Great marketing finds and keep customers. But with so many marketing options, it can be difficult for companies to know how to allocate marketing dollars efficiently. Now more than ever, people spend more time online than they spend reading books or magazines, or even watching TV.
For this reason, marketing is shifting away from traditional to digital channels. Digital marketing gives companies unique and powerful ways to market to prospective customers where they spend their time! Here are six reasons why digital marketing works better than traditional marketing.
1.You don’t need an enormous budget with digital marketing
Many companies continue to include traditional marketing as part of their budgets. It’s why some companies are willing to spend millions on advertising during the Super Bowl. A single ad can reach thousands if not millions of viewers in a short period of time. This can work if a company’s target market is wide (think Coke, Doritos, and cars), and your company has deep marketing budgets.
It’s wise for companies to build a marketing plan by selecting the most efficient channels for their business first and then laying on additional channels as the size and scope of their business increases. In many ways, the lower costs of digital marketing create a more level playing field, allowing smaller businesses to compete with larger ones.
2. Hypertargeting – Have you heard about it?
With digital marketing, companies can hyper-target customers most relevant to their products and services. For example, an IT consulting company in San Francisco can hyper-target their marketing only to senior executives of health care companies in the area with 100-500 employees, annual revenue of over $50 million, and that have been looking online for relevant IT consulting services.
Digital marketing allows for campaigns to be hyper-targeted on gender, age, interests, location, and even past purchasing behavior. This allows companies to get their message in front of the right consumers. Consider platforms like Google and Facebook AdWords. They can show ads for a company’s products and services that align almost perfectly with what those customers are searching for. Selling shoes? Google and Facebook ads can target people looking for shoes just like the ones you offer.
3. Digital Marketing produces higher return on their marketing investment
Digital marketing can reach and convert new customers efficiently. For example, a digital marketing campaign can target prospective consumers on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter and you only pay for an ad when the prospect clicks through to your website to learn more. Through email marketing and blogging, companies can retarget and engage with their consumers on a regular basis. And with SEO, you can have customers looking for your products and services online find you rather than the other way around.
4. Digital marketing is highly automated and efficient
Traditional marketing typically requires more manual processes, more time, and more money. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is highly automated and efficient. Technology and software take data and pull it into a user-friendly database. By doing so, digital marketing provides real time tracking of what works and what does not work so that you can optimize your efforts.
Trying out a new ad idea? Going the digital route allows you to immediately gauge its success. If it is not performing, you can change it without wasting money. Traditional marketing usually requires a longer period of time to test. Because you have to wait to test your strategy, you may end up spending money on unsuccessful materials.
5. A recent survey of 295 CMOs indicated that 4 of the top 5 marketing channels for ROI were digital marketing channels. What were they?
Source: Econsultancy Survey of 295 CMOs, 2017
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Email marketing
- Paid Search (PPC)
If your company’s marketing strategy does not include these channels, consider them. Other promising digital channels have emerged this year that are worth considering – Facebook advertising and messenger ads. These can also provide strong return on investment.
6. The interaction and engagement of digital marketing
Digital marketing offers a great opportunity to interact with your customers. Typically when it comes to traditional marketing, you will have basic demographic information – things like age, race, gender, limited interests,… and that’s it. For example, if you are running a newspaper ad, they may only provide general demographic information on their subscribers.
Interested to know how people are finding you? Want to know what they think of your ad and do after seeing it? This is where digital marketing has great power. You can receive immediate feedback on your ads, products, and business in general.
WHAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU?
So what is the right mix of traditional marketing vs digital marketing for your business? Of course, that depends on your business, the competition and your goals. Be wise and remember to start mastering the highest ROI activities first that align with your goals. Seek help from experts. Test and optimize your plan so that you can develop the best marketing allocation for your business.
Still have questions about traditional marketing vs digital marketing? Contact us for a free consultation.