Traditional or digital marketing? How can strategies align or differ?

Nowadays, there are a lot of debates about which marketing type should companies choose for better promotion of their brand. Well, for me, the answer is simple. What better way to reach more people and increase income than combining both old and new marketing methods.

Before we dive into more details, let’s take a closer look at each one of them individually, and discuss the benefits, and the downsides step by step.

Defining Traditional Marketing

Traditional Marketing, or as people say “the old way of advertising” is the process of bringing awareness to your business, and send a message to a wide group of people by using business cards, print ads in newspapers or magazines, posters, commercials on TV and radio, billboards and brochures.

Defining Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing became over the years a revolution in this industry because of its unique way to determine people to find you using inbound strategies. In other words, Digital Marketing is similar to the traditional advertisement, but all is happening on the internet, using digital devices.

The goal is to make people find your business through content creation, organic online search, or paid ads. The more they see you on social media or read your articles because you offer them pertinent solutions to their problems, the higher is the chance to convert them into leads. There is an entire process around the digital world, and also opportunities for any company to build trust among people.

Make them hear you by giving them exactly what they want, and you will turn them into your “business champions”. When you reach a point when people start to recommend you to their friends, family, or followers, you become unstoppable. Nothing is more important than “word of mouth” referrals. Anyone is more willing to trust real persons that speak from their own experiences.

Find more information about Digital Marketing benefits and types:

How strategies on both sides align and differ?

There are 3 important points that we should discuss in order to understand the impact across audiences:

Mass/Individual reach

Let’s say you are in an airport and you see a banner, or you listen to the radio in your car. Every person around you see the same message and listen to the same audio commercial. This is called a group experience, and it helps increase your business awareness targeting a mass of people.

Instead, when speaking about social media, paid search, email, etc., thanks to the amazing upgrades in technology, you can show ads customized for every individual, depending on their online activity. This is an individual experience. We create different content and share it with a specific audience.

Level of engagement

When a commercial appears on TV, there is no way you can interact with it. Even if the advertisement is appealing to you, the only way to find out more information is to search for it online or go to the actual store. So, we can see in that situation that we confront ourselves with a passive engagement.

One of the many benefits of social media platforms is that people can be active. Actions like comments, likes, or shares bring real value to your brand and last in time.

Analyze and measure ROI

Traditional marketing implies a bigger budget spent on commercials and targets a large group of people, no matter if, at that moment, they are interested or not. But it has the advantage of speaking face to face with potential clients. Reaching a wider audience means that they will remember you as one of their problem solvers when needed.

Using digital methods allows you to invest in campaigns that are meant to send a message to particular groups of people actually interested in what you have to say. The chance to turn them into leads increases significantly, and you can actually measure your efforts and track the results of your investment.

Instead, in traditional marketing, it is impossible to analyze how many relevant people have you reached and how many were really interested in your product and services. Digital marketing techniques are statistically proven to offer great returns on investment with a minimum budget, which the traditional methodology lacks big time.

New and old media, don’t work separately!

Even though digital and traditional marketing work different, if you combine them with flexibility, you are closer to achieve your business goals.

Now, to sustain my idea, let’s take as an example a real-life situation:

Maria hears at the radio on her way to work a commercial about a face moisturizer that will help with her acne problem. Later that day, she accesses the product website for more information. After reading all the good reviews, she to pays a visit to the actual store(address provided on the website) to test the product and speak with a consultant about her skin difficulties.

She decided to buy the product, and while paying for it, a banner with their Twitter page captures her attention. Because Maria is satisfied with the product, she takes out her phone and follows the company Twitter page to be always informed about new product releases and events.

In conclusion, combining traditional and digital marketing is the perfect way to advertise. The repetition and the online and offline presence will make people remember your brand and consider you a leader in your industry.