Ok so this is a loaded question and you’ll likely think I’m biased since I run a digital marketing agency. That said, I’ll share my opinion and you can draw your own conclusions. Is that fair?
Before we get to Is digital marketing better than traditional marketing, let’s first talk about what each one is.
Traditional Marketing
What probably comes to mind are print advertising, tv, and radio. And those are all good. I’d also throw in regular word of mouth or “referral” marketing here but some of that is also done digitally as well.
Print Ads
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Print advertising can obviously come in a variety of ways as well. It could be a business using snail mail to their own customers, or they could be doing a mailout to a certain radius. It also includes flyers, coupon packs and shopper magazines. And regular old-fashioned magazines can be added here as well.
And then there’s still door-to-door marketing. I get people coming by my house weekly still. Most of the time it’s for home services. Windows, landscaping, even roofers.
As far as how effective each of these strategies is, the answer is that it really depends on a couple of things. First and foremost, are you able to reach your target audience. The narrower your audience is, the less effective this type of marketing will be. You simply won’t get the return on investment you are looking for.
Crossover from Traditional Marketing to Digital Marketing
I do want to go back to radio and TV for just a bit because there is crossover now with “online” radio shows and podcasts as well as tv shows and movies that “stream”, that is actually digital!
In fact, Hulu came out with allowing anyone to advertise on their platform. It used to be you would have to hire an agency or use what’s called OTT (over the top) software to create campaigns. I’m not going to go into too many details here but just know that if someone is connected online and sees your marketing or advertising campaign, that is digital.
Email and Snail Mail
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We’re talking email – which can be to customers or prospects, the same goes for FB Messenger campaigns or SMS (text) campaigns. These basically took over snail mail and you can generally get people on your list either from digital or traditional methods.
However, once you have a “list”, it’s far more affordable to market to them digitally than with print. Which in turn creates a better ROI. And the numbers show that it’s also more effective.
TV and Video
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As far as TV, aside from what we already spoke about, I’m sure you can guess that video marketing is the equivalent of TV ads. The thing here is that you can still have your video commercials play on other people’s shows. You can do this on YouTube, Facebook, & Instagram. The added bonus here is that you can create your own “show”, or a series of videos, or Lives that you have you “on-air” at certain times.
With video, the sky is pretty much the limit. And video marketing can run 24/7 and stay online until you take it down. And people search YouTube constantly to learn or be entertained. You can also use video on your website, in email marketing, or with SEO efforts so it’s one of the best forms of advertising methods you can use. Check out some of our other videos on this strategy.
Podcasts and Radio
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With Podcasts, it’s similar. You can be a guest on someone else’s show or start your own. Either way, the most important thing here is audience size and the right audience.
It’s worth noting that if you’re going to start your own podcast, you’ll need to build up an audience unless you already have one in another platform or your own list, then you can redirect them to your podcast. There are a lot of statistics on the demographics of podcast listeners that I encourage you to check out.
Digital Marketing
Now that we’ve gone over some similarities, let’s chat about other forms of digital marketing that don’t have an equivalent in traditional marketing.
The big three are social media, SEO, and SEM. Social media covers multiple platforms of course. There’s also no shortage of ways to market on social media. You’ve got a personal profile, a business page, and a Group. The first two would be your own but the third can be created by you and you run that or someone else’s group that you participate in. There is no shortage of “experts”, that will tell you how they’ve made 6 figures working FB groups to bring in high ticket clients.
With pages, it is harder to reach your audience organically but you can run paid ads and reach your target audience most of the time. You can also do FB Lives which lets page followers know that you are “live”. It’s a great opportunity to connect.
SEO
@RyanL via Twenty20
With SEO, that’s all about getting found in the search engines. There may be too much competition for your business but with newer industries and products that are getting ready to trend, it could be really worthwhile.
It’s not as difficult to get found in local search, however, that is also dependent on several factors.
SEM
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SEM is generally paid ads within the search engines and related websites. Many people refer to this as PPC but it’s really more than that. SEO and SEM basically replaced the old big phone books that people used for search. But there are simply far more places your business can be found instead of one big book.
And the traffic that businesses enjoy from these strategies is far beyond what you can get from print ads.
In my humble opinion, there’s really no contest. Digital Marketing just offers so many more possibilities than traditional marketing. And there are plenty of options for those with smaller budgets.
If you have zero budget, well then that’s hard to market a business no matter what. But any serious business owner knows you have to do some sort of marketing to bring in business.
That’s it for today. I’ll catch ya next time.
And if you need help with your marketing campaign, schedule a free strategy session with us today.
