It is of no surprise that the marketing plan is the most important part of every business, which individuals cannot overstate or neglect even in the worst condition. Moreover, regardless of the industry type, savvy entrepreneurs should focus on the promotional events and publicity stunts instead of only allocating the funds for activities.

Marketing is basically about how you create awareness in the society regarding your product and services. Amidst these scenarios, if you think that marketing plans are only about promotions, then you are sadly mistaken. With every passing day, you need to find ways to attract your potential customers to stand out of the crowd. However, having a marketing budget plan with you will help in showing the right direction for investing money.

But, most of the business owners are finding it difficult to choose the best way out of traditional and digital marketing approaches. It means that the battle between the heavyweights is now on! In this technology-prone era, individuals often desire to gain fame and name overnight, which is not possible with the traditional marketing methods. Isn't it true?

On the other side of the fence, business holders to have certain fear to invest in the digital marketing strategies due to the misconceptions regarding the cost factors, traffic generation and much more. If you are also confused and want to know, which is the relevant method-traditional or digital marketing techniques for running a successful business today with better ROI, then have a look at the following points.
 

What is traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing can be simply understood as the approach of providing publicity to the product/service through mass media platforms; be it about newspaper, TV advertising, banner advertising, etc. In short, the advertisement is meant for everyone; it doesn’t think whether the audience group is targeted or not. In fact, this is where it is distinguished from the digital marketing, as digital marketing is very much targeted or targeted customer oriented.

• Product/Service:

This is the most important aspect of traditional marketing as when it comes about a mass audience base; one has no other option but to improvise the quality. It’s the quality of the product that becomes the highlighting factor for the business group in showcasing.

• Place:

Traditional marketing is very much dependent upon a confined geographic domain. Unlike digital marketing, which can target a global audience, here the targeted audience group is very much regional.

• Right tone of promotion:

Needless is to say that the tone of promotion for traditional marketing varies from that of the digital marketing. As people of all age, gender, and profession will be seeing it, the content needs to be prepared accordingly. In other words, it has to be simple, witty, and generic that can be understood by all.

• Price

This is a key factor that always plays the deciding role for a marketer. Here the businessman has to compare or investigate the comparative market price and then decide about the best one to tag. Lower price tag often becomes the highlighting factor for marketing a product, in case of traditional marketing.

• Attractive packaging:

As here a potential customer checks the product live, unlike the digital platform where things are checked virtually, an attractive packaging means a lot. One should not mind spending some extra bucks in this regard

• Right platform to place the ad:

As the advertising is done moreover on public platforms, one should place it the right way that can drive some potential customers. For example, in the case of TV advertising, one should select a TV program of the time slot that could make the product evident among a larger number of people of the concerned age group.
 

What is digital marketing?

The most appropriate yet simplest definition of digital marketing or contemporary marketing would be, the marketing strategy that encompasses electronic devices, web, or digital channels (starting from mails to social media), to reach the targeted customer base. It is different from traditional marketing as here the publicity is very much specific; individual.

Though digital marketing is a broad term but given below are the prime components or strategies used for it.

• SEO:

The major purpose of SEO Services is to boost the ranking of a website in search engine by increasing the traffic or number of visitors to the site. It is mainly useful for the websites or blogs interested in boosting their viewer base.

• Content Marketing:

This is about the promotion of a brand through creative and intuitive contents. Various ways of content marketing are- writing blog posts, publishing ebooks, forum contents, infographics, digital broachers, etc.

• Social Media Marketing:

As the name suggests, this strategy is all about promoting a brand or driving traffic to a website (e-commerce or genuine blogs) through various social media platforms, starting from Facebook, Twitter, to Google +.

• PPC Campaigning:

It is moreover commission based; here one has to pay a publisher for every time his/her ad is clicked. Generally, business groups go with Google Adwords PPC program, which is about placing the ad at the top of search engine result, for the concerned keyword. One may go with paid ads on facebook, twitter, and paid texts on linked in as well.

Apart from these, the strategies like email marketing, a blog subscription newsletter, online PR, etc., to hold significance in digital marketing.
 

Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing-Choose the ultimate winner!

No doubt, traditional marketing methods were impressive and beneficial previously, but, in the today's date, a new form of the marketing has been introduced, which is popularly known as digital marketing in every nook and corner of the world. It further helps the business heads to reach their potential customers within the stipulated time frame and moreover, without depending on the tedious promotional methods like advertisements through leaflets.

