Advantages & Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

By Zack Siegel

Tweet us @itsbullish

Traditional Marketing is a term to describe the use of:

• Print ads
• Brochures
• Direct Mail
• Flyers
• Radio Advertisements
• Television Commercials

Many brands use this marketing strategy to promote their products or services. In this article, you will learn the benefits and opportunities from these marketing methods.

Physical Products can be kept

With traditional advertising like this, the material products can often be kept and revisited later. This is a huge advantage for brands because it keeps them constantly in front of their audience.

These materials can be directly delivered to them in the mail or handed out in person, so you always know that they are received.

Easily Understood

The great thing about traditional media is that it is traditional. Everyone who receives this strategy of marketing is familiar with it and understands exactly how it works. When you advertise on the television, your consumers know exactly what to do because you tell them.

Online marketing can sometimes be a little more complicated because people don’t know what to expect and often older folks may have a little more trouble navigating these online media channels.

Uneven Playing Field

Marketing campaigns are sometimes more difficult when you are competing for space against the biggest of brands. The tough thing about traditional advertising is that ad placement can often be more costly and is easily bought up by larger brands. When you advertise in a magazine for instance, your ¼ page ad with certainly receive less attention than the full front and back cover purchased by a competitor.

You Often Don’t Know What’s Working

The tough part about physical products is their is know way of thoroughly tracking the results from them. Luckily, with digital marketing, you can more easily do this.

Cost Advantages

The number one advantage of social media marketing is that it is often much more cost effective. On social media you can market to your audience with as little as no money at all through content marketing. This includes strategies like:

• Blogging
• Social Media Updates
• Video Content

Engagement and Interaction

Users spend an extensive amount of time on social media. Brands and businesses have the benefit of being able to instantly interact and respond to your audience in real time with these platforms.

Customer-Centric

Social media is the only channel where you can deeply focus on your target audience. With this method you can speak to each specific audience in a direct way and tailor campaigns to their specific objectives based on the answers you receive from them.

Because you can so closely connect with your customers, you also, have the benefit of virality with social media. Through social media your content can spread viral when it is highly-valued by your audience and they share it on these platforms. This can be a blog post or an image, which can result in greater website rankings on search engines and more reach on social media.

Detailed Analytics

The power of analytics is uncomparable online. The internet provides all sorts of tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Facebook Analytics, and other Spy Tools to deeply analyze and improve upon the performance of your marketing efforts. With these tools you can track and marketing based on topics like:

• Who is taking a particular action
  • Age, Gender, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Demographic, Interests, Occupation, Date of Birth, Marital Status, Spending Habits, and so much more.
• When they are taking an action
• Their journey to take an action (what pages did they click prior, till they took action?)
• What advertisements are working and which are not?
  • How well are they working?
  • What is the exact cost for each lead?

Remarketing

Online with social media marketing you can easily remarket to users based on the actions they take. Let’s say for example a user showed interest in your offering by watching part of your video advertisement on Facebook, but didn’t get in contact with you. Well, with remarketing you can market directly to them again with a new and more personal ad to try and get them to take an action like give you a call. And if they don’t then, you can still keep remarketing to them after they visit your website in the future, so you can have a greater chance of converting more interested website visitors into actionable leads at a cheaper cost for you.

Level Playing-Field

Another huge benefit to marketing with social media vs traditional advertising is that regardless of what you spend your ads can have the same placement in front of your audience. When you market on social media, the more money you spend correlates to a greater reach. It does not correlate to a larger sized magazine advertisement. Businesses of all sizes can use social media ads to easily connect with their target audience.

Easy Distribution

Quickly run ads for current events or sales. Quickly adjust your ads if they aren’t performing well.

How We Use Both Social Media Marketing and Traditional Marketing

Although we do not use television or radio ads, we still do advise that some businesses do if they powerful online presence and are trying to achieve more omni-presence. That being said, we still utilize print advertisements like business cards, brochures, direct mail, apparel, and gadgets for more personal contact with our audience. This multi-channel approach compliments both the convenience of digital marketing and the unique benefits of paper. For this reason, to leverage both methods is still a great solution for all businesses.

Getting Started on these Media Channels

Marketing on social media and traditional media can be a very daunting task. Without the proper implementation, budgeting, and knowledge you could still be throwing away your hard earned money despite utilizing social media’s effective advertising platforms. That is why it is crucial as a business owner to either expand your knowledge beyond this article or hire a digital marketing agency that can implement a thorough marketing strategy for your business.

Bullish is a premiere digital marketing agency in Delray Beach, Florida that has worked with countless businesses in the past whether that be social media marketing, SEO, or web design. We specialize in driving traffic to businesses and helping them implement the strategies needed to convert this into paying customers. Speak with us now if you would like tried and tested strategies to get results today.