Digital Marketing | Traditional Marketing | Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

 Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing

The debate on digital marketing and traditional marketing, that which is better is still going on and will continue to happen. But, in these debates and arguments, some questions related to digital marketing and traditional marketing arises. Is digital marketing being a modern version of digital marketing? Which is better, digital marketing or traditional marketing? Which marketing strategies are mostly preferred by the companies?

To know the answer of these questions, we must understand how traditional marketing and digital marketing are different from each other. And before understanding traditional marketing & digital marketing, let us once see what is marketing?

According to Philip Kotler, an American Marketing Expert, says “Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with each other’s”. Philip Kotler is considered as the “father of marketing”, born in Chicago. He is the author of many different books apart from marketing management. Philip holds 12 honorary Ph.D. degrees from different universities and a Master degree in Economics from Massachusetts Institutes.

Marketing can also be defined as “the process of advertising, promoting, selling a product, service, business or brand to increase the demand and value of a particular product, services, business, or brand”. Marketing includes segmentation of customer into different groups according to their needs, market research, target customers and market, different promotional tactics, monitoring and evaluation to analyze how promotional tactics is working, a proper market plan.

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is basically the marketing of products and services by using platforms and channels that involve one-way communication tool, instead of two-way flow. Traditional marketing includes prints, broadcast, billboards, telephones, direct mails, face-to-face marketing. Traditional marketing was the only form of marketing until the invention of internet in 1990.

In the era of digitalization, traditional marketing is still very much effective, depending upon the type of business and target audience. The marketing strategy might have changed over the years, but the basic foundation remains the same. The marketing techniques we use today, all came from traditional methods and still depends upon four basic P’s i.e., product, price, place and promotion. As a marketer if you want to reach local audiences, traditional marketing method is way better option than digital marketing. Today also our grandparents, parents read newspaper every morning for daily news and advertisements, posters on road, we can see billboards near over bridge and highways, when we watch cricket match advertisement is show after every over, all these comes under traditional marketing and that exists.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the process of marketing through internet and digital based technologies, such as computer, laptop, mobile phones by using different digital media and platforms to advertise product, services, business or brand.

Philip Kotler says – “Digital Marketing is a set of activities that a company or person runs on internet in order to attract new business and develop a brand entity”.

According to Digital Marketing Institute, “digital marketing is the use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to target consumers and businesses”.

The aim of digital marketing is same as that of traditional marketing i.e., to promote products and services, engage customers and address their concerns it’s just that it is done digitally through internet. Digital marketing allows us to targeting audience of any particular region, sectors, age, gender specifically. Digital marketing allows a marketer to perform a deep analysis on their potential customers about what they want, when they want, why they want and how they want any particular products or services.

How Digital Marketing is different to that of Traditional Marketing

We can differentiate digital marketing and traditional on the basis of various aspects. Let’s discuss some of the major differences in digital marketing and traditional marketing. Some of the main differences are as follows:

Marketing Approach

Traditional marketing is more inclined towards personal approach which includes person-to-person or face-to-face relationship with the consumer and can reach out customers locally and easily. While in digital marketing, physical presence of marketer is not necessary as all the marketing process is done through internet and this allows the marketer to reach as many customers as possible.

Ease of Access

The access and understanding of ads are very easy in traditional marketing method as compared to digital marketing method. Ads in newspaper, magazines, posters, television, radio, billboards are easily accessible and understandable by any person young-old, educated-uneducated, male-female, etc. But in digital marketing, a person should have some knowledge about digital channels and must have a little awareness about digital ads.

Targeting Audience

Through digital marketing it is very easy to target an audience of any category and ads can be shown only to that particular category of people. Suppose there is an ad of “sports shoes for men”, then a marketer can restrict this ad only to men any particular age, region, community or suppose there is an ad of “sandals for women”, this ad can be only restricted to women of any particular age group, region, etc. While in traditional marketing, the advertisement can be seen by all the people, it cannot be specifically targeted to a particular section of the people.

Monitor Campaign Performance

In traditional marketing, to know how a marketing campaign is going on you need to interaction with consumers, retailers, dealers, need to closely analyze the sales, a more complicated process as compared to digital marketing. In digital marketing, you can very easily know how many people have seen the advertisement, how many people have shown interest in that ad, a marketer can easily analyze what is working and what is not working in an advertisement.

Interaction with consumers

In digital marketing, there is a limited interaction between the customer and the platform used for marketing. Whereas the traditional marketing is a one-way flow where companies provide or broadcast their product or services to the targeted audience directly. This allows the companies to get a chance to obtain face-to-face feedback directly from the customers.

High Cost

Traditional marketing i.e., advertising on newspaper, posters on road and streets, billboard, air-time on one of the TV stations or local radio stations, etc.  is way more expensive than posting an advertisement on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. Sometimes the high investing cost might not give the returns a marketer desires. Digital marketing allows a marketer to perform various campaigns at the same time and on a budget way less than that in traditional marketing. Digital marketing doesn’t require any kind of man management cost. A digital marketer can evaluate and edit their advertisement budget at any time.

Return On Investment

Digital marketing is any day a best option for marketing, if we talk about Return on Investment (ROI). Digital marketing has way more ROI than traditional marketing. As online marketing provides many options, such as for various social media platforms to advertise, various analytical and measuring tools at a very minimum and desired cost.