Of course, traditional marketing approaches are important today, which individuals cannot ignore, but, when it comes to choosing a worthy option, then nothing can ever beat the demand of digital marketing techniques. Nowadays, due to the implementation of digital marketing rules and tactics, individuals are finding it very easy to generate sales without even putting many efforts and hard work.

This picture depicts how online advertisement is more powerful than the offline methods and techniques.

With the help of the digital marketing methods, the 4P's of marketing is quite easy to handle and manage, which ultimately leads to better productivity of the business. The traditional method is still on the limelight, but, it is not an appropriate way to make your service and product popular across the worldwide. Due to the advent of the internet, the drawbacks of traditional methods are now easy to overcome and manipulate.
 

Disadvantages of Traditional marketing: 

• Near about 25% of the marketers feel that the traditional form of marketing is very costly and cannot be effectively done with a low capital. This makes it hard to achieve for startups and small businesses.
• Around 50% of the business marketers think that traditional marketing leaves little or no room for audience interaction. This leads to potential difficulty in connecting with the audience and keeping them informed.
• Near about 15% of the marketers believe that unlike digital marketing, with the traditional form of marketing estimating the return on investment is tough.
• Nearly 5% of the business marketers have already experienced that receiving customer feedback is very difficult with traditional marketing. This in turn makes it tough for businesses to understand the customer demands and expectations.
• Over 5% of the marketers have witnessed and believe that with the traditional way of marketing, the conversion rate remains considerably poor.

Having discussed that, let us now talk about the prominence and expansion of digital marketing and check how it has influenced the behavior of consumers in the present day.
 

The Reign of digital marketing

Now that digital marketing has almost overshadowed the traditional form of marketing, consumer behavior has been affected a lot. The consumers are evolving with digitalization and with the growth of technology their method of researching and purchasing is also changing dramatically.

•    More than 85% of consumers read reviews and feedbacks about a service or product online before making a purchase.
•    Nearly 60% of the consumers use Facebook and Instagram every day.
•    Near about 94% of the B2B marketers use LinkedIn for online marketing purposes.
•    According to the predictions for 2019, near about 70% of the total budget spent on ads will be directed towards mobile ads.
•    Near about 90% of the B2C marketers believe that social media is the best tactic for excellent content marketing.

Now, let’s dive into the following demographics and see how digital marketing has evolved and surpassed the traditional form of marketing over the years. According to the data of the year 2011, businesses spent comparatively less on online advertisements than on offline advertisements. This continued till the year 2016, when the investment in online advertising exceeded the investment in offline advertising for the first time in the history of marketing. Since then the graph has always demonstrated an increasing expense on digital marketing and a decreasing investment in traditional marketing.

The reason of this sharp shift in the way of marketing is probably the low cost associated with online advertising in comparison to the offline mode. Print Ads work amazingly in brand advertising, however, it demands a considerably huge investment. As per the data, a full page Ad in any leading magazine or newspaper would easily cost $196,535 for a circulation of 1 million. Moreover, the CPM is also higher in case of magazine ads. A full page black/white advertisement can cost you about $120K, for $50 USD worth CPM. When this is compared with digital marketing where the charge is based on per click instead of per impression, the CPM can even amount to zero dollars in certain cases. Hence, with digital marketing, even startups and small businesses with tight budget, can promote themselves through ads and increase sales.

From the above discussion it is now crystal clear that digital marketing is the new king on the throne. Having said that, let us now go ahead and discuss digital marketing in details. We will check what is digital marketing and what the future of online advertisement is.

From the above figure, you can analyze that big business or start-ups are can use the digital marketing channels for enhancing the brand name and image. In case of the digital marketing approaches, the technologies are already proven and statistically declared as the most effective ways for offering great returns into the business, which is quite impossible for the traditional marketing tactics to overcome the challenge in the year 2019.

The ultimate winner is the digital marketing techniques, which are now trending in the marketplace, but, soon, the tactics will be improved in a better manner to challenge the upcoming changes in the year 2019.

Final Conclusion :
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that digital marketing should be given due importance in modern times. Where traditional marketing holds its relevance in certain segments, digital marketing can be relevant for all scale business, if used smartly.