Just before the beginning of this year, I recorded this video to explain to everyone who is yet to try digital marketing and experience amazing results. It appears so annoying to me knowing people who could do wonders through digital but because of lack of knowledge or understanding of digital they are not even using the medium at all.
I am a firm believer of digital not just for selling something online, but to actually build a community of loyal customers and audiences. And out of all the digital products available I find social and search most effective ways of getting leads for a business, especially for a startup.
This video is a humble effort towards showing the value of digital advertising over traditional. There are people who are still struggling to channelize their budgets in right directions to get great results for their marketing investments.
Digital marketing is surely a great asset for marketers, here are 5 points that I have used to show the advantages of digital marketing over traditional.
- Cost of advertising
- High level of targeting
- Measuring the ROI
- Possibility of going viral
- Real-time interaction with the audience
Please watch my argument in the below video:
Let’s discuss every point further in details:
- Cost of advertising:As I mentioned in the video, for any investment we look at the cost of investment or amount against the returns. When you look at traditional advertising it involves a lot of cost and hassles. To few, it might appear an easy way to go for, as traditional might not require a lot of time and energy from you, however in digital you need to be there all the time. Let me compare it in numbers,
Cost of advertising with an example:– You want to give a full-page newspaper ad in times of India, they have custom pricing and a bidding model to get advertisers for the Front page full ad. (that would easily go anywhere near 1 cr for one insertion or one ad) Let’s talk about supplements and try and give full-page ads in a supplement of TOI, let’s say in Pune you have to give a full page ad in Times Ascent, you will end up paying 250K INR for a single insertion.
– When you compare this huge amount with the cost of advertising on digital, it can help you survive for more than a year with great results. You can reach more people, get more clicks to your website if you spend the same amount on digital. - High level of targeting:If you are not showing your ads to the right people, you are wasting yours and their time, you need to target correct people who would be interested in your products or services, not the ones who have no clue of what’s happening. Digital gives you a great level of targeting opportunities based on “Geography”, “Demography”, “Interest”, “Income”, “Profession”, “Education”, “Travel Behavior”, “Online Behavior”, “Behavior with your content” and much more. You can actually identify who is your actual target audience.
“Santa please STOP here!”
There is a reason I have used “Santa please stop here!” signage in the featured image of this post. It actually represents traditional marketing specifically those billboards and OOH advertising options. There are several tactical differentiators, the number one being you can’t identify your target group through traditional, number two you need can’t reach to where your target is, the target should physically come to your ad which would only be possible in a very specific scenario. So in short, traditional is all about waiting for your customers to see your ads the way you wait for Santa during Christmas.
- Measuring the ROI
Any investment that does not give you returns is simply a dead investment. Similarly, if you can’t track the ROI of a campaign, what is the point doing that? You need to have a complete control on your investments which is only possible in digital marketing or advertising.You can track everything, from how much money being spent to how many people have seen the ad, how many people clicked on your ad, how many from the campaign actually bought anything on your website. You can track every activity of a user who comes from clicking your ads.
At the same time, you can also track, from where they came, which age group they belong to, their gender, their geographical territory and much more. This helps you understand your correct audience in a better way and helps you decide who you should focus on your future campaigns.
- Possibility of going viral
Digital campaigns have a great possibility to go viral, if your content is good, connecting, engaging and solving some of the major pain points of your consumers, it has the capacity to go viral. Campaigns which are emotional, solving direct consumer problems, showing some hidden facts about your industry, revealing any dirty secrets, or it involves a person or a thing which is already trending. For traditional campaigns, I would just say one line, “To make a traditional campaign go viral, it first needs to go digital!”
- Real-time interaction with the audience
Digital gives you the ability to interact with your consumers in real time. The moment your ads go live, you start to receive reactions, shares, and comments immediately. You get customer feedback on your product or service very easily and in the real time. This helps you customising your strategy for the product or service you are providing, you can even adjust your marketing strategies by analyzing the responses you are receiving from your consumers.
- Final words!
Stop wasting time to discuss and argue if digital is better than traditional, it’s time to dive in. Start using digital and getting better ROI from your overall marketing campaigns. To me on a personal level, Social, Search & Email can do wonders even if you don’t focus on the other digital products such as display where you pour in more money. Start small, optimize your ROI and then exand.