What is better - Traditional or Digital Marketing?

In a far from ideal world, ironically, brand marketing and advertising which help a company reach out to its customers are typically the first to suffer when the market hits a slowdown or recession. The advertising and marketing budgets get cut, thus nipping in the bud the brands potential of reaching their prospects when they really need to reach out to them.

Considering this cost sensitive nature of the marketing function, it is a pertinent to ask which form – digital or traditional marketing – is better than the other.

Traditional marketing, as the name suggests, is the legacy of marketing that the world has been following, such as print ads, outdoor hoardings, TV ads, Radio, etc. Digital marketing is the more modern form of marketing that has evolved over the years since the advent of internet and social media. So how do you differentiate between the two and how does one compare with the other? Let’s look at both of them across various parameters to understand them better.

ROI – It is difficult to track the ROI for traditional media. Digital marketing scores better here as it helps capture, record and analyse the entire interaction with the prospect through PPC, CTR, etc. So the social media and digital world gives you complete clarity of the customer interaction based on your money spent.

Targetting – Traditional marketing allows a broad, non-customizable targeting. On the contrary, the digital marketing allows you to create a focused and customized targeting of prospects based on demographics, psychographics and other parameters.

Reach – Here also there is a major difference between the two. Traditional marketing is local by nature and has limited reach. Digital marketing empowers the brand with a global reach.

Tracking – Traditional marketing allows little or no possibility of tracking the reach and length of interaction of the advertisement. Digital marketing allows a much more in-depth analysis. For example, email marketing let’s you know whether the recipient of the marketing email opened the email or deleted it, did he click on the link provided in the email or deleted it soon after reading the headline, so on and so forth.

Results – Based on all of the above factors, it can be deduced that digital marketing provides quick and real-time results, something that mainstream marketing cannot, thanks to its very nature.

As you can see, while traditional media is costly and yet less effective, digital marketing is the way to go, especially when the brand is facing budget constraints or wants a clear visibility of the effectiveness of their ad spend.

HCF, a leading advertising agency in Ahmedabad, has been doing a commendable job in mainstream advertising. They are also a renowned social media agency in Ahmedabad, making a difference to brands in the digital space.