It only takes a few seconds to get all the information you ever want or need about a topic from your favorite electronic device today. In fact, research shows that about 56% of online shoppers will do this before buying your products or services now. This shows that convenience is very important.
Defining Traditional Marketing
When you look through a magazine, you’ll see flashy ads. Turn on the TV and you may even giggle at a funny commercial. These along with direct mail postcards, telemarketing, and outdoor advertising still grab our attention, but they also require a lot of repetition and consistency which is very expensive. This is concerning since traditional marketing will only semi-target an audience. Even surveys are misleading because respondents don’t always have their buying habits accurately reflected therein.
How Internet Marketing Solves Traditional Marketing’s Concerns
With internet marketing you have analytics that will give you a behind-the-scenes view of what your customers are thinking and how they’re putting this into action when they go online and navigate your website. This is because you can connect with customers across various channels – including inbound marketing. By understanding what your customer’s buying behavior is like, you can quickly solve their issues. You’ll also be able to interact with them better. All these things set you up as an authority in your niche because now you can tweak your strategies as soon as you see what your customer is doing in real time (e.g. create interactive ads, customize ads for users, geographically target ads).
The Case for Transitioning from Traditional to Internet Marketing
Here are some interesting statistics to ponder:
- Over 60% of people go on Facebook daily
- 66% of Shopify’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were made by customers on their mobile phones
- 97% of B2B marketers favor LinkedIn
This means you should invest most of your marketing money in internet marketing today.
Using Traditional Marketing with Your Internet Marketing
Traditional print ads cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and don’t get much exposure. This is why internet marketing is more effective when targeting and segmenting your customer base even though you pay for each click you get on Google. This doesn’t mean you should completely forego traditional marketing though. For instance, billboards are a great way to reach commuters who are focusing on the road, not their mobile phones. The Super Bowl is also a great time to put commercials on TV because there’s increased banter there.
There are also some industries where traditional marketing is still a requirement. For instance, if you work in a niche that focuses on seniors and baby boomers (e.g. home health care), you’ll want to use print advertising because this population relies heavily on it still. This is something that will also help you determine just how much of your budget goes to traditional marketing. There’s no doubt that for most businesses it does make the most sense to invest the largest portion of their marketing dollars online, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have some money leftover to spend on traditional marketing since you never know when a great opportunity in this arena may arise.
Since things are still a bit convoluted and confusing, you’re bound to need some help navigating your marketing and determining where your money is best spent. Fortunately, there’s a company who you can partner with and who’s successfully helped many businesses navigate this same question over the years: Alphabet Marketing makes it their business to understand these arenas so they can help you determine what will work best for your business. This is why you should contact them today.