Top 10 Advantages of Digital Marketing over Traditional Marketing
As marketing is evolving, businesses around the world are switching from traditional marketing to digital means.
However, there are many small business owners that still don’t know about the advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing, or they even don’t know what exactly is digital marketing.
If you are not familiar with digital marketing, then keep reading because in this post, I will clear all your doubts about digital marketing & we will also learn the top 10 advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing.
Before we begin, let us understand the basic definition of digital & traditional marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
According to Chat GPT:
“Digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels and technologies to promote a product, service, or brand to a target audience. It encompasses a wide range of tactics, including email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, mobile marketing, and more.”
In simple terms, digital marketing is all about promoting your brand over the Internet.
No matter weather you are promoting your brand on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or on your own website,… all of these comes under digital marketing.
Related: 9 Benefits of having a website (for your business)
What is Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing involve promoting a brand via offline channels like newspaper, magazines, radio, televisions, billboards and signage.
The traditional form of marketing is still used widely across the globe however the average budget allocation is shifted a lot from traditional marketing to digital marketing.
Traditional marketing techniques have been around for many years and were the primary means of marketing before the rise of digital marketing.
However, they are becoming less effective in a world that is increasingly going digital.
While traditional marketing can still be useful in some situations, it is often more costly and less targeted than digital marketing.
Top 10 Advantages of Digital Marketing Over Traditional Marketing
There are numerous benefits of going digital. It not only helps you increase your sales but also allows you to reach customers worldwide.
I have curated the top 10 advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing in the below list. Let’s dive right in!
01. Targeted Marketing
The number #1 advantage of digital marketing for businesses is targeted marketing. Business owners can target their potential audience instead of targeting everyone.
In the traditional marketing like advertising on newspaper, magazines, TV, Billboards, etc, you cannot target your ideal customers.
However, with the introduction of digital marketing, you can now show your ads to only those who you think will be genuinely interested in your product or services.
With digital marketing, you can target users based on their gender, age, average income, shopping behaviors, hobbies & much more.
02. Cost-effective
When it comes to cost of marketing, digital marketing is supercheap compared to traditional marketing.
You can show your advertisements to 10x more people on the same budget compared to traditional marketing. Although, digital marketing is not just about advertisements.
You can even build your organic audience & boost your sales without spending a single penny. Blog, YouTube channel & Social media channels are great platforms to build organic audience.
Related Post: Top 10 Social Media Channels
03. Real Time Results
Real time analysis refer to tracking the data about your customers in real time.
What do you think, is it possible for a media company to track the number of views on an ad they have published on their newspaper?
Well, it is quite impossible in case of print media.
And, views are the very basic metric? What about customer demographics, total conversions & much more??
Well, here comes the digital marketing.
With the help of digital marketing, we can see the real time data of the users that are visiting our website, those who are clicking on “Add to Cart” button on your website & those who have purchased the product.
Tools like Google Analytics & Clarity can help you track the number of visitors & their actions in real time.
Related: 5 Must-have Features for Building a Successful Website
04. Global Reach
What do you think how many people can I sell my products if I have an offline shop in my city?
Obviously those who reside in the city.. Or maybe those who are traveling to that particular location.
But, what if I have an online store?
With the help of an online store, I can expand my customer base. I can sell my products around the globe, like Nike, Puma, Amazon, etc.
This is the power of going digital. I’d even say that Global reach is one of the top advantage of digital marketing over traditional marketing.
05. Increased Engagement
In traditional marketing, once the customer has purchased a product, it’s quite hard to keep him engaged with your brand.
You can show advertisement on TV & magazines, but do you think it is a good way to keep customers engaged with your brand?
This way, you can let them remember your brand, but it quite impossible to keep them engaged with your brand.
However, in digital marketing you can create content that helps your customers & if they like the content, they will surely engage with your brand by liking your posts, leaving comments, sharing on social media & much more.
Here are few more ways to increase engagement with the help of digital marketing:
- Two way communication: With digital marketing, businesses can have two-way communication with their target audience through channels such as social media, chatbots, and email. This allows them to interact directly with their customers, answer questions, and address concerns, thereby building trust and increasing engagement.
- Personalization: Digital marketing allows businesses to personalize their messages based on the interests, behaviors, and demographics of their target audience. Personalization can increase engagement by making the audience feel that the message is tailored to their specific needs.
