Firstly, it is important to note that there is a place for both traditional and digital marketing in almost every industry. They both have their advantages and disadvantages but in a growing technological age taking on digital marketing is always advised.
Accountability
The biggest difference between these 2 types of marketing is accountability. Calculating return on investment through traditional media sources is close to impossible. You can never be too sure which form of marketing converted or the cost of each conversion. Whereas with digital marketing, ROI can be calculated easily and accurately. Setting up conversion tracking within your AdWords account is vital and is one of the first steps we take when creating a new account. Conversion tracking can cover a huge range of actions from making a call to filling in a form or even a button click. From here, we can then see which ads, keywords, extensions and more are leading to conversions for your business.
Audience Targeting
In both traditional and digital marketing, it is easy to target your selected audience. Advertising through Google Adwords allows for very tight location targeting to be put into place should you wish for it to be. Not only can you target specific locations, right down to towns or postcodes but you can also exclude certain locations from your ads or even radius targeting around a specific location. Despite the fact that this is possible, to an extent, through traditional marketing; digital marketing holds far superior when it comes to location targeting.
Cost
Print and radio/tv advertisement can be very costly whereas digital marketing is cost-efficient. With Google AdWords PPC you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. With a good, well-targeted ad and high-quality landing pages, conversion rates can be very high while CPA can remain far lower than that of traditional marketing.
Placement Targeting
By using Google AdWords PPC you are putting your ads in front of people who are actively searching for your service, product or content. This alone increases engagement. With traditional marketing methods the preponderance of people who are exposed to your ads, won’t actively be looking for your product or service. Sometimes this has its advantages; although it may not lead to a significant increase in sales it can lead to further brand awareness.
Overall, digital marketing is the way forward. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a place for traditional marketing but taking into account its accountability and costs, digital marketing takes the lead.
