Looking for social media marketing Vs traditional marketing guide?
Any business or company eventually looks into media marketing due to its effectiveness and popularity. Online or offline, media marketing materials can instantly spark up customer interest to generate sales. Social media marketing is the currently trending strategy whereas traditional marketing is the classic pioneer of modern ad campaigns.
The two are still at play to drive potential consumers to know, explore, purchase your products, offers, services. So, knowing the differences between them can help you implement the right one perfectly.
What is Social Media Marketing?
It’s the process to circulate, spread, reach the target audience through social media platforms and/or websites. The leading channels to implement your social media marketing include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, etc.
You’ve definitely encountered influencer recommendations, direct advertisements, hashtag searches while browsing these sites. Not all kinds of ads will appear to consume your time or draw your attention. It’s because the marketing includes a target demographic to interest certain users only.
You must integrate and maintain three founding pillars of modern social media marketing at all costs –
- Authenticity
- Transparency
- Honesty
Public Pages, Video Ads, Public Groups, Image Ads are the most regular form of social media marketing. Some popular limited-time actions to involve, draw, motivate more audience feature the following –
- Contests and Sweepstakes
- Live Streams for Discussions
- Polls on Specific Topics
- Links to Customer Services
- User-Generated Content
You can consider the communication to be a one-to-one or one-to-many formation. So, it lets you craft a message intended for certain groups of social media users or a universal message suitable for everyone. It even allows you to assess the direct feedback regarding your product, approach, service.
It’s a strategy to emphasize building and facilitating a solid brand-follower relationship in the long run. The communication channel further requires an interactive approach. Otherwise, your brand can’t establish a notable online presence.
What is Traditional Marketing?
It’s an umbrella term to feature all the offline approaches to involve and/or attract customers. The promotional strategy interacts with potential audiences in physical locations. You’re to place or present the marketing materials in locations where customers can see, hear, know your product or service.
The most well-known forms of traditional marketing include television commercials, newspaper and magazine ads, roadside billboards. Face to Face Meetings, Direct Mail, Telemarketing are some other noteworthy approaches used by specific businesses.
Some lead, fundamental, or primary characteristics associated with traditional marketing include –
- Universal Audience
- Less Segmentation
- Strong Relationship
- Higher Credibility
- Longer Impression
Publishing ads in newspapers, periodicals, brochures has been a classic practice of traditional marketing. It’s still in play with precise communication with relevant info while appealing to distinctive senses. Direct mails continue to fall out of favor with larger brands.
Financial corporations (banks and insurance) primarily employ meetings and telemarketing to generate more sales. You’re likely to confront a call/message, e-mail, in-app notification in such approaches. Also, employees may discuss new products, offers, services when you check into their physical office/branch.
Traditional Marketing vs Social Media Marketing
Both concepts share some similarities when it comes to marketing objectives. The marketing strategy, whether it’s traditional or social media, intends to draw attention from customers to products/services. It’s actually the implementing strategy, response, and numbers to separate the two from one another.
The topmost differences between the two marketing approaches include –
- Target Audience
Conducting market research on audiences involves – 1) surveys, 2) focus groups, 3) interviews, and 4) observation. Social media analysts continuously collect data on users, allowing to you utilize all the info on target demographics.
Traditional marketing is more outbound, requiring you to observe interests and habits. Also, you can imply limited-scale interviews on locally available focus groups. And it may leave a large gap in the overall understanding of viewers.
- Audience Control
It’s impossible to skip an advertisement shown on TV programs. You must see the content, whether you have any interest or not. Even the advertisers can’t control who will see the promotional materials or how they may be interpreted.
Social media ads are more permission-based, giving control to advertisers as well as customers. Of course, unskippable ads are now increasingly entering the game. Still, the interpretation seems reasonable by coping with audience interests.
- Cost Efficiency
A billboard can cost about $10K to $15K at maximum for standard American rates. A digital billboard may cost slightly less than a physical billboard. However, more population in the town/city will require more fares per month.
The cost of social media ads depends on the total amount spent and cost per result. The expense can range from a minimal $5 to a staggering $50K. Strategy, message, audience – everything is essential to succeed in such marketing.
- Media Channels
The marketing channels to spread messages are entirely different for the two. Social media marketing involves almost all platforms and websites. You can employ different marketing techniques to reach and satisfy the consumers.
Meantime, traditional marketing is all about the outbound sales approach to deliver messages. The client may or may not have ideas for your business. It concerns a smaller number of organic promotions via limited-scale exposure.
- Client Engagement
A great number of sales continue to be generated from TV ads every year, despite social media’s popularity. Many independent studies suggest consumer interaction causes brand awareness through offline advertisements.
Still, social media surely outruns everything under traditional marketing by a fair margin. The millennials are heavily connected to these platforms. And they eventually generate more sales even for remote or unknown brands.
- Tracking Metrics
Data collection to evaluate the efficiency or possibility of traditional marketing is a hard nut to crack. You can’t know the exact number of responses in such an approach. And the assessments often remain vague, incomplete, or misleading.
Social media is more like a piece of cake, thanks to digital data analyses at premium rates. You can track almost everything necessary for a complete evaluation. It also helps expand the overall reach and sales by implying proper strategy.
Wrapping Up
Agility, Returns, Awareness, Reach, Engagement – everything comes better with social media marketing. It’s a good choice to opt for traditional marketing when you know your audiences and their interests well enough. Still, you’ll have to check social media marketing at one point due to its widespread portfolio.
Contact Tectera who offers social media marketing in Sri Lanka for social media marketing services in Sri Lanka.
