Which Media is Best For Marketers: Traditional or Digital?

It is no longer business as usual for traditional media as the world turns digital. Coupled with technological growth, digital media is fast gaining tract over conventional media.

To understand the difference between this two ends, let's get down to what both entities represent.

Mainstream/Traditional media

Traditional media refers to mainstream media that is comprised of billboards, radio, print and TV. Traditional media extends over centuries and has formed part of our culture for ages. Marketers have often relied on television ads to reach thousands of audiences. Though expensive, television media has a wide outreach and can influence masses over a short period of time. Print ads can also be used for marketing. This includes magazines and newspapers.

Digital media

Encoded content that includes video, audio and images are what forms part of digital media. For content to be encoded, it has to be converted into media formats that are digital. Some commonly known digital media formats include social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Other forms include vlogs, blogs, podcasts and website advertisements.

Traditional media vs Digital media

As a marketer, you want to best market your business to reach a large audience. You have the option of going for traditional media or digital media. Question is, what media channel should you use to best market your business?

Several options come into play as you will want to find out here:

• Geographical location

Both traditional and digital media work fine in creating ads that target your audience according to a given geographical location. For social media, you could use bloggers, local advertising companies or social media influencers to do marketing.

If your audience is geographically targeted, social networking sites such as Facebook give you the option of creating ads that are geography specific.

On the other hand, traditional media also works fine in focusing their ads on a specific geographical location. You could use both media streams for marketing purposes.

• Your budget

Digital media is your best bet if starting out with a lean budget. Social media ads are realistic and easy to maintain. Some options to consider include content marketing, search engine optimization, social media and email marketing.

Alternatively, if you are an established company already, your budget could be bigger. A bigger budget could accommodate both streams of media.

• Consumer interests

You want to tailor-make your ads to suit the interests of your consumers. This calls for studying your consumers' patterns and behaviors to know what makes them tickle.

As somebody marketing a product or a service, get to the bottom of understanding the psychology that drives your consumers' behavior. You could get to know the behaviors of your consumers individually or as a group. Basically, you want to know what products your consumers are acquiring, using and discarding.

With this information at your disposal, it's easier to know what media type you could use best to reach out to them. For instance, statistics give credence to the fact that most Smartphone consumers seek information about Smartphones on tech. websites. If creating ads for such products, digital media serves you best.

• Consumer income level

Consumer income level is an important factor to consider when doing ads to consumers. Not all consumers using digital media could be within your product price range. This calls for using all media streams to market your products. A mix of both media gives you the benefit of targeting a large audience.

For instance, consumers who cannot afford mobile phones will miss out on mobile phone advertisements. As a matter of fact, mobile ads easily reach to the younger generation as compared to the old. Affluent mobile phone users find mobile adverts irritating. All the more reason to use traditional and mainstream media for marketing.

• Age groups

The digital age has been fully embraced by millennials and they seem to be enjoying every bit of it. Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are roaring more with the young generation as compared to the old.

More than before, people are now clamoring for attention on social media. Consequently, social media engineers have devised services that offer likes and comments for a fee. With such platforms, you can get automatic comments-new ig fast and safe service. Ad companies and marketers should use digital media if targeting persons less than 35 years of age.

• Interactivity

Unlike traditional media, digital media allows marketers to interact with their audience. Whether through Facebook video or YouTube, Marketing campaigners are able to interact with their target market easily. Tools such as podcasts and webinars allow Q & A session which helps to increase audience awareness.

Interactivity on digital media allows marketers to track their marketing progress. This they do by looking at how receptive and responsive their audience is to their services and products. Such real time feedback enables them to realign their marketing strategy with their audience test and preferences.

Unfortunately for traditional media users, they don't get to know in real-time what their audience feels and thinks about their products. This could work against their marketing campaign conversions.

Conclusion

As a marketer, you have to accept the fact that the marketing world is fast changing and there are new dynamics to contend with.

Currently, there are two media streams for marketing in the world: traditional media and digital media. Traditional media entails the use of radio, billboards, TV and Print. On the other hand, digital media involves the use of media that is encoded. Such media include audio, videos and image content.

Also Read: Beginner Course Search Engine Optimization Digital Marketing: Why SEO Is A Worthy Investment

Digital media also relies on social networks to pass information across. While both media give you a wide range of options to do your market campaign; their several factors you want to consider when doing their marketing.

Some of the factors you want to put into place when choosing which media to do your campaigns include your budget, geographical location, age groups, interactivity and consumer interests. You could have a mix of both audiences, depending on your needs and target audience.