If you’re about to dive into the marketing side of your new business venture, it’s important to know which channels will work best for you.
More specifically, you need to know where your money is best spent to promote whatever you’ve got coming up.
In many cases, a mixture of both digital and traditional channels may be best for business, but budgets don’t always allow for such expansive marketing tactics.
So, let’s say you only have the cash to splash on one or the other – what are the pros and cons of each and why might you put all of your eggs in one basket?
As experts in white label website maintenance, SEO, design, copywriting, PPC, and social media, it’s clear which side of the fence Agency Stack lands. However, we only want the best for our clients and will give it to them straight if we find digital marketing isn’t best suited to them.
With this in mind, consider these points below and get in touch with our friendly team to learn more about your future marketing plans.
Digital Marketing
This basically includes any kind of advertising that you consume via the internet – be that on a mobile, tablet, or desktop. It’s important to note that digital marketing does not include television ads as these fall under traditional marketing.
Digital marketing can be delivered through many channels including social media, your own website, search engine results, emails, clickable banner ads, and much more than the layperson may realise.
Pros
Reach: Many people gravitate towards digital marketing because of the sheer number of people using the internet. More than half the world’s population (5.18 billion) is said to have access to the internet, according to Statista, and almost all of them (4.8 billion) are on social media.
Apply that fraction to your target region and digital marketing is giving you access to an incredible slice of your target audience.
Targeted audience: Speaking of your target audience, digital marketing allows marketers to take them as literally as possible. Different channels allow you to select very specific segments for which your ads will be displayed. These can then be tinkered with to find the most accurate and effective audience for your ads.
Age, location, interests, gender, and even purchasing habits can all be considered when targeting an audience via digital marketing. This kind of specificity simply cannot be achieved or confirmed using traditional means.
Real results: The confirmation of results is much harder to come by using traditional marketing, while digital marketing produces reports with enough data to drown in. The trick is to set effective KPIs that allow you to find your desired data with purpose, creating insights that will inform subsequent campaigns.
If you really want to know that each dollar is being put to good use, digital marketing will scratch that itch.
Cons
Time consuming: Basically all digital channels and the people that use them appreciate originality. Unique social media does well; niche blogs can stand out; and Google loves more specific keywords. Researching these trends and topics can take time, not to mention the time spent actually producing such content.
Regular posting also helps and some businesses simply don’t have the time to post on social media every day. In our experience, that’s where white label agencies like Agency Stack are at their most helpful.
Technology gaps: These can be overwhelming for some people and make digital marketing feel like an impossible leap. That’s fair enough – not everyone was raised in this digital world and it doesn’t help that these technologies are always evolving.
Once again, trusting the experts to do the hard yards and keep up with trends can be just the life-saver a business needs to crack the digital marketing landscape.
Maintenance: Defining and refining your audience, analysing results, and reimagining campaign concepts can all take their sweet time. Digital marketing requires a near-constant eye on the many working parts of a campaign. This can include everything from website views to customer reviews – good or bad, you’ll want to reply to as many as possible and that’s a task not everyone has time for.
Traditional Marketing
Despite its age-old nature and its near-constant presence in our lives, not everyone understands the depth and breadth of traditional marketing.
It includes any form of marketing that doesn’t require the internet, such as television, radio, print, billboards, flyers, brochures, posters, or public activations like a shopping mall sample stall.
Pros
Credibility: Many consumers recognise traditional marketing channels as more reputable because they cost more to access and require more resources to produce. A business on television or in a magazine is perceived as having more success simply because they were able to place the ad.
Range of contexts: While digital marketing reaches its audience on a range of digital platforms, it does rely on them being online. Traditional marketing doesn’t rely on the internet and audiences can be exposed to advertising at any point throughout their day.
Radio with breakfast; billboards on the highway; flyers on your lunch break; and activations outside the grocery store. Traditional marketing is nothing if not dynamic.
Suited to certain audiences: Yes, more people use the internet than not, but that leaves billions of people who are better targeted using traditional marketing. The elderly are one example segment that responds far better to traditional means because it’s what they know and trust after decades of exposure.
Cons
Expensive: The downside of traditional marketing’s credibility is that it comes with a price tag. Compare a billboard to a digital banner ad and you’ll quickly understand why more businesses are opting for the more cost-effective latter.
Unreliable results: Well, not that we can’t estimate how many people have driven past a billboard, but it’s not quite the exact science of digital marketing. If you’re in the market for data-driven reports which explain how you achieved X amount of conversions this month, traditional marketing may not be for you.
Lengthy timelines: To make up for the inability to yield exact results from each campaign, traditional marketing timelines tend to stretch into many months. This ensures that enough people have been exposed to each asset, getting you your money’s worth. Add to this the time it takes to develop each asset and traditional marketing can represent a long-term investment.
Contact Agency Stack
If you’ve landed on the digital marketing side of the fence, Agency Stack is your team. Consider us an extension of your own as we deliver a full suite of services to suit your needs. Book a quick consultation to gauge how we can complement your own team and take your clients to new heights.