FlosumReviews Ways to Integrate Traditional and Digital Marketing
Just ask any of the advertisers and marketers today about the possibility of promoting your products and services, they will surely tell you about digital marketing as the first thing. After all, most of us spend our time mostly on your smartphones and the internet lately, right? The youth of our times are exploring social media and ask Google to make their purchasing decisions.
On the other hand, if you may take a closer look, one may find that not everyone is online yet. This means there are still many people whom you can reach only through traditional marketing and not digital. So, relying on digital marketing alone may not help you to reach out to all potential prospects.
So, a fine balance of combining traditional and digital marketing is the key to success in terms of modern-day marketing. This is the topic we discuss here to effectively integrate digital and traditional marketing avenues to ensure maximum reach.
Why use traditional and digital marketing together?
The majority of the marketing campaigns now consist of SEO campaigns, social media
marketing, email newsletters, blog content writing, etc. There are many paid avenues also for marketing as a pay-per-click advertisement and influencer marketing etc.
While all these methods are good to reach the tech-savvy users out there, this does not cover all. So, the use of conventional marketing techniques also is needed to leverage the best out of your campaigns to reach that share of users who are not so active on the worldwide web.
Indeed, there are still tons of users who rely largely on televisions to get news, listen to the radio stations, and read the newspapers and magazines to gather information.
So, the key to marketing success is determining which products can yield a better result online, which should focus on offline, and which all need to use a combination of both. First, let us review the pros and cons of conventional vs. digital marketing.
The advantages of traditional marketing
It is not ideal for any enterprise with marketing to throw off the traditional marketing avenues out of the window. Studies have shown that traditional marketing still provides significant benefits as:
A higher success rate in many sectors considering the elderly and senior citizens.
Traditional marketing still has a wider audience reach.
Promotes your products and services to consumers who are not always online.
People still find traditional marketing a more personal approach.
Traditional marketing tends to stay longer in the memory.
The cons of traditional marketing
Even though there are many benefits still of traditional marketing, there are some downsides to using traditional marketing.
Less scope of targeted promotions.
The cost involved may be higher.
Result tracking and analytics on traditional marketing is difficult.
Advantages of digital marketing
There are many good reasons why many modern-day businesses tend to incorporate
digital marketing as their frontline marketing strategy. Let us have a quick overview of the
benefits of digital marketing as listed by FLOSUM:
Digital marketing meets the expectations of our fast-paced living style.
It has an instant reach to a wider audience.
Easily accessible to anyone from anywhere.
The results are much easy to track and analyze.
Data collection of prospects and customers are much easier and quicker.
Targeted marketing is highly possible.
It can offer two-way conversations with consumers.
Cons of digital marketing
Even though digital marketing has many considerable benefits, it also has some downsides compared to traditional marketing.
Easy to be left behind by the constantly evolving technological advancements.
Not easy to gain visibility
More time-consuming in terms of consistent creation of engaging content.
Open for immediate public scrutiny as negative comments, ratings, and reviews.
Even though there are pros and cons for both traditional and digital marketing, integrating
these can bring some significant advantages to the table. Let us explore some examples.
Combine email marketing and direct mailing
We all know the effectiveness of direct marketing for promotions. Sending postcards and flyers to the prospects is a traditional marketing approach, which has a significant impact. In digital marketing, however, it is the method of sending emails to the parties. Getting responses to these emails will help you clarify who is interested in your products and services and who may not. By combining email with direct mailing, you can ensure more reach and a better outcome.
Publish your digital channels on print media
All your print marketing collaterals like brochures, newspaper ads, flyers, product catalogs, and everything must have details about your digital channels, such as website, FB page, Twitter handling, etc. Also include these on your business cards, posters, and billboards, etc.
In our times, consumers are willing to see their favorite brands on social media and check
their URLs. So, make sure to include this on all marketing collateral pieces and ensure they are consistent across all mediums. Considering these, you can be more imaginative by using feather flags to advertise your products on online platforms.
Put calls to action through the digital channel on offline ads
If you have a TV commercial featuring your products, you can take your viewers from there to your online properties by providing the same details through the ad. On print media, it is now so easy to print a QR code, scanning which they will instantly place an order to take advantage of the bargains published. You can include such a digital call to action on any possible offline media. Prepare campaign landing pages and publish the URL through all possible media. By doing this, you can effectively engage your audience through offline media and invite them to get additional details by landing on your online handles and initiating the call to action there.
There are many other innovative ways too to draw your online traffic to the physical location too. In most digital marketing strategies, you will find the salespeople use both the website and printed forms to gather prospects’ data. Always try to advertise your local events online and offline and advertise your online channels on the billboards too. There are many marketing tools available now that can effectively integrate your digital and traditional marketing endeavors.
