Traditional advertising is defined as newspaper, radio, television, and direct mail. Kids today might not realize it, but these marketing options were all businesses had to promote their business for many years before digital advertising. Today, however, businesses have more advertising options than ever before through Online Advertising.
It’s true that people still watch TV, listen to the radio, get the mail out of the mailbox, and yes read the newspaper. The world today still interacts with traditional advertising and many marketing strategies still include traditional ads. But what many businesses don’t realize is that choosing between digital and tradition advertising doesn’t have to be a “one or the other” question. Instead, creating a marketing strategy with campaigns in both digital and traditional advertising can promote your business to a much wider audience.
How Digital Joined the Party
Traditional advertising still has a large audience base making them a good option for brand awareness and keeping your company name in front of the masses. They also offer limited targeting options. You can pick days of the week to run print, radio and TV ads. You can pick day parts in which to run your TV and radio ads.
However, in the 1990’s there was a little white elephant that joined the advertising party. That elephant was digital advertising. In the early years of digital advertising, many businesses wrote it off as a passing fad, forgetting that they had said the same thing about other advertising forms as well.
Digital advertising was the outcast. After all, who would want to read their news on a computer screen? Watching TV on a mobile screen or listen to the radio on their computer wasn’t even a thought. But in today’s society, we like the immediacy of our computers and mobile devices. We like that we can quickly search for a video we want to watch or songs we want to hear. We also like the personal nature that digital gives us. Everything is based on how we want to interact with our interests.
Targeting with Digital
What sets digital advertising apart from traditional is the ability to target an audience with specific criteria. We’re not only able to look at all the same demographics as traditional advertising, but also look at our audience and their interests. We consider their hobbies, what kind of searches have they been doing, purchase history, pets, cars they may own, and the list keeps going.
Digital advertising creates a much more personal message and a stronger conversation with new customers. A digital advertising campaign can be created with a more specific result in mind. Whether it be direct purchase or direct interaction with the brand itself.
Combining Digital with Traditional
So how do we pull all this together? In a good media mix, one of the unique features of creating a strong digital campaign is that the other traditional forms of advertising see improvement as well. The combination will only strengthen your message and reach your audience where they are at any given point in the day.
Let’s take myself as an example – I get up in the morning and turn on my favorite local TV station while I have breakfast and enjoy perusing the latest headlines in my local newspaper. I check my mobile device to see what friends and family have posted on the social networks before I head out the door. When I get into the car I listen to the radio as I drive to work.
Now, if your business has a strong media mix of both digital and traditional advertising, I could have seen or engaged with your ads five times all before 8 AM.
The fact is that a good media mix is the strongest adverting plan. We consume data all day in all different forms. You can be in front of your audience with a consistent message more often with a media mix of both digital and traditional advertising than if you focus on just one. Look at your audience, look and their media habits, and then build the best mix to reach them where ever and when ever you can.
Connecting with your target audience and not just blanketing a group of people with advertisements has become one of the most effective ways to convert leads to customers. If you want to find out how KeyMedia Solutions can work with your business to take your traditional advertising strategy and incorporate digital advertising, make sure and contact us with all of your questions.