Differences Between Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing

With billions of people now online, it is important you know and leverage on digital marketing to reach your targeted audience. However, many people are still confused with the differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing. You might have come here because you are searching for “differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing”. It could also mean that you search for “difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing” or even typed “digital marketing and traditional marketing” on Google.

Never worry, we are here to help you. In this article, I will be sharing with you differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing.

First, let’s look at what digital marketing and traditional marketing is.

Digital marketing is the use of digital technology to advertise or market your products/services. It is also known as online marketing or internet marketing. Traditional marketing, on the other hand, is the use of print media such as newspapers, radio, TV, etc to market or advertise your product/services.

Traditional marketing has been in use for ages but digital marketing is relatively new. Digital marketing was introduced around the 90s.

Also Read: 7 Digital Marketing Tools You Should Use

Which is better between digital marketing and traditional marketing? I believe the two compliments each other but as a startup, I will recommend digital marketing. Why? See the difference and decide on which you want.

Cost:

Traditional marketing is costly while digital marketing is cost effective. You can start digital marketing with zero dollar but you cannot start traditional marketing with zero dollar. Take for example, you can create a blog for free using Blogger or WordPress. Or create pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc and start sharing contents about your business. Although, you can still pay to run ads online, they are still far cost-effective than traditional marketing.

Target Audience:

With digital marketing, targeting your audience far outweighs traditional marketing. You can target audience based on sex, age, location, interest and more but you are limited when it comes to traditional marketing. You can target both local and international audience using digital advertising.

Measurement:

With Google analytics, Facebook analytics and many other insights tools provided by most social media and online channels, measuring results has never been easier. Digital marketing provides you with tools to measure your results real-time. It means you can see how far your ad campaign has reach, how many people are seeing it; how many men or women, locations and many others. This is hard to get (if you get it at all) with traditional marketing.

Control:

When you place an ad via traditional marketing, you can hardly pause or stop its distribution. With digital marketing, it’s quite easy to pause or stop your ads at any time. You have control over your ads. This would make you enjoy your work with technology.

Viral:

Because of the share buttons on many online platforms, it’s easy for you to share what you like. This makes ads to go viral when done well. Imagine someone has a thousand friends on Facebook and shares your content. This is so easy because it would involve just a click or tap to achieve this.

These are some differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing and I hope you got value from this post. Do you know other differences that you would love us to know? Please, share in the comments section below.

Meanwhile, the main difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing is that digital marketing is focused on sharing value through content marketing. This means you have to provide value through your blog posts, social media posts, etc.

I will recommend you combine both platforms to maximize your advertisement but if you are looking forward to starting advertisement as a startup, I will recommend using digital marketing.

Has digital marketing or traditional marketing worked for you? Which one works best? Share with us in the comments section.