Despite the numerous changes marketing industry has gone through during the last two decades, and with the digital advertising currently being the go-to tool for many businesses, a lot of traditional marketing tactics are still being successfully deployed to this day. Unfortunately, most companies neglect the traditional over digital and lose a significant chunk of the market share in the process. Truth be told, the best advertising strategies involve both digital and traditional efforts, in order to reach even those deemed unreachable by stubborn marketers who prefer using one over the other.
Benefits of Digital Advertising
One of the clear advantages of digital marketing is its vast targeting abilities. Today’s digital advertising options allow marketers to target extremely specific audiences and segment them based on their age, race, gender, geographic location, personal interests and preferences, previous shopping experiences, etc. This allows for hyper-accurate and narrow targeting and ensures that your ads will only be seen by those intended, whether locally or internationally.
Besides targeting, digital advertising allows users to pick the medium through which they receive information and, in turn, messages from the advertisers. Some people like to read articles, some prefer infographics while others enjoy watching videos on YouTube. Traditional means of marketing don’t allow for this freedom of choice regarding the medium. Not to mention that people have the choice of opting in or out of these “conversations”.
Lastly, digital marketing provides real-time results, something traditional marketing has always struggled with. There are numerous tools, such as Google Analytics or the Insights tool, which allow for tracking of users and customers and collecting various information that will later be used for ad targeting. This includes their physical location, the device and browser they’re using, heat-map for cursor movement, etc. Using this information, marketers can quickly change and adapt their current advertising strategies in order to increase traffic and improve their conversion rates.
Benefits of Traditional Marketing
Traditional forms of marketing are ideal for reaching local target audiences by using, let’s say, a radio to play ads, specific locations or mailbox flyers to target particular suburbs and specific range of addresses. Furthermore, these mediums are all readily known as people have already been exposed to this kind of advertising and all the materials used for promotional purposes can be kept and repurposed as a part of the next campaign.
Using Both Digital and Traditional Advertising
There are numerous ways you can use both traditional and modern marketing tactics to reach and convert your target audience. Events are one of the most efficient uses of both, as it allows marketers to animate their audience on social media by having them RSVP to the event, comment on it, share it and tag their friends. Social media are used to promote the event, while the event itself can serve as additional advertising by using giveaways, handing out flyers and offering various promotional materials such as prepaid visa cards that can later help retain customers on renewal.
Another excellent way of using both marketing strategies involves the use of QR codes. They can also be used for special promotions happening on your social media profile or business website. What makes them so useful is the fact that they can be shared online, using websites and social media or they can be coupled with flyer printing and handed out to passersby in front of the physical store.
But what most marketers fail to realize is that you can use the strengths of one strategy to cover the weaknesses of the other. For example, digital marketing allows for an in-depth market research regarding your potential customers. This information can be collected via numerous social media platforms and business websites, and it can later be used to optimize the traditional strategies.
Separating advertising strategies and arguing which one is better is simply a waste of time. Granted, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and using them to complement each other is only a smart thing to do. Traditional marketing is far from being obsolete and online marketing is far from being the only type of advertising that produces any palpable results. Every smart marketer knows that a successful marketing strategy involves both online and offline efforts in order to provide the best possible results.
A digital marketer from Sydney. Works as a blogger, Senior Editor for Bizzmark blog and a lecturer at Melbourne University. Tweets industry related articles.
