Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing (Updated 2017)
If you are a business owner or a manager of a business in South Florida, you are going to spend money on acquiring customers through the various different channels of marketing, advertising, and promotion available to you for your budget.
Sometimes it can be difficult to work out which marketing ideas are going to produce the best return on investment (ROI), and so you end up trying less than fruitful methods like newspaper ads or run a month of TV commercial ads.
These days, the way of doing business has been shattered through the use of online and digital marketing.
Consumers can now inform themselves about your product and service simply by visiting Google and searching for your business name, address, and phone number.
What are people saying about your business online?
Today, we’re going to focus on digital marketing and the solutions that are available online.
By understanding how advertising in the online world is much more favorable than anything else in terms of budget allocation, reach, market segmentation, and customer reporting.
The web allows your business to compete not only locally but regionally, nationwide, and globally – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; even while you are sleeping!
Don’t worry if you’re a bit of a technophobe, as you just have to find a good digital marketing agency to do all the hard work for you online.
So here are a few traditional marketing solutions and why they’re dying out.
TV Commercial Advertising
While TV commercial advertising is still very popular with large companies, it’s not much use for those running small or medium businesses. During the last ten years, TV firms dropped advertising costs considerably to encourage more small businesses to play ball and discourage them from advertising on the web.
However, the results those companies encountered just didn’t make the endeavor viable.
It costs a lot of money to create an effective TV commercial but also where the TV Ads are being shown and at what time the ads are running is another cost factor. You can’t get a high ROI on your TV Ads if they are being shown at 4:30 am during the week if no one is watching TV!
Radio Advertising
Unless your entire target market lives within a specific area, radio advertising isn’t much use to anyone. National radio stations charge too much for their radio ad slots, and regional ones simply don’t have a wide enough broadcast range.
One of the upsides to radio advertising in conjunction with a strong digital campaign is the ability to track data that is being transmitted but also creates the opportunity to grow your email newsletter and/or social media subscriber list.
A 1-2 punch with digital advertising can generate positive ROI but your sales funnel needs to be setup correctly. Use a call tracking number and a specific URL to send the radio ad traffic to get a real and accurate sense of how your radio ads are doing.
Billboard Advertising
Getting the attention of motorists as they fly down the highway is not the best use of your advertising dollars. The motorist will be distracted from driving, and they are very unlikely to take action based on such a technique.
The only reason a modern company would use billboard advertising would be for brand awareness, rather than selling specific products or services.
Think of a billboard as a static advertisement, one that stays in the same place and can only be seen if a person goes through the area it is placed in. Billboard advertising works great for national and regional businesses but are not a cost effective solution for the local mom and pops store down the street.
Now that we’ve taken a look at some of the traditional marketing solutions, we’d like to spend some time explaining how a digital marketing agency helps their clients through the use of internet marketing.
eWe’ll also try to cover the different digital solutions we use at SMDigital Partners to help your business succeed in the online world.
What is a Digital Marketing Agency?
Digital marketing agencies specialize in dealing with all forms of online promotion, marketing, advertising on the web. While you might not realize it at the moment, advertising online is much cheaper than any of the options we’ve listed thus far.
Way Cheaper!
There are thousands of different ways digital marketing agencies can promote your company without the need for any extra expenditure.
Here are just some of the things that a digital marketing agency might do for you…
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Social Media Marketing
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have hundreds of millions of active daily users. That means any business without a page is missing out on a great opportunity to reach more customers. Pages can be created for free, but it’s often how and what you post that helps to gain the most attention.
Your digital marketing agency will understand how to get the best results. Also, another great way to use Social Media is to run paid advertising campaigns that will allow you to pinpoint people based on interests, preferences, zip codes, and hundreds of other “likes”.
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Google Adwords (SEM)
Google Adwords is by far the best digital marketing tool available on the Internet today. If your business wants to have immediate visibility on the web, this is the avenue for your business.
While it is designed to be simple, there is still a lot you need to know to get the best-paid rankings for your money. Considering that, your digital marketing agency staff will already have the knowledge required. The best thing about Google Adwords is that there is no minimum spend.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Most digital marketing agencies will have a number of key staff members who understand the ins and outs of SEO. There are two facets of SEO – On page SEO and Off page SEO.
By altering your website in various ways and adding the right consistency of keywords and content, it is possible for your business website to rank in better positions on Google and other search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is becoming one of the most fruitful means of online promotion. For that reason, it is something you shouldn’t ignore. Local SEO is important if your target market is located within the same region/city, normally 3-15 miles away from your place of business.
Now that you know more about what a digital marketing agency can do for your business, we hope you will be more inclined to stop using the old techniques and make room for this within your advertising budget. At the end of the day,
At the end of the day, billions of people around the world are now online almost constantly, and so you’re missing out on a lot of potential sales if you avoid digital marketing.
When all’s said and done, advertising your business, products or services online is much cheaper than it would be using other means. You’ll also encounter much better results.
It is possible to deal with digital marketing without the aid of a marketing company. However, the amount of time and effort you’ll have to commit makes that idea unsuitable.
Do yourself a favor and employ the professionals at SMDigital Partners. You won’t regret it.
SMDigital Partners is a full-service digital marketing agency that has been around since 2003. We know the web and we know how to make our partner clients money off the Internet. It’s our bread and butter!
If you are interested in learning more about how our digital marketing agency can help your business or if you’d like a complimentary website audit, please call 561.404.9787 and ask to speak with Lenny.
SMDigital Partners
601 N. Congress Ave. #430
Delray Beach, FL 33445
561.404.9787
