Traditional or Digital Marketing: What’s the Difference?

You’ve got an active business or superb product to promote, but how do you wrap your head around the difference between traditional and digital marketing? Isn’t digital marking just about web design and getting an eye-catching homepage up and running? And traditional marketing is just newspaper ads, right? Well, not quite, so read on to discover they key differences between the modern flair of digital marketing and the tried and tested realm of traditional marketing.

What is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing refers to any advertising that is not online, such as print and broadcast media. But there’s more to traditional marketing than glossy magazine ads. Think TV commercials, newspapers, billboards, catalogues, flyers and brochures. Traditional marketing was the way it was done before the internet became the next big thing in the 1990s. Before smart phones and tablets, and before YouTube, Facebook, Google and Amazon, printed matter and television were (and still are) prolific in their success and rightly so. 

The world of marketing has changed since the 1990s, but the concept of traditional marketing has stood the test of time. Let’s face it – TV’s not going anywhere, and last time you looked at a magazine stand, it was jam-packed with every niche type of publication you could possibly imagine. And now, many of them are also available in digital form and sometimes the traditional even overlaps with the modern!

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing utilises internet and online-based digital tools and devices such as computers, smart phones and various digital media platforms in order to advertise, present and promote your product or services. Just like traditional marketing, digital marketing aims to catch the attention of your potential customers. But digital marketing happens online, so think blogs, social media, email, pop-up ads and search engines. The way that consumers engage with products, services and businesses has changed a lot since the internet became such an integral part of everyday life. 

Therefore, digital marketing has become an essential component of any successful modern marketing campaign. In fact, many potential customers prefer to use the internet to research and purchase products and services, make enquiries and bookings, as well as browse and look for inspiration for their next purchase.

Advantages of Digital and Traditional Marketing

Most of today’s consumers are part of the online world and that is why digital marketing offers many advantages to promote your product, business or service. It’s important to consider that:

• Digital marketing campaigns can be tailored to suit any business’s budget. Marketing and advertising costs don’t have to be a financial burden when you can choose what you want to spend on digitally marketing your product.

• Results of digital marketing campaigns are easy for you to track and analyse. You can engage SEO Services to evaluate the effectiveness of your online advertising campaigns.

• It’s also simple to adjust and tweak a digital marketing tool when needed, such as changing keywords or adding new information and keeping your audience updated. You can run your own online campaigns or your chosen marketing agency can manage it for you.

• Digital marketing can reach a precisely targeted demographic, or it can target an audience as broad or as far-reaching as necessary. Your company’s message can even go global, for example, hiring a Chinese SEO Agency can help you target local and international Chinese speakers who might be your marketing campaign’s ideal audience.

It is of course, essential to consider taking advantage of traditional marketing tools which may also be suitable for helping to grow your business or sell your product. Traditional marketing has many advantages in the modern and competitive realm of reaching potential customers. 

It is often easier for traditional marketing methods to focus on a local target audience through TV commercials. While TV can also reach a national audience, regional commercial campaigns can be more tailored to suit a small business.

The use of billboards and the distribution of visually engaging printed material also directly targets all local consumers without excluding or overlooking any particular demographic of potential customer. 

Another advantage of traditional marketing is that it can come across as less forced and more subtle than digital marketing and reaches an audience in a more organic manner by being immersed in a community setting. Think colourful flyers, bright posters at the bus stop or a catchy-sounding ad playing in the background while you make dinner at home.

Combining Traditional Ideas with Modern Energy 

Your company can reach a broader audience if you use a combination of traditional and digital marketing in your next advertising campaign. Think about combining email and direct mail marketing, putting your website and email addresses on eye catching flyers or following up a client you met in person with a quick email or direct message through social media. 

Engage a suitable SEO Company Melbourne has to offer to strike the right balance between traditional ideas and the modern energy of digital marketing for the best possible result for promoting your product or service. It’s easy to tweak your next marketing campaign to engage as many potential customers as possible when you consider the endless choices that traditional and digital marketing tools – and a combination of the two – can offer in today’s online world.

Written by: Angela Wauchop

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