital marketing is becoming the best way to reach out to your targeted customers.

Growth beyond boundaries

It’s important to understand that digital marketing doesn’t only applies to your website; it is much more than that. To make your business stand out from the crowd, you need a real strategy that puts potential customers first and use all the available tools to acquire them.

A step ahead

Digital marketing gives you a chance to grow a step ahead of your competitors. If you learn more, you’ll grow more. It is all about the learning process. The more you become good at it, the better your organization will flourish.

Traceable results

Digital marketing has more traceable results as compared to any other medium. You can trace them on digital platforms as they have various tools to do that. Feedback is the most important thing for any organization and here; feedback results are instantly and can be traceable.

Marketing is the necessity of any organization in today’s time. Whether it is traditional marketing or digital marketing, an organization needs support of these to grow. Marketing is like a wheel on which organizations ride. Therefore marketing cannot be ignored. But there is always a choice with the organizations to choose their marketing style. A wise organization looks at all the aspects, does a detailed study of them and then selects their marketing medium.