A good digital marketing strategy is becoming more and more crucial to brands which want to stand out from the crowd. The concept of marketing itself existed even before advertising online was a thing. What used to be print ads, door-to-door sales, and telemarketing have become social media posts, YouTube videos, and blog content. With the emergence of new digital trends and technologies, marketing has become a lot more complex.
In this article, we will look at:
- Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
- 8 Advantages of Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
In the past, a company’s traditional marketing strategy was all about reaching a large general audience in hopes that they will be able to achieve media coverage due to sheer numbers. This method proved more effective for companies trying to create brand awareness rather than generating actual leads.
In other words, traditional marketing would help businesses reach out to a broad audience with various offline advertising and promotional methods. To this day, many companies use traditional marketing to this day because, through their experience, they know that their efforts can quickly reach a local audience.
However, as competition continues to grow in different industries, brands have had to develop unique, and creative ways to attract audiences. These days, it is not just about gaining the attention of a target group; it is also about a company’s ability to retain its attention. The shift towards digital marketing has caused companies and PR professionals to understand the endless online marketing possibilities.
The downsides of traditional marketing include very little interaction between businesses and customers, high cost, and difficulty to measure media outreach results. Digital marketing is the business world’s attempt to develop a marketing strategy that is focused more on efficiency and less on volume.
Digital marketing has now become an essential part of any company’s overall strategy. It has allowed brands and PR professionals to create content and produce advertisements tailored to their target audiences and buyer personas. It is a strategy that uses online tools, platforms, and channels to promote a product or service.
In the marketing industry, there is no distinct competition between traditional and digital marketing. Both strategies need to be used to achieve an effective marketing campaign. Traditional marketing can be separated into three main categories; general ads, lead prospecting, and customer relationships. However, the content that brands have created for traditional marketing is the same for digital marketing. The only difference is that, in the past, this content wasn’t optimized for the Internet. Digital marketing helps companies network and connect with journalists, bloggers, influencers, and their target audience to send out press releases and other content to gain high-quality backlinks, social media mentions and improve their search engine optimization.
The importance of digital marketing in every company’s strategy has caused businesses and PR professionals to adapt rather quickly. While there are currently plenty of digital marketing gurus in the public relations industry, these people had to adapt rapidly and stay on top of industry trends.
For companies which opt to hire PR professionals who understand the need for a digital shift, PR agencies like Pressfarm provide tips and help them implement an effective digital PR plan to get media coverage. Pressfarm understands that both traditional and digital marketing involve finding, creating, and developing unique and creative content for journalists and media outlets. In addition to content creation, Pressfarm also boasts a PR database with over 75,000 journalists so that brands can find their perfect media match. The Pressfarm team also goes that extra mile to increase online visibility by optimizing branded content to show up in relevant search results.
8 Advantages of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has a significant impact on consumer behaviour, which is why a company’s content and efforts need to complement each other. Some effective digital tactics for brands include;
- Website building
- Email marketing campaigns
- Content marketing
- Social media posts
- Clickable ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Search engine optimization.
Everything a company creates should do much more than just selling a product or service and promoting a brand. It should encourage positive engagement with the brand and present it as a powerhouse in its industry.
As mentioned previously, both traditional and digital marketing should be in a company’s overall strategy. Even so, there are certain things that digital marketing strategies can do that you cannot achieve through traditional marketing.
1) Reaching a global audience
Digital marketing has allowed companies to reach a larger, global audience, especially since social media has become a regular part of everyday life. Social media platforms have become the place where people learn about everything from the latest fashion trends to new advancements in technology. It is also where consumers go to share their opinions about a specific product or service. Online marketing has become globalized and has opened up plenty of new opportunities to expand a brand’s marketing efforts beyond physical borders.
For this reason, social media and influencer marketing have also become ways for companies to monitor their effectiveness. Since digital marketing allows companies to reach people worldwide, they can target their audiences more precisely. While traditional marketing has been proven to be useful when creating brand awareness, digital marketing is what companies use to generate leads. It has allowed companies to target specific consumers based on their search history and behaviour online. Behavioral targeting is just one of the many advantages that digital marketing has over traditional.
2) Building a positive brand image
Digital marketing gives companies the ability to continue providing quality content to their audiences. Using social media channels, personalized email marketing, and a well-maintained website brands can offer their audiences value. This helps them create a positive brand identity.
Whether through blog content, social media posts, or emails, companies can create a memorable brand image to keep their target audience engaged.
3) Recording data
Along with various digital channels come new ways to measure data and results from marketing campaigns. Google Analytics and other insight tools offered by most social media channels provide companies with access to the results of their campaign at any time. What may have taken months to track with traditional marketing can now be achieved in real-time through digital marketing. It allows companies to see what is working and what isn’t, and adapt their strategies quickly to improve results.
4) Increasing engagement
Whether through social media, email messaging, or other methods, digital marketing generates a higher level of engagement and interaction than traditional marketing. Target audiences are instantly connected to companies through their various digital platforms. For this reason, companies can build trust and long-lasting relationships with customers by interacting with them on a more personal level. Companies can seek out the opinions of their existing customers to perform better through their products or services.
Customers tend to build brand loyalty with businesses that they connect with personally and have a positive experience with. Using digital marketing allows companies to engage with customers through media content and solve any issues as soon as possible.
5) Saving money
Traditional marketing can cost quite a lot of money. This is more obtainable for companies which have a large budget. However, for startups and entrepreneurs, digital marketing provides a more cost-effective way to create brand awareness. Even with influencer marketing, they are more likely to spend less than they would if they were creating traditional advertisements.
6) Adjusting easily
As mentioned before, instant results through analytics on digital platforms allow companies to adjust their strategies continuously. Regardless of what type of content they are trying to create, digital marketing will enable companies to see what has been successful and what needs to be worked on.
For those who are predominantly creating blog content and guest posts, they can look through each post’s results to see what topics resonate with their audiences more and which ones were not able to gain media coverage. By achieving that insight, they can research more keywords and quickly adjust their content so that they can create brand awareness and continue developing it.
7) Offering your audience choices variety
Having many different platforms gives customers the ability to choose how they obtain a company’s information. Where traditional marketing lacked in choice, its digital counterpart provides a variety of content for consumption. Digital marketing gives users an option to receive information through a blog post, a YouTube video, or other digital content.
8) Remaining competitive
Digital marketing has provided companies of various sizes to compete on a level playing field. It has given all businesses a chance to gain online visibility to a global audience. With a solid digital marketing strategy, any company can match larger competitors, which would have been a struggle with traditional marketing. With digital marketing, the size of the company does not matter. Regardless of the size of your brand, a digital marketing strategy will help you create captivating content that sets you apart from your competition.
Conclusion
While digital marketing has provided more opportunities than traditional marketing, both strategies need to be incorporated into any company’s overall marketing plan. Companies need to create content that increases brand awareness and generates leads either by themselves or with the help of PR professionals. Rather than just choosing one strategy over the other, companies should have used a multi-channel approach that combines both traditional and digital marketing to achieve effective marketing.
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