Differences Between Digital Marketing & Traditional Marketing.
A brief introduction into some of the differences between Digital & Traditional Marketing.
1) Media Outlets: Generally digital marketing is associated with online platforms (Social Media, Blogs etc). Digital marketing can be defined as the marketing of a product and/or a service through various digital technologies, mainly the internet or via mobile technology. Traditional marketing is the opposite to this and therefore, relies on ‘offline’ platforms (Radio, Tv,etc).
2) Cost: Digital marketing is a cost effective way of advertising in the modern world. Compared to more traditional marketing which usually requires the company or business to outsource the service of advertising, companies can now customise and control their own adverts via social media or Google Adwords. This point also ties into the fact that a business can at any time update, change or completely remove their ad with relative ease. This would not be possible with traditional print adverts such as in a newspaper because once the ad has printed, it can no longer be changed.
3) Push vs Pull: Digital Marketing is associated with Pull Marketing meaning that the consumer can pick and choose which material or advert he/she views and engages with. The goal of the pull marketing is to get the consumer to come to you. Pull marketing can achieve brand loyalty for a company as the aim is to keep the consumer coming back in the long term.
Push Marketing, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. The goal of push marketing is to take the product/ service directly to the consumer without the consumer having any choice in it. This can often back fire as the consumer’s may not want to be exposed this type of approach.
4) Reach: Online digital marketing has no physical or geographical boundaries. Traditionally a company would have been physically restricted with their advertising campaign due to inability to reach consumers further afield. For example, a traditional newspaper, radio or magazine advertisement would have a limited reach specific to that town, city or region. Digital marketing through the 24/7 availability of the web and mobile technologies allow the company to reach consumers anywhere on the planet.
5) Timeframe: With digital marketing an individual or company can create and publish content online and within a matter of hours the content can be viewed/ shared/ downloaded by thousands of customers. In contrast, a more traditional approach such as a newspaper advert can take days/weeks to design and even longer to finalise the content before publishing. The quick turnaround on digital content is a huge advantage by itself and of course as mentioned above the longer a delayed publication drags on the more it will cost the company.
6) Audience: With more and more people coming ‘online’ in recent years, the surge in digital marketing has followed. This generates a lot of positive advantages over traditional marketing however, there are certain demographics such as 65+ category where a large proportion are not ‘online’. Companies that utilise a traditional approach can target this demographic which would of otherwise gone unnoticed by a marketing campaign.
7) Feedback: One of the key’s to a successful digital marketing campaign is feedback. Feedback via the customer and via analytics. E-tools such as Pay Per Click, Google Analytics and Google Ad Words allow a company to monitor closely the response from customers to the campaign. This is not possible with a traditional campaign such as a newspaper advert while in contrast a company can see exactly how many customers have, for instance, clicked on the advert.
8) Delivery: After the development and publication of digital content, the company remains in control. What I mean by this is, if there is an error/ misprint, if the message was misunderstood or in general the digital campaign isn’t performing, the company can edit or withdraw the campaign immediately with little additional cost (if any). Compare this to a traditional TV or Newspaper advert, the same degree of flexibility and control is nowhere near the same level. Once the advert has been published it can not be edited without first being withdraw. This can accrue large costs to the company.