Chapter 3:- DIGITAL vs. TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING
It only has one single disadvantage according to me and that is it constantly keeps on evolving. The more searches are performed the more the database and the more is the complexity to place your ad.
Hence just keep that in mind and keep evolving along with it.
Digital Ads vs. Traditional Ads
Choosing an Advertising platform has never been easy for businesses across the globe. Big companies like NIKE, PUMA, RELIANCE, LIC, AMUL, spend big bucks on their traditional advertising campaigns. But some companies rely only on Digital Advertising too. One might ask “then what platform is correct and will work best for me?”.
Many of you might have this confusion as to what platform to choose out of Traditional Advertisement and Digital Advertisement, for your business Advertising. Well, mate, you’ve come to the right place to know each and every possible factor to determine which platform should you choose out of both.
Note that I am just going to show you some real points that you should consider while choosing your advertising platform.
So let’s start by understand the basics of both.
WHAT IS DIGITAL ADVERTISING?
In layman’s terms, it is the Advertising communication via all possible Paid Digital Channels. These include Websites, Blogs, Social Media, Directories, V-logs, Articles, Community Forums, etc. It is done to attract and aware potential audience and convert them into customers, digitally.
You might have encountered ads about your favorite shoes going on sale or x-box price drop when you are surfing online. That’s Digital Advertising. It has become important in the past couple of years because many people are spending their most of time on the internet.
WHAT IS TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING?
Before the internet became a thing in the late ’80s and ’90s, Advertising communication was possible through only newspapers, posters, billboards, banners, brochures, vehicle wraps, etc. This is called traditional advertising.
It also consists of magazines, journals, articles, radio, etc. Even though the Internet is dominant, traditional Advertising is still a major thing for many of the world’s companies.
HOW TO CHOOSE PLATFORM?
You need to take care of some things while choosing a platform to advertise. Here I have explained the top 3 factors while choosing a platform.
They are –
1) Be MONEY MINDED – Track Your Money
This is the single most advice I can give you that will determine your Advertising success. Keep track of your revenue coming due to which advertisement. Once you analyze this, cut off the budget for underperforming Ads and play a big shot on higher-performing ads.
Money is an important resource in your business that you will want to optimize for. So, make sure you are getting enough ROI on investment in each part of your sales funnel. If not? It’s time to reconsider our strategy pal.
No matter what platform you choose, digital or traditional. Your goal is to convert leads into sales and generate revenue. If an Ad fails to meet your objectives don’t waste another penny on that.
Digital Advertising comes in very handy when it comes to tracking your money as it boils down to individual sales by users and provides you with much-needed insights. On the other hand, in Traditional Advertising, you will never know which customer came to you because of billboards or newspaper ads. This alone is the classic difference between Digital Advertising and traditional Advertising.
2) AUDIENCE ATTENTION – Crave For It
Understanding where your audience has its attention is a very crucial point in Advertising. Showcasing your company word at the same place where the audience is seeking it with utmost attention could be the best thing for your Advertising campaign.
But also your message needs to be concise, clear, and compelling enough to immediately grab people’s attention because with increasing day-to-day activities people’s attention time has reduced very much. It takes only a couple of seconds for visitors to decide whether they want to read the entire content or not.
It is so powerful tool for brand awareness that even if the customer doesn’t buy from you, your company name and product have been flipped in his mind and next time whenever you promote your ads he is likely to come to you.
If you want to compel your audience into buying your business, you will most definitely have to think about audience attention. One way to do it is to think about what keywords people are looking for when they search for your business? Are they looking for discounts or offers? The moment you understand this and put it in your ad you have my friend what we call “AUDIENCE ATTENTION IN YOUR HAND”.
Use it wisely.
3) AUDIENCE VIEWERSHIP – Be With The Trend
What platforms my potential audience spends most of their time on. Where do they go look on the internet for answers that are where you will have most viewership are some of the questions you need to ask yourself at this stage.
With trends changing minute by minute it is very difficult to accurately say which platform will work best for your business. So it is important to be in the trend. This way you will be regularly updated about your audience viewership.
According to a research, there has been a drastic downfall in the number if T.V viewers in past 30 years. This is because better quality content started entering markets like Netflix and Prime. Also because TV was less engaging than other platforms like social media.
Say you advertise on the radio, it’s most likely that the person listening to it is driving a car. Now even if you add a call to action in your ad. It’s highly unlikely that they will do so. On other hand, if you advertise on search engines or social media you have high chances of getting a click or share or even purchase.
Now let us see the Advantages and Disadvantages between Digital Advertising and Traditional Advertising
DIGITAL ADVERTISING – Advantages
- HIGH ENGAGEMENT RATIO – Since Digital Advertising includes actions (shares, likes, subscribe) that are performed by users it has very high ratio of engagement compared to traditional Advertising. This could really be helpful to reach out to more people and make them your potential customers.
- ACCURATELY MEASURABLE AND PRECISE – Insights provided by Digital Advertising are highly used to accustom user experience which is the base of generating sales. You can accurately measure your acquisition. This means you will also know where your customers are coming from whether social media, ads, website everything.
- TARGETED AUDIENCE – This is a very important point. Showing your ads to somebody who is not looking for them in the first place is useless. Hence Digital Advertising allows you to focus your ads on specific people who are searching for your business niche.
It makes your customer base more relevant and lead sales higher.
DIGITAL ADVERTISING – Disadvantage
It only has one single disadvantage according to me and that is it constantly keeps on evolving. The more searches are performed the more the database and the more is the complexity to place your ad.
Hence just keep that in mind and keep evolving along with it.
TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING – Advantage
- MORE IMPACTFUL AND MEMORABLE – If you see a ad in banner or newspaper you are highly likable to remember it for long period of time. Because what we see in real life has more impact on our memory than what we see virtually like laptops and tablets.
TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING – Disadvantage
- SOMETIMES IGNORANT – Banner ads, wrap vehicle are something that even if you see it you ignore it. Mostly because when you come across such ads you are either driving or doing some important task so you ignore it.
- NOT MEASURABLE – As I have said before you cannot measure your performance on traditional ads. How many people come to you via banner ads and how many from newspaper ads. You will never know.
- NON TARGETED AUDIENCE – This is also a very important point. If you portray your ad about shoes on radio or newspaper people who are not looking for shoes will also hear or read about you. Your ad will most probably get ignored here and also your customer base became more irrelevant.
