Since the boom of social media platforms and other digital reality today, the debate about whether digital marketing or traditional marketing is better goes on. The new era or the people who moved into digital marketing believe that traditional marketing is now considered old-fashioned. Many say that the style of marketing (digital) has the upper hand and control of the traditional. The reason behind coming up to this conclusion is that because even the reputable magazine and news publications are turning digital.

Is digital marketing winning the marketing arena? Before we dive into the real argument here, let us first differentiate the two methodologies of marketing.

Traditional Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages

Traditional

People are always exposed to the traditional marketing; they must not be aware of it sometimes. Traditional marketing consists of tangible items such as magazines, newspapers, brochures, posters, print ads, TV, and radio. Traditional marketing is everywhere except not inside anything digital.

Modern marketers might think if there are a thing or two advantages that they could get from using the traditional method. Well here are some.

  • Reaching the local audience targeting is easy. Let’s say you want to promote a service or a product in your town; then you can go for a radio advertisement or go to your local newspaper team and get a spot for your business. That way, you are a hundred percent sure that you are targeting your fellow residents. Steveston whale watching adventures uses local targeting for their business .
  • Sticky. Because you gave them something that can be kept physically, there’s a good chance that they keep the material and browse through more than once.
  • Easy to understand. According to research, printed materials are easier to understand because people are already familiar with this kind of marketing unlike with digital marketing that could be in the form of emails or sponsored ads, some people get a new feeling like they are still exploring the new strategy.

Meanwhile, the disadvantage of using traditional marketing is that it can only give minimum interaction to the audience. Radio, TV, newspaper, they are all one-way communication where the potential customer has to directly contact the person responsible if they have questions or if they are interested. Another thing is that traditional marketing is costly and the results are hard to measure. Imagine if you want to gauge the effectiveness of your radio advertisements. There are many factors to consider.

Digital Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages

Digital

Digital marketing involves business promotion over the world wide web. It can be in the form of email campaigns, advertisement banners, or SEO optimization. Some of the advantages of digital marketing are:

  • In-depth modifications. The good thing about digital marketing is that you can determine who your exact audience are, where they are, how old they are, the gender you prefer, and even their interests related to your business.
  • Lots of options. Digital marketing gives you the power to make marketing variations for the interest of your audience. Not everyone likes to read blogs or watch videos. Some prefer a series of imagery to present the message; some prefer animation or presentation. All these are achievable in digital marketing.
  • Live interaction. No matter where your audience is, you can easily communicate with them using so many social platforms out there which are mostly for free.
  • It is cheaper. We cannot say that this method is not expensive, but you can cut down costs.
  • Easier to measure. The result or the effectiveness of your advertisement are easier to measure in digital marketing. There are many developed software and features to measure click rates and sales conversion all of which can help you improve strategies.

The disadvantages with digital marketing is that it takes the time to master the perfect strategy that would work for a particular business. Another thing is that you make your files or identity vulnerable to thieves like hackers and scammers.