Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing and Benefits

Traditional marketing vs digital marketing, when planning for your marketing strategies this question surely arises, and it is very difficult to decide amongst both of them.

Like salt is an important ingredient of your food, both digital and traditional marketing are equally important for your business to grow. Traditional marketing vs digital marketing is a very debatable topic, and no one can win which one is better.

Let us check traditional marketing vs digital marketing their benefits and shortcomings

Traditional Marketing

Let us jump into traditional marketing. Marketing began in late 1940’s with the efforts to sell goods and services. This activity was taken as a thought to increase business, which was later recognised as marketing.

Traditional Marketing includes the following mediums of marketing.

Print media: Newspapers, Pamphlets, Flyers, Newsletters, Magazines.

Audio-Visual Ads: Radio, Television, Hoardings, Banners.

Events: Exhibitions, Road-shows, Seminars, Launches.

Traditional marketing is basically used by every startup and small business to introduce their business to the local market and create awareness among the people. Not only small business or startups, many developed businesses also prefer traditional marketing. Let us check what benefits of traditional marketing vs digital marketing and how traditional marketing is different.

Benefits of Traditional Marketing

#1 Precise area or Local Reach

In Traditional marketing vs digital marketing, traditional marketing helps reach the local target audience easily. Print advertisements in local newspapers or hoarding in city help reach the target audience.

Precise locations can be reached with display advertisements on hoardings or banners. With radio advertisements, you can reach your target an age group during specific hours and even different channels.

Local broadcast channels or news channels on television also help target your audience with your advertisements.

Television, Radio and newspaper advertisements help you reach larger groups. Planned events, seminars and exhibitions also help you target a broader audience.

#2 Larger Display Area

With too much of competition in digital media, traditional marketing is ahead with this benefit of a larger advertisement display area.

Print media helps reach an audience with larger display area than that of digital ads.  Spending more on advertisements aids you with the larger display area for your advertisement.

Display advertisements also help you reach different cities, there are special newspaper supplements which target local city, hoardings in different cities and radio ads or television ads also help reach different city audience.

#3 Distinct Results

Results vary in traditional marketing vs digital marketing. In traditional marketing, results can be immediate if there is an urgent requirement or if the advertisement is appealing. Immediate Call or messages or direct walk-in or purchase are the results of traditional marketing.

You can see results even after few follow-ups. During events and specific launches, you automatically attract new leads.

Shortcomings of Traditional Marketing

#1 Time Bound

In traditional marketing vs digital marketing, traditional marketing is time bound which is the biggest shortcoming. The first thing you decide about traditional marketing is the start and end date. Before deciding the advertisement or knowing about results you need to decide about the end date of your hoarding or radio ad or event.

Newspaper advertisements self-life is very less, which is only one day and it remains with readers only for one day. So, to create an impact on the readers is a difficult job as there are many competitors at the same time trying to pitch their products.

#2 Response based analysis

An analysis is the key element of research about marketing effects. In case of traditional marketing, you can analyse the response.

How people react to the advertisement, they may call you or they may just ignore it if it’s not their requirement. To get a response you spend half a lakh on a print advertisement, which is an initial rate for advertisements in good newspapers and banners at good locations.

So, traditional marketing analysis is response based.

#3 Expensive day by day

With the increase in demand and competition amongst business and various industries, the demand for print media or display advertisements is increasing day by day.

Like a newspaper rates varies from city to city, rates in metro cities are almost double the rates in tier 3 or tier 4 cities in India.Rates vary on sizes, bigger the display area, more expensive the advertisement goes.

Due to this reason, in traditional marketing vs digital marketing discussion digital marketing is more preferred.

#4 Scheduling not possible

In today’s generation, almost all things have gone automated. Automated means scheduling advertisements to appear in future.

With traditional marketing we cannot schedule advertisements for a week or even few days, you need to submit artwork two days in advance or a day before the advertisement date. Which makes it very time to consuming and require your presence for submission or finalising the artwork.

Digital Marketing

During the late 1990’s, text-based websites came up and started creating an existence on the web. With the existence of the website, many other ways of digital marketing started coming up and created a digital presence for various businesses.

Email Marketing

Search Engine Optimisation

Social Media Marketing

Blogging etc

Many businesses have added these digital marketing trends to their list of marketing strategies. Business and startups start with traditional marketing to reach the local audience but also consider vari

ous free digital marketing platforms to reach more audience.

Benefits of Digital Marketing over Traditional Marketing

#1. Reach

Reach with digital marketing is wider than that of traditional marketing. You can reach the local, international and global audience when it comes to digital marketing. Digital marketing allows you to decide on the factors like age group, interest, geographical locations etc. Because of these factors you can target your audience and reach them easily with paid advertisements as well.

#2. Free Platforms

Many free platforms are a part of digital marketing, including social media platforms. These platforms help you target audience without spending on your advertisements. Great ideas can be used to increase social media engagement, engagement on your social platforms help you reach more people.

In this way, digital marketing helps reach a more organic audience.

#3. Analytics

Offcourse various analytics options are available in case of digital marketing. Google analytics,  social media analytics, WordPress blog plugins to check site statistics, scheduling apps analytics all of these help you to know about your reach which is a wide range for studying the engagement and reach of digital marketing.

Analytics not only helps you study the reach, it also helps you to study your site growth and visits to your website, in case of traditional marketing you cannot analyse this aspect through any add-ons.

#4. Cost Effective

Budgets are always considered before finalising traditional or digital marketing strategies. Whenever you search for any product you look for good results and cost-effectiveness. Similarly, while considering digital activities, this criterion should be considered.

Digital marketing ads or google adwords are very effective even in a very low budget. They help reach the global market or targeted audience in a budget which you cannot even think of.

#5. Scheduling and automated

Digital Marketing campaigns can be automated and scheduled which is a boon for marketers, they plan a marketing campaign months before and schedule it beforehand and plan for next upcoming activities.

Many software’s help schedule social media campaigns and later you can check their insights, reach or impressions.

#6. Availability

Availability is a very big advantage of digital marketing. You can remain online for 24 x 7, by configuring chat on your blog or website or dropping an email to the client. Or a client can inquire via email and chat messengers.

Being available for solving clients queries or requirements which make digital marketing ahead in traditional marketing vs digital marketing debate.

Shortcomings of Digital Marketing

#1 Clearly seen customer feedback

Negative comments or customers feedback are visible publicly on social media or blog posts. These comments are mostly based on real-time which means at the time when the campaigns or events are taking place.

Later on, you have to work on online reputation to clear or manage the negative feedback or complaints.

#2. Knowledge Required

You require digital marketing knowledge to run successful campaigns. Without having proper knowledge campaigns cannot be successful or you cannot reach the target audience to get conversions or results.

Proper digital marketing training or expertise can help you use digital marketing effectively.

#3. Create online Reputation

As a matter of fact, with so many digital platforms, you require different sources to manage all media at a time. With any-one platform receiving a negative feedback or complaints makes it difficult to handle your business. To take care of this you have to create and take care of your online reputation on all platforms and digitally.

To summarize with, traditional values cannot be forgotten, at the same time, new digital trends are to be accepted.

A proper balance between traditional marketing and digital marketing will surely help you create successful marketing strategies and help you get your results within your budgets.

You may also like 8 effective ways of social media engagement