In today’s growingly digital age, establishing an online presence and investing in internet marketing over traditional marketing is essential to surviving and thriving as a business. And that applies to brands of all sizes!
Digital marketing today is what traditional advertising used to be before the age of the internet. According to Statista, businesses increased their digital marketing budgets by around 13% between 2019 and 2020. At the same time, traditional marketing spend has been steadily declining.
The reason for the rise of digital marketing is that our habits are changing. Nowadays, people spend 5.4 hours a day on average on their mobile phones, and more and more jobs require them to work on computers. Considering that consumers spend so much time surrounded by technology, it’s much easier for modern marketers to reach them online.
The above should make it clear why internet marketing has overtaken the spotlight nowadays. However, there are many more benefits to it than that. So for all of you wondering why digital marketing is superior to traditional advertising, you’re in the right place! Let’s check out ten advantages internet marketing has over traditional marketing.
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10 Reasons Digital Marketing Trumps Traditional Marketing
- 1. It’s More Cost-Effective
- 2. It’s More Engaging
- 3. It Has Excellent ROI
- 4. It Allows Precise Audience Targeting
- 5. It Enables In-Depth Performance Tracking
- 6. It’s Effective for Building Brand Awareness
- 7. It Has a Wider Reach
- 8. It Builds Stronger Relationships
- 9. It’s More Time-Efficient
- 10. You Can Automate It
10 Reasons Digital Marketing Trumps Traditional Marketing
There are many benefits of investing in digital marketing over traditional marketing, but here are some of the most notable ones:
1. It’s More Cost-Effective
If you asked any business owner what the most expensive part of building a brand was, they’d surely say marketing!
Yes, marketing has always been the most financially draining but an indispensable part of any business. That is why brands greeted any opportunity to cut costs with open arms. And digital marketing does just that!
Internet marketing is significantly cheaper than, for instance, print advertising. Depending on your digital marketing channel of choice, you can get started for free or a small investment in a few online marketing tools at the most.
An excellent example of a cost-effective way to start would be with email marketing. All you’d have to do is create a mailing list and invest a few bucks in email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Sendinblue. That would set you back far less than paying hundreds of dollars for printed publications or promotional material.
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Alternatively, creating a company profile on various social media platforms won’t cost you anything. Still, it will allow you to build an online presence and get your brand in front of thousands of eyes.
With internet marketing, your options are almost limitless!
2. It’s More Engaging
Digital marketing is much more engaging than traditional marketing — that much is indisputable. There are a few reasons for that:
- It has access to various types of interactive media — The digital environment gives marketers access to a wider variety of ways to engage their audiences. While traditional marketers have limited advertising choices, online marketers can use various content types to attract different users. For instance, one of the most popular methods of digital advertising is using various types of videos. These are an excellent and interactive way to communicate with your consumers, entertain, and convert them!
- It caters to different users’ tastes — All of us have preferences, and the digital environment lets marketers cater to them! Whether it’s through targeting or promoting a business through several content types, brands achieve higher user satisfaction rates when promoting themselves online.
- The competition is overwhelming — The ever-growing competitive digital market forces marketers to stay on their toes and make the most engaging content possible. If they don’t, their competitors will quickly swoop in and take steal their audiences’ attention.
User engagement has always been crucial for marketing professionals, and online marketing just makes achieving it easier!
3. It Has Excellent ROI
Digital marketing is not all about low costs; it also provides an excellent return on investment! Compared to traditional advertising techniques like branded goods, print advertising, and media collaborations, advanced digital marketing techniques are significantly cheaper and provide more effective results.
The best example would be PPC. If you were to invest the same amount of money in paid digital ads that you’d use to launch a traditional marketing campaign, you’d undoubtedly generate way more conversions with the former.
The reason is that PPC and many other online marketing methods are better at zeroing in on your target audience. That is primarily due to the various targeting options they offer.
Speaking of targeting…
4. It Allows Precise Audience Targeting
One of online advertising’s strongest trump cards is its targeting capabilities. What does that mean? It’s quite simple.
The nature of traditional advertising is to cater to the broadest audience possible, which is far from ideal in terms of lead generation. Online advertising solves that issue by allowing marketers to target specific consumers based on their search histories or behavior online. This type of behavioral targeting is why digital marketing is so effective at driving sales. After all, serving your products only to the people who need it is a surefire way to maximize conversions, isn’t it?
