When it comes to choosing the right kind of advertising campaign for your business, you will likely find yourself having to choose between traditional and digital marketing. Below we explore these distinct campaign strategies to help you decide which would work best for your business.
Traditional marketing
Traditional marketing campaigns include advertising in newspapers, print ads, radio and TV ads. They hold a certain kind of authority with consumers as some of these media channels have a high reputation. It’s this that leads many businesses to believe they need to invest in print advertising. However, the most effective channels for traditional advertising are also the most expensive, which can be prohibitive for small businesses, not to mention audiences are dwindling all the time. Instead, online marketing has the potential to reach a bigger audience, particularly as many younger consumers don’t watch traditional TV or read print media anymore.
Digital marketing
Digital campaigns usually comprise of email marketing, social media marketing, banner ads and content marketing in the form of blog posts and web page creation. These campaigns can be much quicker and easier to put together, and unlike traditional campaigns can make it easy to track the results. For instance, you can be notified when recipients open your emails or click on ads and you will be able to track clickthroughs to your site, the products they buy and the amount of money they spend. You will learn what works and what doesn’t so that next time you can focus on the parts of your campaigns that worked.
Traditional vs digital marketing: Which is best?
Cost
Digital advertising is generally cheaper than traditional advertising, with much of it possible to do for free or on a low budget. It doesn’t incur the costs of reproduction like with print ads and can also be made more quickly if you decide that you want to run a campaign at the last minute. There’s also much more online advertising space available compared to traditional advertising space, which makes it cheaper. Plus, there are options to increase or decrease the number of impressions you want to achieve from banner and social ads, which makes it much more scalable for smaller businesses.
Time
If an opportunity arises and you have to create a campaign in a short time frame, you can prepare and execute digital ads at a much faster pace than traditional marketing. Digital marketing can also be updated with much more ease than traditional marketing as new content can be uploaded online with much greater speed and does not need to be individually distributed. For example, a print ad needs to be approved by publishers, created, printed and distributed. You may also have to wait for the publication or channel to have an available slot, limiting the exposure or positioning of your ad.
Longevity
Some consider traditional marketing to make a longer-lasting impression, but in reality, newspaper adverts are only visible for one day when a publication is in circulation. Successful digital ads, however, can be repurposed, have their contract terms extended and go viral, making a global impression in the space of a few hours. Similarly, blog posts will stay on your site forever, generating click-throughs and improving your SEO ranking, and emails can be saved by users for later reference.
Even if they also use traditional advertising, all companies need a great online presence for their business, but many don’t have the time to do it themselves. If you’re looking to work with industry-leading marketing experts who can make your next digital marketing campaign accessible and affordable, get in touch with us at Promotr today.
