The 21st-century economy runs on the art of persuading people to purchase a product or service. However, in recent years, there’s been a gradual transition from traditional marketing to the digital mode of doing things. This has left many potential entrepreneurs and investors wondering whether to stick to the tried and tested path or jump onto the bandwagon of the latest trends.
If you’re trying to decide between traditional or digital marketing strategies is the way to go, check out a few pros and cons below before you make your decision:
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing strategies refers to selling your product to the general public. This encompasses methods like distributing business cards, flyers, ads on magazines, paying for TV commercials and canvassing.
In other words, traditional marketing refers to any way of branding your business without relying on digital means. This also includes the old-fashioned way of building your business using a carefully cultivated referral network.
Pros
There is no refuting that many people have a strong affinity to traditional marketing due to its longevity and familiarity. We all grew up watching Super Bowl commercials more religiously than the actual game. Additionally, traditional marketing is also one of the best ways of selling your brand to a localized audience.
Cons
Traditional marketing is not only expensive when looking at it from a long-term and large-scale perspective, but also quite static and inefficient. There is no easy way, for instance, to gauge whether or not people are impressed with your new billboard in town. It’s much harder to track traditional campaigns in comparison to online campaigns.
Digital Marketing
The realm of digital marketing strategies revolves around using interactive social media platforms and the internet to sell your product or service. Unlike traditional marketing, the goal of digital marketing is for your potential customers to find you and not the other way round.
Pros
Given the unprecedented popularity of the internet, digital marketing campaigns have grown to be quite powerful means of reaching an infinite number of potential customers. While it’s possible to tailor it to target a localized audience, it can have a global reach as well, if done correctly. That being said, due to the interactive nature of digital marketing, it’s easy to gauge consumer feedback through the many social outlets available.
“Digital Marketing is like a high-tech drone that is much more versatile, vs traditional marketing which is like a aging helicopter,” said Jacob Grey of Boost Digital Marketing.
Cons
Digital marketing, while efficient and effective, requires a lot of training and know-how. You have to have to be familiar with internet practices and social media branding to realize any meaningful results with this mode. Otherwise, it can take months or years for a digital marketing campaign to bear fruits.
The Bottom Line
In the past two decades, the world has transitioned into a highly digitalized environment. Everything, including old school paperback magazines, is now published on the internet. Complex financial tasks, which only recently looked impossible, are now completed securely online via portals and hubs.
Therefore, as a smart entrepreneur, it’s only practical to invest in digital marketing rather than its traditional counterpart. For instance, every business nowadays, however big or small, should have an official website and accompanying social media handles to grow its online consumers base.