Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Why Not Both? – InstantFollowerz

Traditional marketing versus digital marketing has become a hot topic among marketing professionals.

I intended to learn the pros and cons of each and come back with my findings so you can make an informed decision about marketing your brand.

I will go over what the two terms mean and how they work together. Next, I’ll dive deeper into traditional marketing, which sometimes seems like it doesn’t hold up in the current digital-dominated environment.

But if you’re trying to choose between the two, I’ll end it before we even begin: the answer is both.

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What is traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is all marketing that happens offline. This includes print, broadcast, direct mail, telephone and out-of-home advertising such as billboards and posters.

It’s called the traditional method because it’s the way marketing was done before the Internet. But even though the modern market has incorporated newer methods, traditional marketing is not disappearing.

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What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, on the other hand, is any marketing done online. Examples here include paid SOCIAL MEDIA ads, email marketing, and PPC advertising, along with content marketing, SEO, and more.

This post won’t go into all the details, but for a deeper dive into digital marketing, check it out What is digital marketing: everything you need to know.

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As the world becomes more digital, so does the way the market evolves. Not only is digital marketing sometimes more cost-effective than traditional marketing, it’s also a more direct way to connect with your target audience on a global scale.

Digital marketing has now overtaken traditional marketing as the primary way to reach consumers. But really, these two strategies coexist, and mixing methods are becoming the norm.

Traditional marketing vs. Digital marketing

Traditional marketing is an approach where marketers identify their audience and place ads where their audience will see, hear, or interact with them offline, such as print ads, billboards, or television ads. Digital marketing is facilitated online and uses paid or organic ads on social networks or search engines, as well as email marketing, influencer marketing and video marketing, to name a few.

In today’s environment, it’s no surprise that digital marketing is an increasingly important revenue driver. in fact 78% of companies who use social selling outperform those who do not.

However, the disadvantages of digital marketing will exist. Chief among them are privacy and security concerns. According to the same 2024 report, online data privacy is valued as a human right 74% of respondents.

In response, the tide has shifted towards greater safeguards, with 84% of marketing professionals saying it has affected their strategy. In addition, digital marketing faces the challenge of people tired of distracting adslike pop-ups and videos, while conveniently viewing offline ads.

What about AI?

2024, according to ours State of Marketing Report85% of marketers say generative AI has changed the way they create content, and marketers who use AI are “95% more likely to say their marketing strategy this year was very effective than those who don’t.”

AI is, of course, a game changer for everyone – including the marketing industry – and it remains to be seen how it will affect the relationship between traditional and digital. But one thing’s for sure: it’s the single biggest trend driving industry growth right now.

Types of traditional marketing

Now that we understand both sides of the coin, let’s take a deeper look at traditional marketing. It can take many forms, but the main types are as follows.

Print Media

Print media uses newspapers, magazines and other printed materials to advertise to potential customers. This option is scalable, from local to globally read publications.

A now infamous example of an attention-grabbing newspaper ad is Norwegian Airlines’ “Brad is Single” campaign, which capitalized on the celebrity couple’s breakup. I’m not one to gossip, but if you want to draw attention to your low, low prices, this is the way to do it.

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Broadcasting

This applies to TV and radio advertising and aims to create brand awareness. Broadcasting relies on repetition, as the same ad will be played over and over again.

The commercial that has always stuck in my head is for Wendy’s hamburgers – where a woman examines a competitor’s offering and asks, “Where’s the beef?”

Originally aired in 1984, the ad later became so iconic that I can still summon the woman’s voice in my head — even though I didn’t see the ad when it appeared. Forty years later, I’d say that’s good advertising.

Direct mail

Direct mail is when marketing materials are sent directly to your door.

These can be letters, postcards, flyers, catalogs, and even gifts, and the point is to connect directly with the individual – unlike print or broadcast, where the goal is to reach as many people as possible.

An example of a direct mail campaign where the mailing was fit for purpose comes from Ikea. To sell one of his side tables, a small pop-up version of the table came in the Ikea catalog.

It caught my attention with the perfect parallel between Ikea’s flat furniture and the paper miniature that was meant to advertise it.

