Which is better, Traditional Marketing or Digital Marketing?

“Which is better, traditional marketing or digital marketing?” We’ve been asked this question several times in the past and we always tell our clients the same thing, they are both good. Traditional Marketing is not better than Digital Marketing and Digital Marketing is not better than Traditional Market. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses to consider. So, when deciding which one to choose for your campaign, you have to see which one will give you the best ROI and which can communicate your message better to your target audiences. You also have to consider your budget as doing both can be very costly, so sometimes you might only be able to choose one.

To help you decide, we have listed a few pros and cons for you to consider when choosing which one is better to help communicate your message.

Traditional Marketing (Pros & Cons)

As the name implies, traditional marketing is the ‘traditional’ way of doing marketing. Examples are flyers, print ads, email, events, radio and tv adverts, etc. Basically, any sort of marketing that doesn’t involve the internet.

PROS of Traditional Marketing

Can easily target your local audience: For example, you own a small restaurant and you would like the people around you to visit your shop. You can easily print flyers and hand them to the people who walk past your store, or somewhere nearby. Or you can get your local newspaper to promote your restaurant.

Your materials can be kept as a reminder: Going back to the restaurant example, if you give flyers to your target audience and they keep it, they can easily have access and browse through your materials.

CONS of Traditional Marketing

No Interaction with your audience: Unlike digital marketing, traditional marketing doesn’t allow you to interact with your audience. You can only have a 1-way communication, meaning you are just giving information to your audience, without their feedback. This can affect your brand dramatically because you don’t know what your customers think about your products or services.

Can be very costly: Printing out flyers or doing a commercial on the radio/TV can be very costly. Especially, if you don’t know whether your target audience is just throwing away your flyers or if they are even listening or watching your commercial the time it’s played.

Don’t know if your campaign worked: Since you cannot obtain data through traditional marketing, you don’t know if the campaign will be successful. It’s hard to know how many people interacted with it and how many took action after your campaign.

Digital Marketing (Pros & Cons)

Digital marketing allows you to communicate your message or promote your product/services online. Examples would be building a website, SEO, SMM (Social Media Marketing), email newsletters.

PROS of Digital Marketing

Reach a Global Audience: Thanks to the internet, you can easily market your campaign/message on a global scale. If your digital marketing strategy is done correctly, you can easily be found online across the globe. You can even tailor your campaign to a specific market segment. Whether you want your campaign to only target women aged between 25-40, or men who like sports in Asia, thanks to Digital Marketing, this can be done.

Interaction with your Target Audience: Thanks to social media, you can have a 2-way communication with your customers. 2-way communication allows you to communicate with your customers and allows them to communicate back to your brand. This means you can interact and listen to what they think about your brand.

Real time results: You can easily access data to confirm whether your campaign was successful or not. This is really helpful as you can see what sort of strategy works with your target audience and what don’t. This allows you to create a strategy or campaign personalised to your target audience. This data is also easily accessed if you need data from a few months ago.

CONS of Digital Marketing

Can have negative effects on your brand if done incorrectly: Since almost everyone in the world has access to the internet and social media, it is very easy for your audience to give you a bad review. One wrong message could affect your brand image dramatically.

Your campaign could be missed by your target audience: Since there are so much news and clutter now on social media, there is a high possibility that your message might not be seen by a percentage of your target audience. So, it’s important to create content that catches your customers eye. You will also have to consider the time you post your message at different times will have different results.

Conclusion

So, which one is better? The answer is, it depends! We don’t think one is better than the other. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses, but if used correctly, both are great marketing channels to promote your products/services. Depending on your goals, both can be used effectively, together or by itself.

If you would like to find out more how you can use Traditional Marketing & Digital Marketing to help communicate you’re your message, you can contact us here