Traditional Marketing VS Digital Marketing | What’s the difference?

As Digital Marketing has been creating waves around the world, it is very hard to keep it unnoticed. Even in Nepal, you can see most youngsters keep investigating Digital Marketing.

However, it can get confusing sometimes for people who aren’t familiar with the technology. What’s the difference between Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing? Exactly, what is Digital Marketing?

Well, this blog will walk you through Digital Marketing, Traditional Marketing and how they differ.

What is Traditional Marketing?

You may have noticed hoarding boards whenever you are walking through the street. Those big boards are one of the forms of Traditional Marketing. In simple words, Traditional Marketing is an offline form of marketing. From printed ads, broadcast, direct mail, and phone to billboards, every single one of them is Traditional Marketing.

Considered to be one of the oldest forms of marketing, many kinds of research and studies have been done in Traditional Marketing. The main objective of Traditional Marketing is to attract humans in different ways without using the internet, of course. 

Even though the rise of the internet has made Digital Marketing more popular, there are still some audiences who prefer traditional ones. So there are still many companies who use this old form of marketing to get their messages up to clients who are not familiar with technologies, particularly the older population.

It is worth noticing that the age group of 55+ tunes to cable television nearly more than twice the younger ones. So, if there is any question as to if Traditional Marketing is still viable, then this should have given you some perspective on why big companies still use it.

However, this form of advertisement is usually costly as it can cost you between Rs. 2,00,000- 16,00,000 to run a print ad.

What is Digital Marketing?

Since the evolution of the Internet, Digital Marketing in Nepal has been growing and evolving quickly. It has grown to the point where it is even more popular and widely used than Traditional Marketing itself. 

But what is Digital Marketing, and why does it have such huge hype all over the world?

Well, if you use social media like Facebook or Youtube, and you see different advertisements for different products while scrolling through those media. Then bingo, you are already familiar with Digital Marketing, in a sense.

Digital Marketing is the method of marketing through the use of digital channels. In simpler words, it is marketing done through the use of channels like social media, pay-per-click ads, Email marketing, Search Engine Optimization, or anything that takes place online. 

As the number of people who use social media is increasing at a huge rate, and on top of it people nowadays, seem to spend most of their time on their social media, it has become a necessity for brands and companies to be present online; where their audiences are.

As a result, brands and organizations who have leveraged Digital Marketing Techniques for their marketing have astounding results. For instance, 86% of Marketers increased their brand awareness and 75% increased their company’s trust through Digital Marketing.  And that is the reason why Digital Marketing is gaining such an uproar.

How digital marketing is different from traditional marketing?

The definition of Traditional and Digital Marketing has already been laid out. Now it’s time to look at the distinction between them. 

First and foremost, when talking about the difference between these two marketing industries, let’s talk about the cost. To promote your brand in Digital Marketing through social media, will take you anywhere from Rs. 100-1,00,000. In simple words, it depends on how many people you want your ads to be seen. But to promote products on Traditional Marketing like billboards, newspapers, or television, the price ranges from Rs. 2,00,000-20,00,000. If you have to print an advertisement on Kantipur’s front page, it will cost you between Rs. 5,00,000-10,00,000. 

Moreover, Digital Marketing gives you a better Return on Investment(ROI) as it costs you less, and on top of that, ROI can be measured in Digital Marketing. You can easily view the customers who bought your product by seeing your ad but the ROI of Traditional Marketing is immeasurable as there is no way of knowing if the customer bought your product by seeing it in ads. It is almost impossible to know who brought your product if you have done your advertisement through hoarding boards.

It is not possible to communicate or have interaction with the brand through Traditional Marketing, however, a brand can build a community of loyal customers through pages and groups which in turn gives a brand ample chance to build loyal customers who believe in their vision and products. You can see Nike have nearly 300 million followers on Instagram, and they interact with their audiences through those media, thus creating loyal customers.

If you want to place an advertisement through social media, you can target the specific age, place, and geography of people to get better and remarkable results, But there is no data on how many people are currently viewing your ad through the newspaper, television, and Hoarding Boards.

But which marketing campaign is more memorable, Digital Marketing or Traditional marketing? When was the last time you remembered any ads from social media, probably never? However, you can still remember the ads you watched on television when you were still a kid. So Traditional advertisements are more stuck in our heads rather than Digital Marketing.

Why is it time to shift to digital marketing from traditional marketing?

The internet has created a wide range of business prospects. One of the ways that digital marketing has changed how companies advertise and market their goods and services is that it is nearly always accessible.

Social media networks have emerged as one of the most effective channels for reaching out to potential clients. It is a good platform for gaining new clients and communicating with existing ones, and it may also help to raise business visibility, which in turn helps to accelerate growth. Therefore, digital marketing is used to accomplish all of these tasks.

The advent of digital marketing created several online platforms through which brands can advertise their company online. In the modern business world, a business can only succeed globally if it is digitalized.

So here are the five reasons why brands and organizations should shift from Traditional Marketing to Digital Marketing:

Builds trust:

There are different possibilities for using Digital Marketing. Among them, one of the best parts is making a community of people who believe and trust in your products, brand, and vision. 

Through the social media page and group, a brand can build an army of people who love its product, support its vision and engage with them daily. However, it’s very difficult to build loyal customers from Traditional Marketing as it is difficult to have direct interaction with their customers. 

