Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

There are many benefits to both traditional and digital marketing, but also drawbacks. Both are effective and should be considered when launching a new marketing campaign.

Tracking
A big difference between the two would be how you can measure the data and feedback from ads from both mediums. Traditional marketing campaigns can be measured with brand trackers, but they aren't nearly as in-depth or clever as the tools available for digital marketing. The details of digital marketing tracking are extremely detailed. Examples of ways to track digital marketing campaigns are key performance indicators, such as cost per lead, click through rate, customer lifetime value, and many more. This lets you learn for your future round of marketing and change your campaigns appropriately.

Targeting
Digital marketing campaigns have a wide range of targeting from age, interests and location. This means you can create perfectly tailored content for your target audience. On the flip side with traditional marketing, you have no control over any of this except what medium you use, the exception being where you place your billboard or hand out your flyers. Then there is also retargeting, which with digital marketing, lets you retarget people with new ads who have already seen your previous ads. If you wanted to do this with traditional marketing it would be near impossible to guarantee.

Updating
Social media ads can be tweaked easily, which is a major benefit. Compared to traditional mediums which have no way of editing already released content.

Significance
Traditional marketing for example a newspaper advertisement is going to stick around forever until that newspaper is recycled. Online ads are less permanent and also a lot less memorable. You are much more likely to remember a newspaper ad next to the article you are reading in comparison to an Instagram ad you have scrolled past in a matter of seconds.

Ease of Access
Many forms of traditional marketing are considerably more expensive than the alternative. Digital marketing ads can be created quickly and efficiently, also at a much more flexible price.

Constantly Changing
All digital marketing channels are constantly evolving, whether its a change in the algorithm or new terms of service, there is always new things to take into consideration. Not only this but each channel requires different skills, for example the skills required to be successful at search engine optimisation are different from social media management and different again from pay per click ads. Traditional marketing however stays relatively consistent.

Potentially Annoying
Social media advertisements such as Instagram or Youtube ads are generally considered annoying. This could make a user dislike the brand being advertised. Traditional advertising is deemed as normal and is unlikely to get the same response.

So Which is Better?
As shown both traditional and digital marketing have their advantages and disadvantages. The real answer is it depends on the product/service you are trying to promote and where their target audience resides.