Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing: Which Produces Better Results?

Whether you’re a new niche business or an established large corporation, no doubt there’s an allocated marketing budget in order to raise awareness of the brand. With the way consumers access information changing, it can be difficult to predict which marketing method will be more successful than the other. This means that many businesses often take a calculated risk. So, how do you divide the spend – if at all – between digital and traditional marketing techniques? It can greatly depend on the nature of your business.

What Is the Difference?

Traditional marketing is marketing as most people know it; using mediums such as print, TV, and radio in hope to reach their audience. It’s a conventional way of marketing, meaning that as targeted as the advertisements are, there is no strict way to ensure it gets to your target audience other than plenty of research into the outlets.

Digital marketing is the new age approach to getting your brand out there. Social media, content marketing, and email marketing are all forms of digital marketing. Agencies like Red Cow Media can help use targeted advertisements to reach the audience demographic. This also includes SEO and PPC. In many ways it can be more precise than traditional marketing.

Benefit and Drawbacks of Traditional Marketing

Because it’s been around for so long, many businesses fall into the default of traditional marketing, which can be beneficial as it is still effective. Many people still find a company through magazine, billboard or newspaper ads. It can be used to reach local audiences as well as nationwide, which is what makes it particularly popular with small businesses.

Disadvantages of traditional marketing include that the results are not easily measured. This is because you have no way of knowing how the audience interacted with the advertisement apart from how much of an increase there is in sales or enquiries. This can’t be quantified. There’s also no way to interact with the audience. In addition, a lot of the time traditional marketing is surprisingly still more expensive than digital marketing.

The Rise of Digital Marketing and The Implications

Increasingly, popularity is rising with businesses choosing to go down the digital marketing route. Though some companies prefer to do it in-house, a digital marketing agency could dramatically help an inexperienced business. One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that you are able to monitor user behaviour better and increase interaction. Social media has transformed into one of the most powerful forms of marketing because of the great level of interaction with customers. Using digital marketing all means you can reach an infinite audience.

One of the downsides to digital marketing is that it can take a while for the success to be measured. Because it can be a more longtail way of marketing, you need to be patient to see any real changes when it comes to the impact on revenue.

Where to Invest?

Using your marketing budget to make sure you get a good return is fundamental for businesses. As previously mentioned, the method of marketing you choose can depend on the nature of your business. For example, if you are an independent hairdresser salon, then you may have more success going down the traditional marketing route. Taking out local newspaper ads and relying on word-of-mouth could be the best way to allocate your budget if you’re limited with spend. Although, digital marketing can also be targeted locally, so if you had more of a budget then you could explore the possibility of doing both.

On the other hand, larger companies with a high number of competitors may do well with digital marketing. They can reach a wider audience as well as target ads based on demographic. Though it may be a good idea to take our newspaper and billboard ads if they are launching a new feature or powerful campaign, many large companies find digital marketing to be more beneficial.