When it comes to differentiating between digital marketing and traditional marketing there are a number of things that come to light. Both tactics can be used effectively, the key is understanding your specific marketing needs, knowing your budget and understanding your target audience.
In many instances the key to a successful marketing campaign is to find the right balance between traditional and digital as both tactics can be used effectively. However as we live in an increasingly digital world, digital marketing has definitely started to take the lead.
What Do We Mean By Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is carried out using digital channels such as social media, google and websites to promote products or services. Digital marketing includes a number of different services such as SEO, PPC and Social Media. Instead of focusing solely on products and sales, digital marketing helps to build brand awareness, engage with potential customers and generate leads, strengthening and building customer relationships. This quick and real time marketing has allowed for greater and much more precise targeting on a vast amount of platforms which allow for 100% trackable campaigns in order to establish a true ROI.
Using the internet for several hours a day, on a laptop or smartphone, has become a normal part of everyday life for most people, therefore this transition to the online world requires nearly all businesses to have a digital presence. Digital marketing involves a lot of interaction with customers, enabling a strong relationship to build with overtime leads to more trust, and subsequently more conversion.
What Do We Mean By Traditional Marketing?
Up until the 1980’s, before the development of the internet, traditional marketing was the only form of marketing. Traditional marketing refers to any sort of ‘offline’ marketing and encompasses a wide range of advertising and marketing strategies such as newspapers, television, radio, direct mail and billboards. These traditional channels can be more memorable, impactful and last for a long time, they can also be harder to ignore than digital marketing methods, as you can’t implement ad blockers or skip past them.
Traditional marketing can be on the pricey side, and there can be little to no customer interaction or real time data, making it harder to know what works and where to improve for upcoming campaigns. There is an audience that is much easier to reach through traditional marketing than digital marketing, and for some audiences, traditional marketing methods demonstrate the stability and security of the brand.
What Are The Main Differences Between Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing?
There are numerous differences between traditional marketing and digital marketing. We’ve pulled together the main three…
Point Of Access
Traditional marketing is great for local advertising and is well trusted by many, particularly those who are uncertain about the new and ever changing digital marketing world, whereas digital marketing has global reach, making your brand visible to people from all walks of life.
Target Audiences
Traditional marketing tends to be limited to the local geographic area, and these marketing methods are carried out with limited knowledge of if the recipients are interested in their products or services.
Digital marketing offers dramatically more precise targeting in terms of where your advert is displayed and who it is displayed to. You can find out specific information such as the age range, gender, and geographical location of those who you should be targeting.
Engagement and Interaction
Traditional marketing tends to just focus on looking at increasing sales without that customer experience in mind, and it can be hard to measure engagement and interaction. So unlike social media marketing, you’re more or less in the dark about your audience’s reaction to your marketing efforts. Traditional marketing methods can take weeks or months to yield results and data. Using digital channels enables you to know exactly how your consumers view your brand, and what works and what does not work. This data can be instantly tracked and makes any learnings extremely clear and can be taken into account for your next round of marketing efforts.
Interested In Our Digital Marketing Services?
At Wriggle we will work with you to develop a sustainable digital strategy, with a multi channel approach to deliver results and agreed KPIs.
If you’re interested in any of our digital marketing services fill in our contact form or give the team a call on 0191 815 0815.