Aside from various targeting options, another advantage of internet marketing over traditional marketing is that it offers plenty of personalization opportunities. While traditional ads often seem distant and detached, it doesn’t take much effort to personalize an online campaign. A single personalized video or email is often all you need to get your brand off the ground!
5. It Enables In-Depth Performance Tracking
Whereas traditional marketing lacks in the performance tracking department, internet marketing shines! Because digital marketing takes place in an online environment, there are many systems in place that keep detailed track of your campaigns’ performance.
The above applies to all types of digital marketing! Video marketers get access to real-time video analytics, online advertisers to ad metrics and performance in Google Ad Manager, and content marketers measure their campaign’s performance through Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
The online world is filled with tools built to help you! Having access to various relevant data allows you to adapt on the fly and tweak underperforming campaigns. That is something you could never do in traditional marketing (at least not as reliably)!
6. It’s Effective for Building Brand Awareness
It’s undeniable that investing in digital marketing, particularly content and social media marketing, is one of the best ways to build brand awareness. Why? It’s simple.
Nowadays, people are always online — whether we’re on our PCs or mobile phones, most of us always have the internet at hand. And whenever people browse their social media profiles or visit Google, they’re prime targets for online ads!
If you’re not sure how much you can benefit from advertising, know that Google AdWords alone serves over 30 billion ad impressions a day! With such massive potential for exposure, brands worldwide don’t penny-pinch on advertising, and neither should you.
Display advertising is particularly potent for building brand awareness due to its low cost. So if you’re looking to raise brand awareness through internet marketing, it’s an excellent place to start!
7. It Has a Wider Reach
Traditional advertising has a few critical flaws that internet marketing easily overcomes — physical boundaries. While traditional marketing is mostly localized, online marketing is globalized. That has opened up plenty of opportunities for business owners to expand (or start new) businesses beyond a single country’s borders.
All of the above was possible thanks to the power of search engines like Google and various social media platforms. Some social media giants like YouTube have more than two billion monthly users. Just imagine how much exposure your brand could get if you built a presence on one (or more) such platforms!
8. It Builds Stronger Relationships
We’ve already mentioned how internet marketing focuses on various content types to engage audiences, but what does doing that achieve? It helps build stronger relationships with your consumers, of course!
In the ever-growing sea of competition, brands need to stand out if they want to succeed. That is particularly true in the digital marketing world since all your competitors will be doing the same thing as you! That’s why building a relationship with your audience is critical to success. Luckily, the online marketing world offers plenty of opportunities to do so!
One excellent way of making your brand accessible to your audience is establishing a strong presence on social media channels like Facebook. Interacting, engaging, and being responsive to your customers is a surefire way to earn their trust.
Another handy method of strengthening your relationship with your customers is through storytelling. Telling your brand’s story through a series of social media posts, blog articles, or storytelling videos will make your brand relatable and help its message resonate with your audience.
Either way, the online world is the place to be if you’re looking to build lasting relationships with your consumers.
9. It’s More Time-Efficient
While a traditional marketing campaign takes a lot of time to prepare and execute, digital ones don’t!
Launching any online marketing campaign is much quicker, so you can do it with far fewer people. A single seasoned digital marketer can plan, execute, and monitor multiple campaigns simultaneously, saving valuable time and resources.
Because internet marketing is so time-efficient, it is an excellent way for startups to get their brand off the ground. In fact, a single marketer is often enough to handle a small business’s marketing needs!
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10. You Can Automate It
Finally, one of the biggest draws of internet marketing is that you can automate it! While traditional advertising will always require time to implement, there are dozens of tools that can help you streamline your digital campaigns.
Seasoned marketers understand the value of digital marketing automation tools, so they aren’t reluctant to invest in them. Considering that there are dozens of services and online tools for all digital marketing forms (email marketing, social media marketing, etc.), you’re going to have a lot to choose from. But don’t worry; even if you’re a startup working on a tight budget, most if not all of these tools have pricing plans tailored to your needs.
Streamlining your marketing efforts using automation tools can help businesses cut costs and optimize their marketing endeavors. That is something you cannot do in traditional marketing!
So what do you think? Were these reasons enough to get you to give digital marketing a shot? If you liked this article and found it helpful, we’d appreciate it if you shared it on social media! Best of luck on your journey!
Until next time!