How to Successfully Combine Traditional and Digital Marketing: Practical Tips
How to Successfully Combine Traditional and Digital Marketing: Practical Tips
The development of technology requires new solutions for modern business. Economic success is impossible without risks, attempts to combine old and new approaches, and fresh views on already familiar techniques. This all primarily concerns marketing. With the advent of digital opportunities, many have decided to abandon traditional marketing, considering it obsolete and not in line with current business needs. However, this is not entirely true. In certain situations, traditional marketing in tandem with digital can be more effective than each of them individually.
How Is Traditional Marketing Different from Digital Marketing?
The main difference between traditional and digital marketing is in the communication channels of the marketing message in the source of communication with the prospect. In the case of traditional marketing, these are offline sources such as media, print publications, direct mail, telephony, and outdoor advertising.
In the case of digital marketing, these sources are online tools such as social media, websites, content marketing, affiliate marketing, inbound marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, and paid traffic.
What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing?
We briefly talked about what traditional marketing is. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with its advantages and disadvantages.
Benefits:
Customer confidence
There is a large flow of information on the Internet, some of which are of no value to the user. At times, this can even be misleading. For this reason, people tend to trust offline advertising as a good source of information such as radio and television.
Relatively fast results
Some ways of digital marketing take a complex approach and take a long time to implement (eg SEO). In the case of traditional marketing, you can get a quick result in a short time.
Durability
Websites move, pages on social networks are deleted, and search positions change. This will not happen with offline advertisements. Banners can hang in places of greatest traffic for as long as your budget allows.
Disadvantages:
Expenses
A large advertising campaign in primetime on a rating channel will cost more money in comparison to online advertising.
Lack of interaction with the audience
If you have published an advertisement in a newspaper, there is no way to track its effectiveness.
Complexity of updates
If there is a mistake in a print ad, imagine how long it will take to fix it. Financial and temporary losses are inevitable.
Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing
New school marketing also has its pros and cons. Let’s get a look.
Pros:
Ability to interact with customers
Everything is simple here. There are likes, comments, giveaways, and polls.
Most people are on the Internet. You can find any age group and cover the desired region.
Availability and efficiency
Even with a small budget, certain results can be achieved.
Cons:
High competition
All companies use digital channels for advertising.
Risks of facing online fraud
You may encounter counterfeiting brands, logos, fake pages, and attempts to sell low-quality goods on the Internet.
Anti-advertising and underreporting
Competitors can start a war if they see it as a threat to their business.
How to Successfully Combine Traditional and Digital Marketing
The effectiveness of the approaches should not be underestimated. As you can see, each of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. We offer several options for combining traditional marketing tactics and new school marketing, which give good results for your business.
1. Try to mix digital content and print media
Most potential buyers use a smartphone. However, this does not mean that they do not read newspapers and magazines. There is a lot of talk that print media is dying and the rising generation Z will wipe out this industry. For now, it is still a source of information for the older generation that should not be ignored.
If you publish an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, do not forget to indicate your site so that the reader can independently familiarize oneself with the business. You can publish the link or simplify the task with a QR code.
This tactic should be used not only for newspapers and magazines, but also for other printed materials that you use: business cards, brochures, flyers, posters, etc.
2. Combine geo-targeted advertising and billboards
The popularity of billboards in B2B marketing is returning. Billboards can be used to increase brand awareness and to broadcast your messages to a potential audience.
You can optimize the performance of these traditional marketing channels through geotargeting.
What is geotargeting?
The main principle of geotargeting is working with data about the user’s location, determined by the IP address. Advertising offers for the user are formed based on his location.
If you know where potential clients spend most of their time, it is much more logical to place outdoor advertising there. You must admit that billboards with information about the sale will work much more efficiently if they are located in the place where the most requests for your business come from. You can also advertise on public transport in the area or advertise yourself at a local concert.
Billboards at Time Square during the Covid 2020 pandemic:
3. Use customer intent information for cold calling
Today’s marketers are wary of cold calling as an intrusive tactic. Intrusive calls from companies can play a cruel joke on businesses. This worstens their reputations because the call was made at the wrong time and in the wrong place to a random person. Its effectiveness was zero.
It is completely different if you call a person when you know what they need in advance. Intent data will help you with this.
Intent Data is information about the intention of a potential customer in order to take a certain action.
Intent Data can be explicit like surveys and questionnaires, or implicit like pattern analysis.
Users conduct research before a purchase. They read reviews, compare prices, and look through blogs. If you have information that a person is interested in your product, call them and help them make a purchase decision. This will be the correct and effective action.
4. Combine activities and ABM
Account-based Marketing or ABM is a new direction in B2B marketing. It builds on the integration of sales and marketing activities within a B2B organization. ABM views each customer as a separate market. Instead of working withtoo many potential customers, the focus shifts to a narrower group-specific niche that is best suited for the role of a consumer of a product or service.
How can ABM be used for events? Marketing activities that target only potential buyers will most likely result in lost investments.
Most marketers attend events considering only their topic and completely ignore the audience composition. As a result, money and time are wasted.
Using ABM at the planning stage of the event visit uses lead lists. This is how the most popular events are determined.
5. Promote local events online
Social media and your website are the perfect platforms to advertise local events. Create a separate event page on the website and create an event on Facebook.
Sponsored posts and compelling videos should be posted on these pages. You can hold a poll among those planning to attend the event. This will help attract people and increase your reach. Do not forget about the targeting options. You can always launch an event advertisement for a selected region.
6. Make a video ad for TV
The younger generation is choosing to watch YouTube. This is both good and bad news for traditional marketing strategies. Ad reach on cable TV is falling, but TV advertising is getting cheaper. You have a better chance of reaching older target audiences because not every business could afford TV advertising a couple of years ago.
If your target audience is youth, don’t be discouraged by cable TV ads. Many channels broadcast online on YouTube and in special online applications. These open up additional opportunities. Prices for such advertising will also be quite reasonable.
The main thing worth working on is the quality of the ad. Don’t be afraid to invest in TV commercial – it will pay off.
7. Combine Lead nurturing and direct mail
People hate newsletters but they love personalized offers. Every day, we receive a lot of promotional offers and notifications from different companies in the mail. Most of these end up in the trash before they are even read. How can we fix this situation?
Offer your customers something unique that will make you stand out from the competition. Personalization always has a positive effect on the user experience and helps in building lasting and trusting relationships with the target audience. By addressing the needs of a potential client with an interesting proposal, you will get to the point.
8. Use streaming radio ads
Another old marketing strategie is radio advertising. Don’t write it off because car owners still listen to the radio on the way to their jobs. Please note that advertising will be effective during these peak times. What can be added to a traditional approach? Podcast advertising! The demand for podcasts is growing steadily, and their audience is completely different. This means that it is quite possible to find exactly what suits your business. Chrysler Podcast Ads.
Old marketing vs. new marketing
The debate among marketers about which direction of marketing to give their preference and where to make more investments is unlikely to ever stop. Nonetheless, we can make sure that digital and traditional marketing can not only coexist peacefully but also complement each other well. Try it out!
Anna is a creative writer, copywriter and radio presenter. Nine years of experience in marketing, advertising, promotion. Five years in the media sphere. Now she is studying and writing about SEO. Anna hopes she can offer you something interesting and useful.
