Digital Marketing VS Traditional Marketing

There is no doubt marketing is crucial in order to successfully run a business and that you must have a set budget for marketing. Many small businesses struggle with deciding which kind of marketing to do, because their budget will only stretch to one or the other, not both. So which is better? What type of marketing will benefit your business in order to grow? 

Traditional Marketing

As traditional marketing is the first form of marketing people are accustomed to traditional marketing. Finding ads in magazines and newspapers, or reading billboards are still familiar activities and people still do them all the time. Most of the time, traditional marketing is reaching only a local audience even though it is not limited to one. One of the primary disadvantages of traditional marketing is that the results are not easily measured, and in many cases cannot be measured at all. In most cases, traditional marketing is also more costly than digital marketing. And perhaps the biggest disadvantage today is that traditional marketing is static which means there is no way to interact with the audience. It’s more like you are throwing information in front of people and hoping that they decide to take action. 

Digital Marketing

One benefit to using digital marketing is that the results are much easier to measure and another is that a digital campaign can reach an infinite audience. It is also possible to tailor a digital campaign to reach a local audience but it can also be used on the web and reach the entire globe when appropriate. Digital marketing is also a very interactive means of reaching an audience since it makes use of social outlets. There can be plenty of direct contact between the audience and the business which means that the business can get some very valuable consumer feedback. One of the disadvantages to using digital media marketing strategies is that it can take some time to realize measurable success. 

Both marketing strategies used together would massively boost your businesses growth, however if budget is a problem and you had to pick one, digital marketing would be the smarter option. Due to the massive impact the internet has, it seems more logical to invest in digital marketing rather than traditional marketing as for example even magazines are digital. It is also easier to target specific desired audiences as well as keeping exact tracking of results.