When you are running a business, you might be operating with a limited budget. If that is the case, you might need to choose between traditional and digital marketing. Traditional marketing uses offline tactics to reach and gain the interest of the consumer. Whereas with digital marketing you can utilize the full power of the web to promote your brand.
Digital Marketing
Pinpoint Accuracy Targeting Customers
One of the greatest benefits of digital marketing and online advertising is that you can target your audience directly. There are a variety of tools to do this from social media to Google Adwords, to remarketing ads. Through methods like this, you will be able to direct the exact people you want towards your site who will be the most interested in buying your product. Many digital marketing agencies offer a link building service to their clients where they place their client’s links on suitable websites across the internet, with the aim of increasing the amount of traffic going to the client’s website. Through paid search marketing like Adwords, it’s possible to use negative keywords to make sure you are only paying for clicks from individuals actually interested in the product or service based on the keywords they are searching on Google.com. For example, if you hire a digital marketing company you can target keywords only related to oral health and line it with the rest of your marketing strategy.
Explore Detailed Analytics
It is possible to explore analytics through traditional marketing, but the digital platform provides information that is far more detailed and specific. A/B testing is perhaps the best example of this. Through A/B testing, you can run two versions of the same website with small details changed. You can then use analytics to explore whether the change had an impact on conversions and use the data to improve your site with more, similar changes. While it is possible to receive some kind of feedback through traditional marketing, it is never going to be this advanced. A survey won’t tell you with pinpoint accuracy how many users responded positively or negatively to your most recent marketing campaign. But, a simple tally of likes and shares can create a simple picture that is easy to understand. Tools like Google Analytics can even tell you which website pages are viewed most, average time spent on your website, where your website traffic came from, and where your website sales and leads are coming from.
Track The Journey Of Each Customer
Online, it is easy to track the customer journey from finding your site to committing to a purchase. You will be able to see whether a customer completes a transaction or clicks off your site before buying a product. This also opens other exciting possibilities such as remarketing. You can track that customer and ensure ads for your site appear as they are browsing other websites. By doing this, you can give yourself a second chance at a sale. By analyzing where they lost interest in making a purchase you can also troubleshoot problems and make sure that any problems that stop consumers buying are corrected with your website design to add conversion rate optimization aspects. If you need some more help with this digital marketing pros can give you a hand but it is a critical part of your digital marketing strategy.
Target By Keywords
As well as this, using pay per click ad tools like Google Adwords, you can target based on keyword searches. You can make sure that people who are searching for a product or service that you’re selling will find your site. Similarly, Facebook and other social media networks can be used to target based on interests and behavior. So, if a consumer loves car shopping you can then make sure they see marketing related to your local car dealer specials.
Specific consumer groups can also be targeted and companies can be directly campaigned to through networks like LinkedIn. This way you know your ads are being seen by the right groups and the right companies you want to target.
In truth, the power of digital marketing is staggering. So, how does traditional forms of promotion measure up?
Traditional Marketing
Mailers, TV ads, radio ads are still widely used by a lot of companies, however many of them have also integrated these campaigns with digital marketing to boost results. Traditional marketing methods such as direct mail are still useful, and can still come out with successful results. Essentially, it depends on how you approach direct mail marketing if you are wondering if you can find success in this form. You have probably commonly seen “Like us on Facebook” or “Visit Our Website” used in traditional marketing ads to help merge the 2 efforts. Traditional marketing ads have even used specific website addresses like website.com/tv-offer so these ads can be better tracked.
If you do have the budget, it makes sense for your target demographic, and you are getting good results, traditional marketing should be integrated with your digital marketing to give both a boost.
It seems then that overall, digital marketing does have the upperhand. Though it is worth pointing out that traditional marketing can be greatly improved by connecting it to an online campaign. An example of this would be including a hashtag on a flyer that customers could search for later online. Traditional marketing is still used effectively by a lot of different companies, it has simply been adjusted for the digital age. But, if you have a smaller budget that needs more flexibility, digital marketing would be the better way to go.