Marketing is crucial to the success of any business in Nigeria. Either as a multinational business or as a small business in Nigeria, you will need some degree of marketing to enjoy increased sales and revenue. Especially for small businesses, you need to ensure that the marketing strategy you pick is cost-effective. So how do you know the right marketing strategy to spend on? Marketing can either be through traditional marketing or digital marketing. As a business owner, you need clarity on the best marketing strategy for your business. To do that, you must be pro-active to envision which strategy would produce better results for your business.
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What is Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing is a conventional form of marketing that helps reach a semi-targeted audience using traditional media. Traditional media includes; newspapers & magazines, television and radio, billboards, flyers, and others. When advertisements and promotional messages are placed on traditional media, it becomes traditional marketing.
Pros of Traditional Marketing
Reach local audience
Traditional marketing can effectively reach a local audience. Flyers can be shared in a particular community that is the target audience (especially for small businesses). The radio station in that vicinity could also help you spread the message across.
Some materials can be kept and recycled
A major pro of traditional marketing is that some promotional materials can be kept and recycled. Printed materials such as flyers, newspapers, and magazines are usually read by more than one person per material. A person can read a magazine and pass it on to a friend or family. Months after the advert, the message may keep spreading.
It is familiar
Traditional marketing is an old form of marketing. This means that older people are more familiar with traditional media than digital media. So if your audience is within the older age, you can target them better with Traditional media.
Cons of Traditional Marketing
Although traditional media is quite effective, there are certain drawbacks to using this marketing strategy. The fact that the world has evolved to a digital community as technology and innovation occurred has reduced the efficacy of traditional marketing in Nigeria.
Here are the cons of traditional marketing
Interaction
The biggest drawback to using the Traditional marketing strategy is that there is little or no interaction between the medium and prospects/customers. With Traditional marketing, a message is placed on the media without the possibility of getting an immediate response or reaction. It, therefore, becomes hard to understand what your customers want. Feedback is very important for every business, and sadly, traditional marketing does not do justice is providing it.
High Costs/ Low ROI
As the only marketing strategy for a long time, the cost of traditional marketing is very high. To continuously invest in traditional marketing, your business would be making a huge investment that may not yield good returns. For example, if you place an ad in a newspaper, there is a 50-50 probability of your target audience seeing the ads the day it is published. The exposure rate is unpredictable. Unlike digital marketing strategies like PPC (pay-per-click) where you only pay when an ad is seen and clicked on, you can spend millions on a traditional marketing strategy and not get enough returns on that investment.
Evaluation
Evaluating a marketing strategy would help you know the areas to adjust on, and the areas to intensify efforts. However, the evaluation of traditional marketing is quite vague. Television and radio are often put on, when no one is watching or listening. Newspapers could also be bought without anyone reading it, so looking at the ads. It then becomes hard to know how effective a campaign is. It is hard to pick the channel that brought more returns.
Semi-targeted audience
Traditional marketing does not help well enough in targeting a specific demographic. So if you want to target a specific gender or age group, it could turn out quite vague. It has a semi-targeted audience.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is also known as online marketing. It is marketing done through the internet, on an electronic device. Digital marketing includes content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, PPC, Search engine adverts, pop-up ads, YouTube marketing, and lots more. We offer all digital marketing services here at Chordidigital. With the world in a digital age, digital marketing has proven to be an effective way to reach your audience /clients. The internet is becoming one of the most used tools in the world. A large percent of the world has a digital presence today. More people are logging on the web to carry out their daily activities, which includes, purchasing of goods and services. Research shows that more than 80% of shoppers/buyers do their research online before investing in a product/service. It also shows that 94% of B2B marketers actively use LinkedIn for marketing purposes. Also, 90% of B2C businesses report that social media has been the most effective content marketing strategy.
Pros of Digital Marketing
Engagement
Digital marketing makes it easy to engage with your prospects/customers in real-time through social media, or website chatbox. You can instantly get feedback on the thoughts, comments, and needs of your customers. Your brand can be constantly connected with your audience. It makes it easy to avoid a business crisis and increase the rate of brand loyalty.
Easy evaluation
As earlier stated, evaluation is an important aspect of marketing. Digital marketing makes it easier to evaluate every marketing campaign. You can tell the effect of digital marketing strategy on your business or brand. It is easy to spot which channel is bringing more returns, and how effective a strategy is to your business. It, therefore, makes it easier to adjust your marketing strategy to the best and most effective for your brand.
Wider Reach and Targeted Audience
Digital marketing helps you reach more than your local audience or audience in your vicinity. It would help you reach both your local, national, and even international audience. Therefore, increasing brand awareness and popularity. Your audience is targeted, to reach the specific demographic that fits your brand. You can target the gender, age, personality, and likes with digital marketing.
Cost-Effective
The most cost-effective form of marketing is digital marketing. Digital marketing brings better returns on investments and is way cheaper when compared to traditional marketing. So you can pay less and have better marketing results.
Cons of Digital Marketing
Expertise
To enjoy the benefits of digital marketing, you need to use only experts or professionals who are skilled to carry out the campaign. They have to be knowledgeable about the right tools, platforms, and trends (which change rapidly). Chordidigtial has experts and professionals that would deliver top-notch services for your brand.
Time-consuming
Digital marketing may take some time. Advertising campaigns, creating quality content, and optimizing your brand’s digital presence may take time. However, in the end, it is worth it.
Digital Marketing VS Traditional Marketing- Which Marketing Strategy is Better?
Traditional marketing is not as effective as it used to be. The conclusion we can draw from the pros and cons of both forms of marketing is that Traditional marketing cannot stand on its own. The efficacy of traditional marketing is best seen when merged with digital marketing.
Traditional marketing does not yield enough results for it to be done alone for any business. You can take a look at all adverts placed on the traditional media in 2020- they are also on digital platforms.
Digital marketing, however, is still very effective on its own. The results speak for themselves. For small businesses or start-ups, it is very advisable to use digital marketing to create brand awareness, loyalty, and popularity and increase your sales.
We have experts to ensure that your business grows to its right potential. We will handle all your digital marketing needs without stressing you at all. Visit www.chordigital.com today, and grow your business to its full potential.