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Telephone

Telemarketing, which involves cold calling, is another traditional method of reaching a prospect directly. Direct telephone marketing goes a step further than direct mail in order to create a connection with a potential customer.

I’ll admit I had to look up an example for this one, and it’s hard to find much information because the calls are so ephemeral.

But I found a leading telemarketing campaign from Microsoft in 2009 when sales reps called to sell Office Suite software. Sources they say that the company made a million dollars in revenue from this campaign alone.

Out of Home (OOH)

OOH marketing means it takes place outside your home, primary examples being static billboards, posters, bus signs and painted wallscapes.

This is a form of visual marketing that most often uses images to convey its message. OOH is location-based and aims to advertise to people passing by a particular place.

As someone who has spent most of my life walking around cities as an urban explorer, this type of marketing is most likely to get my attention.

A clever example that comes to mind is the Coca-Cola billboards that appeared in European cities in 2019. The image takes the brand’s signature white band and turns it into a hand, with the hand pointing to a recycling bin on the street.

The campaign hints at Coca-Cola’s promise to fully recycle its bottles. I personally love this kind of interaction between the ad and the urban environment.

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The importance of traditional marketing

It may already be pretty clear from the examples above, but I want to break down some of the reasons why traditional marketing is still important alongside digital marketing.

Trust

Connecting with potential customers is at the heart of marketing. I recent research show that when asked about their most trusted advertising formats, traditional marketing channels fill the top spots, with print ads coming out on top.

So even if it seems like we live in digital marketing, when it comes to trust, the tried and true works better.

Loyalty

Since I barely receive mail anymore, I was surprised to learn that direct mail ranks third in the same trust polls.

In addition, according to a 2024 publication of the Data and Marketing Associationpersonalized emails are set to make a comeback with today’s marketers due to their ability to convert into long-term loyalty.

Reach

Watching the broadcast, I was skeptical of how effective radio commercials could still be, but when I got my hands on 2023 Edison Research resultsit turns out that if you spend any time in your car, you’re likely to listen to AM/FM radio (76% of listeners).

This makes you the perfect audience for ads on that channel.

Cold calling was another one I wasn’t so sure about. But just like direct mail, the effectiveness of cold calling is on the rise — and again, I was surprised by the numbers.

Cognism’s State of Cold Calling 2024 Report reported that the success rate of B2B cold calling doubled from 2023 to 2024 (from approximately 2% to 4%).

Advantages and disadvantages of traditional marketing

Compared to digital marketing, traditional marketing has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: Local audience

Traditional marketing is great when you want to reach a local community or community. If you operate in a small market, very specific ad placements can help you reach the right people.

Advantages: Repetition

Another benefit is repeat ads. And not just with TV commercials or radio jingles that might get stuck in your head. When you think about OOH, it’s easy to imagine how passing the same bus stop billboard every day increases visibility and brand awareness.

Advantages: credibility

And that leads to credibility. With brand recall, especially in the public spaces we occupy every day, ads begin to look familiar, like any part of the environment, and increase credibility.

Cons: Cost

Traditional marketing can be more expensive than digital marketing. In 2024, the average newspaper ad it can cost upwards of $750while an online ad costs 3-5 cents per click.

Above that portion of the budget will be spent casting a wide net and showing your ad to people outside of your target audience.

Cons: Targeting

This brings me to precision targeting: it’s an integral part of the digital marketing world — and one that traditional marketing really can’t compete with. If you need granular segmentation, none of the above marketing channels will give you that.

Cons: measurability

In addition to the impossibility of precisely zooming in on a specific target audience, measuring the results of advertising campaigns is not as simple as with online marketing.

No real-time results or optimizations. And the process of changing your ad will take longer if you realize it’s bad.

Cdo traditional and digital marketing really work together?

Absolutely. My biggest takeaway after diving into the stats is that not only is there room for both strategies to exist, but it can be advantageous to double up and use them together.

While traditional marketing can capture local audiences, it doesn’t offer a granular way of targeting. This gap can be filled with digital marketing.

And with the marked differences between the two methods, I’d say it’s more a matter of multiplying the options than pitting the two against each other.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.