We do a lot of things in our daily day-to-day activities like eating, sleeping, watching television, cooking, writing, reading, etc. At the end of the day, we are able to do these successfully because we know clearly why we have to do this. That’s the most important thing, as in this fast-moving world we are not going to get success in any work until we don’t have the vision in our mind about something. The same applies to digital marketing. Before knowing anything about it let us know why to do digital marketing?
When we start a small business, our focus is mainly on getting the first group of customers to buy our products and service. To get more and more customers we use the traditional marketing methods like printing ads, templates, newspaper ads, banners, hoardings, etc. For these businesses it costs a lot of money. This strategy may bring flow of sales but this method does not always bring huge number of customers in this digital world. People in this busy world don’t see every ad and business cards given to them. Many people don’t even read the physical newspaper, instead they read the e-newspapers. The main loss is that the small businesses can’t analyze the data or analytics of any of the people who see these advertisements.
So, what’s the alternative?
It’s Digital Marketing.
For every business in either of the sectors there is a huge number of prospects online. According to a latest survey the average time spent by an Indian on mobile after the pandemic of Covid-19 has gone up to 4.3 hrs./day and the time spent on social media has increased up to 87. (Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/indians-spent-4-3-hours-a-day-on-smartphones-in-march-up-24/articleshow/75192318.cms, https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/coronavirus-87-percent-increase-in-social-media-usage-amid-lockdown-indians-spend-4-hours-on-facebook-whatsapp/story/399571.html)
Any business, no matter how small or big it is, how new or old it is, should take over this vast marketplace. Digital marketing provides proper analytics of the number of customers clicking the ads, no of lead generation, what the customer wants from us, everything. The best thing if you use digital marketing for your business, is you can reach the global marketplace for customers just by using a laptop and internet. If you use digital marketing you don’t go to customers but instead your ads and other digital tools become magnets and attract customers to your business. There are a number of endless possibilities for branding including email, video, graphics, social media, podcasts or website-based marketing opportunities.
Most people don’t go digital as they think it’s going to cost more. So, they never own a website and their business is never online but the strange thing is that you spend very less amount of money to get your business online.
Digital Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing
Pros and Cons of Traditional marketing
Pros
• If you reach out to an older demographic, traditional marketing can be very effective. According to global newswire, audiences ages 50+ spend almost twice as much time reading the newspaper and watching TV as compared to those ages 21-34.
• This type of marketing strategy usually works best for businesses looking to build a larger local audience.
Cons
• Printing postcards to send out even to just a local audience can be expensive and there is no guarantee that the recipient is interested in your business or product.
• Traditional marketing can take weeks or months to yield results and data.
Pros and Cons of Digital marketing
Pros
• Data and audience involvement can be tracked instantly. When someone clicks on a link to your site, reads an email or follows you on social media, you have that information
immediately. You can draw numerous insights from this data including which type of content works for a specific audience.
• These techniques incur a much lower cost.
• It works well for large and scattered audiences.
Cons
• Some internet users might have ad blockers, so they will never see pop-up or banner ads. Other times ads can be skipped or removed if a user pays for premium services.
• New technology and trends emerge so frequently; Digital marketing techniques need to be evaluated regularly as one day they may be relevant and another may be irrelevant.
Which method is best?
According to me the best way to market is to use a mixture of both. Both work for different audiences. So, we can cover a large audience if we use both.