Marketers since generations have banked heavily on the traditional means of marketing for the share of voice and getting people to buy their products & services. However, over the period of the last 20 years, there has been a significant and constant increase in ad spend on Digital Marketing in comparison to Traditional means of marketing. 

This pivot has largely been attributed to the exponential increase in the number of internet users across the world, adoption of technology within the marketing circles and the predictability of returns that new-age digital media has to offer. As of today, over 560 Mn Indians are on the Internet and  the growth of this domain remains unprecedented. To know more about the differences of Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing here is an elaborative guide:

Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing: What’s the difference?

The main difference between traditional and digital marketing is the medium used to reach a wide set of audiences for an organisation’s marketing efforts. Traditional marketing uses magazines, newspapers, OOH etc. while digital marketing uses social media, websites, search engines etc. Since the advent of the Internet, businesses have started putting a lot of emphasis on digital marketing efforts since it provides a great ROI & ROAS but that doesn’t mean traditional marketing is lagging.

Traditional marketing provides an impactful & immersive experience and puts your brand physically in front of your audience whereas digital marketing uses every digital touchpoint of your audience’s to increase the exposure of your brand, as using the Internet for hours has become the normal part of everyone’s lives.

Mediums of Traditional Marketing: 

• Out-of-home or OOH – Billboards, Bus/Cab wraps, Hoardings, Banners etc
• TV, Radio Broadcasting
• Print Media – Magazines, Newspapers, Posters etc.
• Mail – Catalogues, leaflets etc.
• Telemarketing – Phone, SMS etc.

What makes Traditional Marketing the OG marketing channel?

Traditional marketing methods include all the offline marketing methods including ATL and BTL marketing. Traditional marketing is great to make your business stand out or popularise it in a local market and compounding your marketing efforts with digital marketing will lead to a holistic campaign made of all relevant channels. Here are a few advantages of traditional marketing:

Credibility: Since the collaterals in traditional marketing are tangible (OOH, print media etc.) and rolled out in a bulk manner, from a psychological standpoint, it gives users more confidence in a brand than other forms of marketing. The additional point of a larger budget involved also portrays Traditional marketing as a more credible channel.

Diversity: The collaterals in traditional marketing are rolled out in bulk, which means that the brand will be able to reach a wider and a more diverse audience than digital marketing. The whole play of digital marketing is segmentation and personalisation, thus, traditional marketing stands out as a winner in this field too.

Scope Of Human Touch: Traditional marketing methods can arguably be more engaging and involve a human factor more than its digital counterpart. Offline activation like contests, events, concerts etc. make people interact with the brand and portray the human side of it too.

What makes Digital Marketing stand out?

Here are a couple of examples of how digital marketing fares in comparison to the traditional marketing:

Performance Predictability: Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing can be run for days with a small, managed budget as well. TVCs take crores of rupees, the same is the case with OOHs and even pamphlets can cost you thousands, without giving you a proper track of the KPIs. With digital marketing, small businesses can run digital ads under their D2C growth strategies and ensure that a set budget is used to omnipresent ads with trackable KPIs.

Huge ROI: Digital marketing offers a great return on investment (ROI) over a small ad spent as well. You can start campaigns that last for a day to over months. As a thumb rule, digital marketers should aim for 5X ROI, that is, gaining INR 5 for every INR 1 spent. Great digital marketing campaigns can offer up to 10X ROI as well. eCommerce marketing requires a holistic use of social media promotions, digital marketing (PPC, Google Ads etc.), email marketing etc.

Trackable Conversions: Digital marketing enables ads that are specialised in making the audience convert. You can set conversions as a goal, run the campaign, gather data from the campaign, make changes and run them again. These campaigns can be tracked and come with an additional perk: digital marketing’s conversion rate is higher than the conversion rate of other forms of marketing.

Campaign Flexibility: One part where traditional marketing truly suffers is campaign flexibility. Since a large budget is involved and physical, tangible collaterals are involved, once rolled out, it becomes increasingly difficult to make changes or adjustments to your ongoing campaigns. A TVC once aired, cannot be reshot or a printed ad once circulated cannot be taken back, whereas digital marketing allows marketers with tools to make adjustments and optimise or pause ads depending on their learnings and insights.

Growth-focused Strategies: Successful growth strategies give way to more conversions and more conversions translate to increased revenue. Email Marketing alone offers an approx. 4400% ROI and an average open rate of 15-20% (source: MailChimp). Thus, a combination of content marketing and digital growth marketing strategies is bound to bring you a high response and revenue.

Targeting The Right Audience: As mentioned before, digital marketing is highly personalised through not only demographics but also psychographics. So, for example, if you want to target a college professor or an under-18 athlete, you can easily do it through the tools provided. This gives way to personalisation like never before, making digital marketing win over traditional marketing.

The interactions done with the target audience are result-oriented. They help to achieve predetermined goals. With e-mail marketing, one can directly target a specific person. Therefore, digital marketing is considered the highest personalised form of marketing.

Influencer Marketing: An integral part of digital eCommerce marketing is influencer marketing. Social media has given birth to content creators who use their skills and talents to attract people. Influencers have a large follower count and cult fan-following, through which, they influence the decision of the general public and make them aware of a particular brand. Influencers have a great engagement and conversion rate as well, thus, apart from brand awareness, they can help businesses convert and turn their audience into repeat customers as well.

Measurable Results: Every ad platform provides specific tools, through which a marketer can easily measure results for every digital marketing platform. You can also organise, reorganise and collate historical data to make comparable and analytical reports. 

Traditional methods are quite slow and limit your reach to the local level only. With digital marketing, potential customers can be identified, targeted and converted online very easily. Thus, digital marketing is taking a big portion of any business’s marketing efforts.

Both Traditional and Digital Marketing are important and necessary, basis your marketing needs and more often than not, their interplay makes a huge impact on the overall campaign. A digital marketing campaign backed by traditional marketing channels always leads to higher ROI in comparison to a stand alone digital marketing campaign. 

With the digital proliferation, Digital Marketing is turning out to be essential for growing brands and established goliaths alike. To truly reap the benefits, you need to explore a multichannel approach but if you are looking for more performance predictability and quick gains then Digital Marketing is a more sensible investment.

If you are looking for a Brand Marketing agency that understands the needs of your D2C eCommerce, check out GreenHonchos – a Full-Stack D2C enabler offering services like growth marketing, eCommerce digital marketing, marketplace management, social media marketing agency and much more! For more tips & tricks on eCommerce marketing and D2C growth strategies, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter or visit our website for more information.