The Differences Between Digital and Traditional Marketing

There are numerous differences between traditional and digital marketing given the nature of both, below I will list and discuss five differences between each:

Audience Reach: One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is its ability to reach a much wider audience, as it is a worldwide platform with millions of users on e-tools like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it is a prime platform for companies to segment and target an audience of their needs. Whereas traditional marketing has a far more contained and limited reach as it more often tangible media such as fliers, or advertisements on local radio stations, making it more effective for smaller, local businesses and it makes digital marketing much more effective for larger companies and corporations.

Customer Interaction: Another benefit of digital marketing, is its ability for businesses to interact with their customers, it is incredibly easy through online reviews and social media comments sections, for companies to gather customer feedback and interact with customers thus building a relationship with their audience. With traditional marketing, this is a bit more difficult, as the nature of it is not flexible enough to allow this, they can only interact with customers through things like one to one surveys, surveys in the mail, and one to one phone calls, which are much more time consuming in comparison to digital marketing’s customer interaction.

Marketing Cost: Naturally traditional marketing is more expensive in price due to the methods of advertising behind it, such a TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads etc. Television ads in particular can cost a company a lot of money but can also be watched by millions of an audience at a time, for example when a big football match is being played, there are more often than not millions watching at home, this prime slot for an ad can cost a company millions but they can also gain the attention of millions at a time. Digital marketing on the other hand is far less expensive than traditional marketing and sometimes won’t even cost companies a penny if they opt to just use a social media page to advertise their product as setting up one is free.

Marketing Campaign Results: In traditional marketing, companies must invest more money into their campaign as mentioned above, and they must also wait longer to gauge the audiences reaction to their campaign and see the results of their labor as everything in traditional marketing is offline, they won’t be able to see initial reactions right away, if customers are unhappy with the product/service or not, this makes it harder for a company to refine their strategy if needed. Where as with digital marketing, companies can gain an almost instant response from their audience, with social media comment sections, likes and dislikes options, e-mail responses etc.

Audience Demographics: In todays digital age, companies should be aware of what audience they’re trying to target and where. Today many of the younger demographic reside on social media and streaming apps, in relation for things like social interaction, entertainment, the news etc. So if a company were trying to reach a younger audience, they should strive to stay away from traditional marketing and focus more on digital marketing. For example an elderly home owner who might be looking to buy a new couch for her living room, would benefit from seeing a Harvey Norman special offer sale ad on the Television, where as if this ad was to be put on YouTube or Instagram for example, it would go over most of the audiences heads as they aren’t interested.