Gone are the days when companies used to invest a lump sum of dollars in printing pamphlets and advertisements. With the digitization, there has been a considerable shift from the use of traditional marketing methods to a digital one. Traditional methods like advertisements through print media and by distributing pamphlets is slowly fading and is now being replaces by much more affordable e-media.
Before understanding Digital Marketing, let us first dive into why traditional methods failed and why there is an urgent calling to shift to digital marketing.
Traditional Marketing Methods
Even today, when people think about advertising, they talk about traditional methods of marketing good and services. These methods include the use of print media like newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and billboards to advertise some product/service. This also includes use of radio and television services to advertise about your product.
These methods are well tried and tested and they have a proved success rate. But there are some disadvantages to it. The major one is the cost. Using print media costs a lot of money and takes in a lot of time and effort. A lot of manpower goes into ensuring the circulation of the ads even through TV ads.
Costs incurred are high but the impact can not be denied. Traditional marketing is a trusted method and is deployed by companies for each and every product. But with everything going digital, companies are now switching to go online and so should you.
Here’s why.
ABC of Digital Marketing
Let us first understand what Digital Marketing is.
Digital Marketing is the marketing of products and services using digital technologies mainly with the use of internet. Social media, mails, blogs, videos. Basically, everything can be used for digital marketing. It also includes use of tele marketing and digital posters for the advertisement of the product or service.
Companies have realised the potential of digital marketing and that’s why the late 2010s saw a rapid boom in the use of digital media for advertisement. The advantages are many to speak of. Firstly, it saves the cost of paper and banner printing. All those dollars spent on getting pamphlets printed is now being saved. It also helps the company to keep better track of expenses and the related outcome.
Why Digital Marketing?
With more and more people going online, there is a need to digitalise each and every thing, be it business operations to financing and advertising. We have already seen how Traditional marketing methods create huge piles of expenses. What’s more considerable is the people are moving from TV to YouTube, Newspapers to e-papers and Magazines to blogs. There is a huge shift in user based experience. Around 80% of smart phone users are present in social media platforms and this number is huge. It’s gigantic.
Now, in a platform like this, you get every sort of interaction that any company might ever needed and this brings in an opportunity to reach more and expand more.
With traditional approach, the reach was local and when you invest more, it will get national but not effective of course. Unless you invest crazily! At such rates, you will be done even before you make it to the local topic of the day. What else can you expect by distributing pamphlets? We know that traditional method is overwhelmingly effective. The result is the growth of giants like Microsoft, Subway and many more. But this is valid for big firms only. For entrepreneurs, it is a huge step to invest such a lump sum of money for advertising.
Now with digital methods, these firms have now an option to target specific people which mean business to them. The investment is considerably less and the impact is notable on many scales.
An Example to simplify things
Let’s assume you start a company producing wooden crafts. You are presented with two options to market your product. Either you choose print media and TV ads or you chose the new digital way. If you select the traditional method, you need to develop an ad be it for a newspaper or TV or a pamphlet. You need to spend huge amount of money to spread the word and even after you do, there are few chances that you will get as many customers as you desired. And there are chances that you cannot reach to a huge concentration of firms who are in need of wooden crafts.
Let us start with the digital marketing now. You go through the websites of the companies who deal with wooden crafts. It can be sellers, consumers or middle agents. You create social media accounts and keep advertising to a group of specific people or a community. Not only that, you can integrate ads to YouTube and other video streaming sites which have videos related to crafts. This way specific people who are interested in crafts will see what you have to offer in addition to the regular audience present online. This targeted approach narrows down your work and you get genuine interested customers.
So what do you think? There is obviously a lot of research work involved in Digital Marketing but it’s fun. And yes, it is super effective.
Conclusion:
We know how important Traditional Marketing is. And with that, we realise what Digital Marketing can do. Thus, we recommend you to use a mix of Traditional and Digital Marketing methods. There are few risks with Digital Marketing. The chances of slow client feedback or sometimes the absence of clients can be fatal unless you keep on with Traditional Marketing hand in hand. The use of new along with the promise of the Old way can definitely help you flourish your business in no time.
Where to start with?
This new process can be complicated for a whole lot of you. Not to worry anymore. There are a lot of ASO companies in India dedicated to make this lengthy process easier for you. For small businesses, it is ideal to contact these firms and let them develop marketing strategies for you. There are many ASO services in India working extremely well in helping clients to develop marketing solutions. Choose an ASO services company according to their client history and experience.