Digital Marketing compared with Traditional Marketing

Marketing has been around as long as people try to sell their products and services.  Digital marketing is an expansion of marketing using Internet technologies.  Traditional marketing was once the only method of doing marketing, but times have changed again.

Traditional marketing can be divided into a couple of groups.  The first group is print.  Examples are newspapers and magazines.  The second group is broadcast.  Examples are TV and radio.  The third group is direct mail which includes bulk letters and flyers.  There are some other examples of traditional marketing like the Yellow Pages.  The things these all have in common is they existing before the Internet.

Besides using the Internet, digital marketing is different than traditional marketing is a few ways.  The first is the ability to target an audience.  In traditional marketing, you could mail your sales letter to a list of possible customers, but it was imprecise.  A TV ad would be seen by a broad audience.  Digital marketing gives you the potential to target your marketing message based on the intent of the person if they are searching for your local products or home services.  You can also target based on different demographic information that is shared with the advertising platform.

The second way is the ability to interactive with your potential customers.  In traditional marketing, your marketing message could just be viewed by potential customers.  But, with different digital marketing methods, you can talk back.  In social media, people directly reach out to your business and you can respond.  With reputation management of reviews, you can reply to reviews posted about your business.

The third way is the ability to control costs.  In traditional marketing, you would pay for an ad in Yellow Pages and it was printed once a year.  If you wanted an ad in a magazine, the lead times were long.  The costs were fixed based on the volume of ads per magazine issue.  But, with digital marketing, the costs can be started and stopped when it fits your marketing needs.  You have the option move your marketing messages across platforms as it fits your needs.  Additionally, you can create content once in a number of formats and leave that content to be discovered over a long time period without incurring additional marketing expenses.

Traditional marketing has been eclipsed by digital marketing because digital marketing has many more benefits.  Digital marketing can be targeted, interactive and cost-effective.