Marketing is a very important tool that businesses use to attract prospective customers to the products and services they have to offer. There are two types of marketing that businesses can choose from: traditional marketing and digital marketing.
Traditional marketing involves conventional marketing activities such as advertising products and services on television, radio, newspapers, and magazines.
Digital marketing, on the other hand, is when we use the internet to promote a company’s products and services. Digital marketing and traditional marketing are different in a number of ways, which are explained below.
1. Traditional marking can only reach a local market, whereas digital marketing has a more global reach.
In traditional marketing, a company or an individual that places an ad in a newspaper may only reach an audience in their local community or within that region or country.
However, placing an ad on the internet which can be seen by people all over the world is a digital marketing activity. For example, an ad placed on Facebook will be viewed by millions of people from all over the world.
2. Digital marketing is more effective and less expensive than traditional marketing.
There are many digital marketing strategies that you can implement for free such as social media marketing, content marketing, and search engine optimization. There is also online paid advertising which is much cheaper than the traditional methods such as pay-per-click advertising or social media advertising.
Digital marketing is also more effective because businesses are able to have a direct connection with target global audiences. They can get direct feedback on the products and services they are promoting and can easily communicate with people through social media or via their website to resolve any issues.
3. In traditional marketing, it is impossible to make adjustments to the ad once it is placed, but in digital marketing, adjustments can be made any time, even after the ad has been placed.
In traditional marketing, once the ad has been placed on television, radio, in newspapers, and in magazines, there is no way it can be changed. So if there is a spelling mistake or if the message is unclear, nothing can be done to change it as it has already been implemented for people to see or hear.
However, in digital marketing, the ad can be changed even after it has been placed on an online platform. The ad can easily be removed, the wording changed or a different picture can be included in the ad.
In digital marketing, you can easily track and measure results than in traditional marketing.
In traditional marketing, you cannot tell who has looked at your ad or how many people it has reached. You also cannot tell how effective your ad was in converting prospects into paying customers. With digital marketing, on the other hand, it is so easy to track and measure results from your marketing campaign.
You can use Google Analytics to see how many people viewed your ad, how many clicks your ad received, what countries your ad reached, which online platform people used to see your ad, and so much more.
Conclusion
Digital marketing has grown and become more popular than traditional marketing because of its cost-effectiveness and its global reach of targeted audiences. However, it doesn’t mean that you should stop using traditional marketing methods. Many organizations use both strategies to reach their audience and to gain new customers.