By Michael Briggin
Planning for your company’s future certainly can get your head spinning when you have all different kinds of ideas in your head over what to do and what kinds of marketing methods will or won’t work.
Before you launch your next campaign, it’s important to understand key distinctions between traditional and digital marketing as both have clear differences:
Traditional Marketing is far more labor intensive in producing the deliverables and is not as depended on by organizations as it used to be. On the other hand, outdoor banner advertising still makes an impact as opposed to radio ads.
Digital marketing is increasingly popular as mobile and tablet devices are being used at an increasing rate with centennials and millennials, the fastest growing age demographics in the consumer market.
Is one type of marketing better than the other? It all depends on the scope of what you want to do.
However, there are key things to realize about deciding how much you want to do in traditional marketing vs. digital marketing:
Both marketing options are not necessarily cheaper than the other. As digital marketing evolves, the competitive market becomes fiercer and as a result, pricing for digital marketing tools and related options increases. Never assume you can by nature that Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) is a cheaper form of marketing. It and others aren’t by nature, although with email marketing using programs like Constant Contact and Mailchimp the costs are typically much different because the scope of the marketing efforts is more targeted towards warm leads as opposed to cold leads.
Traditional marketing by contrast can present a marketing budget that becomes more bloated in costs and can be a beast to grapple with if you aren’t making the right decisions to focus on such efforts. However, even in-person banner ads and TV spots can still be impactful in ways which email marketing and mobile marketing aren’t. Just ask Jeep as its Super Bowl “Groundhog Day” ad featuring Bill Murray replaying Phil Connors from the original 1992 film was a big smash with Super Bowl audiences:
“In Hollywood circles where everyone has a publicist, an agent, a business manager or some other kind of representative or assistant, Murray flies solo.
Jeep, Bill Murray win USA TODAY’s Ad Meter with hilarious ‘Groundhog Day’ commercial
He doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t have an agent, doesn’t have an email,” Fiat Chrysler Automobiles chief marketing officer Olivier Francois told USA TODAY Sports on Friday. “He allegedly has an 800 number. You leave a message and maybe he’ll call you back.”
This was the challenge that Francois faced when his team first came up with the idea for its 60-second Super Bowl commercial, a brilliant reprise of “Groundhog Day” that finished first in USA TODAY’s Ad Meter, which ranks Super Bowl ads by consumer rating with voters giving each ad a score from 1 to 10.
It’s the first Ad Meter title for the Jeep brand, which had only finished inside the top five once before, in 2013. It also marks the fifth consecutive year in which a first-time winner has finished atop the Ad Meter rankings, which first started in 1989.”
Depending on your company and the message you’re sending, there are ways which banner ads on billboards in your local city or town can spread the word of mouth more quickly than your own website can. Such ads have been placed in the open consumer market for decades and have no plans of dying down anytime soon.
How do you make sense of all the options of marketing that exist? Answer: It’s all about timing and being able to understand society changes before, during and after they occur, not just what goes on in business. So long as any marketing method you use gets responses, nothing will ever truly be dead.