Suppose you have a Facebook page of your brand, and you keep on posting content and keep engaging with your audiences. This will increase trust with your audiences, and they will keep coming back for more content and information.

Authority:

Digital Marketing helps a brand to establish itself as a leader in its industry if they keep on commenting on topics and debates that concern its brand and sector. 

Simply, a brand can be a leader and have authority on the subject, if they keep on creating reliable content which inevitably earns the audience’s trust and encourages them to return for additional details and finally make a purchase.

Take a look at Digital Gurkha, they provide Digital Marketing courses and their content is always based on the Digital Marketing industry, which has established them as a leader in that industry.

Levels the playing field: 

Flexibility:

Another benefit of using Digital Marketing is a brand has a plethora of options to post their content and resources such as banner ads, email marketing, content marketing, and social media posts. On the other hand, Traditional Marketing has limited options to choose from and almost all of them are costly.

You can run the same advertising on different social media at the same time through Digital Marketing, and it doesn’t even cost a lot of money which gives the brand flexibility to try different strategies.

Trial and Errors:

Perhaps, the best part of Digital Marketing is the ability to test your ad campaign and see the result. Since Digital Marketing costs less, a brand can do different advertisements and see which works and which doesn’t. 

That makes it easier for a brand to concentrate on the campaigns which work and cancel those which don’t give a  better result. In contrast, as Traditional Marketing costs more, it is difficult to do trials and errors.

How to shift to digital marketing from traditional marketing?

Now that the differences between Digital and Traditional Marketing have been laid out, along with the reasons why shifting from Traditional to Digital Marketing will do a brand well, it’s time to focus on how to shift from Traditional to Digital.

It may feel overwhelming to shift your focus from Traditional to Digital if you are particularly new to the game. There are lots of tools, options, and platforms that might seem complex. However, if you have been using social media, shifting your focus to Digital Marketing could be easier. 

Anyway, here are the processes or steps you can follow to have a better understanding of how Digital Marketing works.

Start with the social media you use the most:

Your first step towards Digital Marketing should be from the social media you use and know the most. There are lots of social media and it can get enormous and confusing when you see a brand having a page on every social media. But, you have to keep in mind that these brands spend tons of money and resources to hire Digital Marketers. 

You may have been using Facebook for a long time. So it’s better to start your Digital Marketing journey by creating a Facebook page for your brand. Then you try to build that page and try to grow the audience by posting relevant content. 

So your first target should be to find out who your customers are and then focus your energy and time on two-three social media that your audience prefers or uses.

Research your competitors: 

Now that you have made your entrance on social media, the next thing you should do is research and find out about your competitors. You view their social media and see what kind of posts and content they have been publishing. You have to understand their tones, strategy, and results.

That will give you different ideas for content and even inspire you to create different content that they have not yet done or tested. And that’s how you can differentiate your brand from your competitors. 

As you have already made your Facebook page, go and look at your competitor’s Facebook page. Keep notice of what kind of content, strategy, and offer they are posting, so you can get an idea of what you can do for your brand.

Brainstorm Ideas:

Here comes the fun and challenging part. Now, it’s time for you to create content. But before creating content, you take a whole day to plan your content and come up with different ideas and topics that your audience is searching for.  

Researching your competitors will come to good use now because you will have ideas on what kind of content you need to publish to hook and attract your audience. When you are brainstorming, make sure you come up with one month-long content, meaning, you make content that will last you for a month. A reminder though, to invest your time and energy into crafting valuable content that offers value. Go for content quality over quantity.

To brainstorm ideas for content, you make a calendar of a month in Ms. Excel or Google Sheets and come up with ideas and topics about your brand and industry. The main goal of your content should always be either to provide education or entertainment.

Start posting more videos and pictures:

You know what they say “ A picture speaks louder than a thousand words”. And it’s the same when it comes to content as well. People are more attracted to pictures and videos than written form of articles. So take pictures, record short videos and post them on your social media. 

Nowadays, social media gives more priority to short videos, so don’t miss out on them. You have probably seen more short videos on Instagram or Youtube these days. The reason behind that is that social media favors short videos. So, make sure you start recording videos about your band and product through TikTok.

And if you want to design the pictures, then Canva is the best option for you as it is easy to learn and most of the tools are free of cost.

Keep on learning and improving:

Yes, it’s easier for others to lay out the plans and steps for you to follow, but it is another thing to do it. So no matter if you are a beginner who has just started Digital Marketing or you know Digital Marketing in and out, it’s always important for you to keep learning and researching.

Because Digital marketing is such a platform, where trends, tools, and ideas keep changing and evolving. So, you need to keep evolving as well. 

Moreover, the best part is that there is free content and lessons available all over the Internet for you to learn and keep growing. But due to lots of information on the internet, it can get confusing to decide where to start learning the course, that’s why Digital Gurkha has the best and most practical, and actionable course where you can learn Digital Marketing from the scratch.

Conclusion

Finally, if you want to take away something from this blog, let it be that; though Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing are different, you can make great use of both platforms and keep yourself ahead of your competitors. Rather than focusing solely on one of them, it’ll be better for your brand to utilize both of them. 

There are still people in Nepal who don’t use the Internet; around 61.6% of the population. So, to drive both internet users and offline people, you need to focus on both Traditional and Digital Marketing.