- Interactive content: Digital marketing offers various types of interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and contests that encourage the audience to engage with the brand. This type of content is not possible with traditional marketing and can be an effective way to increase engagement.
- Real-time feedback: Digital marketing campaigns allow businesses to receive feedback on their marketing efforts in real-time. This feedback can help businesses make changes to their marketing strategy to better resonate with their target audience and increase engagement.
- Social sharing: Digital marketing offers the ability to share content easily across social media platforms, allowing audiences to engage with the brand and share it with their own networks. This can increase brand visibility and help the brand reach new audiences.
06. Better ROI
ROI refers to Returns on Investment.
Since we can target our customers based on their demographics, behaviors & other actions, it is obviously easier to sell them the ideal product.
Instead of showing your advertisement to the world, now you have to show it only to the people who are genuinely interested in purchasing it.
Now what do you think, where you will get higher ROI?
In traditional marketing (where you can’t track your users) or Digital Marketing (where you can track their behavior & know most of the details about them)?
It is obvious that digital marketing not only helps in reaching more people but also has better return on investment (ROI) which is why there is an advantage of choosing digital marketing over traditional marketing.
07. Measurable Results
Can you track how many people who have seen your ads have visited your offline store? Or is it possible to know how many customers are visiting your store after seeing the billboard at the center of the city?
The single answer to all these questions is a big NO!
It is not possible to know, from where the people are coming to your store. However, with digital marketing & ecommerce you can easily track how many people have seen your ads, how many of them have clicked & how many are converted.
In this way, digital marketing is way more beneficial compared to traditional marketing.
08. Flexibility
It is easier to make changes in digital marketing campaigns, However, when it comes to traditional marketing changes can be a huge pain & sometimes these changes can cost you hundreds of dollars.
Let’s say you have issued an advertisement about your brand & suddenly a negative news spread about your product, then it’s quite hard to stop the ad campaign & even if it is easier it will cost you a lot of money.
On the other hand, you can easily control your Facebook or Google Ads campaign. So, in this way, it is quite flexible to manage campaigns in digital marketing compared to traditional advertising.
09. Increased Brand Awareness
Brand awareness refers to how aware your customers are about your brand. Do your customers recognize your brand name? Do they recognize your logo, products or services?
In order to increase brand awareness, both digital & traditional marketing work wonders. But, on the same budget (of traditional marketing), you can make much more people aware of your brand with digital marketing.
You can make use of social media channels, blogs & YouTube for increasing your brand awareness.
10. Boost Sales
If you want to boost the number of sales, then digital marketing has an advantage over traditional marketing.
It is so because digital marketing offers a range of tools and techniques that are specifically designed to drive traffic to online stores, convert visitors into customers, and retain those customers over time.
- For example, search engine optimization (SEO) can help online stores rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it easier for potential customers to find them.
- Paid advertising, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, can be used to target specific audiences with highly relevant ads that encourage them to click through to the online store.
- Social media marketing can be used to build a loyal following, engage with customers, and promote products and services directly to followers.
On the other hand, traditional marketing techniques such as print ads, radio and TV commercials, and billboards are generally less effective for driving online sales.
FAQs
Digital marketing refers to promotion of a business or its products or services on Internet. It is of two types: Inbound marketing (content creation & organic traffic gaining techniques) & Outbound marketing (where we reach out to customers with advertisements & other activities).
Traditional marketing involve marketing through offline channels like TV, Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, etc. On the other hand, digital marketing involve marketing using digital channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, etc.
There are many advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing like you can target customers, see real time results, reach global audience, increase brand awareness & much more.
Digital marketing offers a range of tactics for increasing engagement with customers, including social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and influencer marketing. These tactics allow businesses to share content, engage with users, and build relationships with customers in real-time.
Business owners can improve their brand awareness by leveraging various social media channels. Creating content across social media, blog & YouTube is a great way to reach new audience & improve brand awareness.
Final Words
In conclusion, digital marketing is one of the essential tools in 2023 & beyond if you want to reach the right audience. It not only helps in finding right audience but also help you track their actions in real time.
Compared to traditional marketing, it has a lot of advantages including targeted marketing, real-time analysis, increased engagement, better ROI, measurable results, improved brand awareness & much more.
I have explained top 10 advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing in this blog & I hope it will help you identify whether digital marketing is right for your business.