Well, this is a million dollar question itself, different digital marketers will put a different opinion on this.
Will digital marketing replace traditional marketing? Too difficult to say but I would write as per my personal opinion and experience.
What is digital marketing?
Promoting a brand / business / product or service via digital platforms i.e smartphone screens, laptop screens, social media, search engines, e-mails, and SMS.
What is traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing is a form of marketing where we use traditional strategies to market our products, services, business or brand; i.e Billboards, Banners, Hoardings, Events, Roadshows, Pamphlet, Leaflet, Business cards, etc.
What do we need to get started with digital marketing?
- Website / App
- Facebook Page
- Google Ad Account
- Search Engine Optimization
- Domain Email
- Whatsapp Business
- Messenger Chatbot
- Blog
- Podcast
- Youtube Channel
- CRM
- Automation tools
The great news is 90% of the above list are free to set up. Yes, the setup is free. Placing ads and doing search marketing will cost you money. Also creating content will cost you money as not all the entrepreneurs are good in content creation and some are really busy in their daily work life.
What do we need to get started with Traditional Marketing?
- Marketing Manager
- Marketing Team
- Marketing Team Expenses
- Billboards – (Very costly & returns are not guaranteed)
- Banners, Glow Sign (Costly)
- Sales Team (To close the deal)
- Flyers, Business Cards
- Marketing Strategy
- Canopy, Standees (For Roadshows)
- Fuel & Calling Expenses of the sales and marketing team
- Leads (Generated mostly from digital marketing)
- The list goes on with a lot more investment
Digital marketing is data-driven and ROI driven which can be trackable using analytical tools.
Tracking traditional marketing is quite a hard task i.e
let’s say you have a billboard placed near downtown and want to track how many male or female have watched the billboard, but there is no tool to track it.
Thus tracking traditional activities is sometimes quite impossible.
Let’s talk about affordability:
One can start a FREE website on WordPress or Wix
Can create Free Stunning Graphics on
Can use FREE CRM of Hubspot
Can use FREE tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console & Facebook Page / Instagram Page to drive awareness.
Placing ads will cost you a minimum of $2 on some platforms and in some platform, the bare minimum is $5
Where if you want to put a billboard it will cost you thousands of dollars. And how you are even going to track those sales?
We are living in a world of startups, almost 4 out of 10 businesses are in the startup phase. Until and unless they get huge funding to invest in marketing how would they manage a marketing strategy that costs a lot more higher than digital marketing.
Let’s talk about the end user or customer:
How many of you stop and read billboards? I watch YouTube videos, do google searches and spend time on social media.
How many business cards you have in your pocket that has been given to you by another company? I prefer keeping digital cards as it won’t harm trees and be in my cloud storage forever.
How many of you even watch television like before? I use to watch Netflix, Amazon prime videos and premium most of the time.
Let’s talk about acceptance:
Let us assume you are roaming inside a shopping mall, Some salesperson will appear all of a sudden like a superman and tell you Sir /Mam if your wedding is coming up anytime soon I think you should hire us as your wedding photographer; then you would be like man, I am still single and your marketing strategy is all wrong. Try someone else.
Let us assume you have uploaded your status as engaged and suddenly you will start seeing a sponsored ad of a wedding planner or bridal makeup artist or wedding photographer providing some amazing services with great portfolios. You will feel like, Yes this is what I was looking for. Thus the acceptance rate is quite higher in digital marketing than traditional.
Let’s talk about manpower cost and availability:
One can hire digital marketers who are interns at a very low cost and if you want only experts then digital marketing agencies like us are providing digital marketing services packages as low as $497-$997 to $100k per month.
When it comes to traditional marketing or direct sales, you must hire professionals with knowledge and passion for sales. If you don’t you will end up paying three months salary and the employee can never provide results.
People normally join sales and marketing jobs because they have no other option and those who are professional or passionate will charge you $5000 a month at least.
Apart from that, the laptop lifestyle is replacing the traditional workforce. Youngsters are more into digital devices rather going door to door to sell your products and services. Therefore it is really hard to find hardcore sales or traditional marketing manpower nowadays.
Now the conclusion :
Digital marketing is no doubt more effective and affordable in my opinion than the traditional marketing form. But we cannot deny the fact that traditional marketing has also given significant results to many industries i.e the Pharma industry.
I would suggest startups to go with digital marketing with a calling team, big giants to combine both strategies i.e keep digital marketing team for leads and keep traditional marketing team for business development and a sales team for follow up.
Both the marketing forms will co-exist but digital marketing will dominate the scene in the coming future. Traditional marketing will never be out of the scene but slowly the end users will diversify towards the digital world.
This article was based on my own personal opinion and experience I would appreciate if you share and give your feedback about digital marketing and traditional marketing in below comment section.
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