Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

• by jakeaull

Last week I was lucky enough to give a presentation to the South Cobb Business Association on the differences of traditional marketing and digital marketing, what you need to know and why it’s important. Here’s an overview of those differences:

Attributes of Traditional Marketing:
– Traditional marketing focuses on brand
– (because it’s not as measurable as digital)
– we think of B2C focus, billboards, TV ads
– The question often comes back to: “where’s your location & sign”
– The major measurement is Impressions
– A focus on Marketing Research (surveys) to identify demand & consumer insights
– The Budget is identified to pay for impressions
– For more individualized touches, the focus is Direct Mail & list-building
– For B2B, the focus is sales & networking (A handshake & a biz card)
– We think of the famous quote: “I know half of my marketing efforts are effective, I just don’t know which half”

Attributes of Digital Marketing:
– Digital marketing can cost less and be more measurable
– B2B & small businesses can see direct benefit from digital marketing
– Digital marketing is focused on content (which is focused on keywords)
– “Engagement” is instrumental in philosophy & measurement
– Content is served to ‘what people want’ & based on knowing what people want (thanks to search engine measurement & social media)
– Geo-local search results don’t care where you are (as opposed to that big sign on Main St.; Because you can be found in GoogleMyBusiness/Maps)
– budgets can be easily identified to pay for clicks (or CPA/digital advertising)
– The ability to do in-depth digital audits/competitive analysis
– In-depth measurement capabities
– serving ads to psychographics (interests; as opposed to only demographics) in both Social & search ads
– other highly measurable activities include website tracking,
– social media measurement,
– email marketing,
– digital ad landing pages (& list building)
– social networking (which supplements traditional sales/marketing)

Therefore take all above into planning & use digital marketing to supplement and measure your traditional sales efforts.

Thanks for reading, J. Aull, Zen Fires Digital Marketing