With digital marketing becoming more and more dominant, it's sometimes hard to see if traditional marketing still has a place.
There was a time when traditional marketing was enough. Handing out flyers or putting an advert in the newspaper would raise brand awareness and drive people towards your business. But as we are all aware, in the last 10-15 years there has been a vast move towards digitisation. More people are using social media to communicate with friends, websites to do their shopping and apps to keep us up to date with the latest news. Because of this, businesses have had to take a massive step in to the digital era to keep up. But does this mean traditional marketing is dead? We don’t think so….
When should you use traditional Marketing or digital marketing?
When it comes to deciding what platform to use for your marketing campaign, target audience and data should drive your decision, not just what the new ‘thing’ is at the time or the classic phrase ‘it’s what we’ve always done’.
Audience
First of all, you need to think about your audience. What sort of things are they looking at in their day-to-day lives and where are they looking at them? Are they likely to be TikTok or Instagram users, in which case social advertising on these channels should be your focus. Or are they a more elderly demographic where putting a large amount of money into Instagram advertising would be a waste but a radio broadcast or advert in a magazine would be more relevant. It’s about thinking about the consumer you are targeting and understanding their behaviours, not your own.
Data
It’s never been easier to see campaign and promotional data with digital marketing, tracking the customers journey and how you’ve made conversions. This is why digital marketing is such a powerful tool. You can see if you were hitting the right demographic, what links they clicked on your e-shot, how engaged they were with your content and much more. Even if the data shows poor results, you can learn from it and see where it went wrong. However, this shouldn’t deter you from going traditional. Whilst it may not be as easy, there are ways of tracking your marketing when it goes offline. This includes trackable phone numbers, email addresses or web links and asking questionnaires on where they saw your advert. This could help you link an increase in sales around the time you put an advert up in a local bus stop. Whilst this data may not be as quick to gain and detailed as digital, if it’s showing the right results, don’t just ignore them.
But remember, when thinking about a campaign or promotion, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, perhaps it’s both. You might have heard the term, the ‘marketing mix’! Whilst it might make you roll your eye’s, it has some credibility. A single customer in your target audience will have both an online and offline footprint, therefore, so should your marketing.
How traditional and digital marketing can play hand in hand
When we think about traditional and digital marketing, we tend to think about them versus each other, but what about how they work together? There are plenty of ways to incorporate both methods. I’m sure you’ve seen flyer and posters with QR codes that send you to a company’s digital content or a pop-up display in a shopping centre asking you to take a picture and share it on social using their specific hashtag. So don’t always think of it as one or the other, in some cases two is better than one!
A good example of this was snack brand Emily and their bus stop outdoor adverts. They utilised their outdoor adverts still by making their straplines such as ‘hmmm…maybe we should of made a TV advert instead’. They then shared their six-sheet outdoor adverts on their social channels with the hashtag #stayhome.
What has the new digital era meant from traditional marketing?
Whilst digital marketing has caused traditional to take a back seat, it has also had some positive impacts. Brands have had to become more creative with their traditional marketing, to stand out from the crowd and do what digital can’t do.
Recently we have seen an increase in brands using billboards to get the attention of consumers, for example BBC’s Dracula advert or Marmites Chilli-infused OOH campaign. Whilst these may be large brands with bigger budgets, traditional marketing can be just as effective with smaller budgets when you put out the right content at the right place. Sometimes it’s about thinking creatively and as we’ve said before, what your audience will see and if it’s getting the right results.
So when you’re thinking about your next campaign, don’t be tempted to push traditional marketing techniques aside too quickly. Whilst a digital only campaign might be the right decision for you, it’s always worth the time to consider outside the digital field.
At Colossal Motion we understand that trying to figure out who to target, when and how isn’t an easy or quick task. We can look at your current content and channels, audience, data results and what’s current in your field and generate a strategy that you can either implement yourself or ask us to do for you! If you would like to find out more, then come have a chat with us today: +44 (0)7402 929227
