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Traditional vs Digital Marketing: An Agency Perspective

Digital marketing or traditional marketing. What's better?

By Scott Ingram. Director, Helium Marketing.

As a digital marketing agency based in Perth, we’re often asked by our clients, “Why do you just do digital marketing, and not traditional marketing, too?”. The truth is, we actually love traditional marketing (and we’re really good at it). It’s super effective and has unique perks like increasing credibility and brand perception.

You might be thinking, “So... Why aren’t you a traditional advertising agency then?”. That's a fair question, and here’s the low-down. My team and I are really passionate about serving the small business community, but traditional marketing is often financially (just) out of reach for pretty much all our clients. As a result, we rarely get to exercise this skillset and passion — that’s why we’re using this blog as an outlet for all this helpful info we’ve picked up the years!

But, traditional marketing lost it’s potency years ago, right? Wrong. People still listen to the radio, and no — Netflix hasn’t killed free-to-air TV. Although it’s true that listenership/viewership numbers have fallen, there is still heaps of untapped value and opportunity in these platforms. Let’s run through what these are, and how they compare to digital marketing.

What You Need to Know About Traditional Marketing

How much does Traditional Marketing cost in Perth?

The bad news is, it’s expensive. The great news is, it’s not as expensive as it used to be. With the fall in listenership/viewership, traditional mediums have become relatively affordable compared to what they were 10 years ago. They once cost an arm and a leg, now it’s just an arm.

Probably for the first time ever, a small business can consider being on TV. We’re a small business ourselves, and we take out spots with Channel 7 and Channel 9 on Sunrise and the Today Show (and yeah, it works!). Check out our ad below.

So, it’s an opportunity for sure and comes with a notable about of credibility and exposure. It also comes with a price tag. To give you some concrete numbers, we’re talking a minimum of $1-2k a month for an entry level community radio station and $7k per month for a larger radio or entry level TV station.

If your jaw just hit the floor, let me be the first to say that I realise this is not going to be a realistic budget for many reading this right now. However, I can attest to the fact that traditional marketing can generate far more than it costs. It’s worth considering not only the cost, but also the value these mediums can generate for your business.

I’d also like to say that rolling the dice on such a large amount might cause some stress-induced insomnia. Realistically, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket — make sure you have a few different marketing/advertising channels running at all times. If you can’t afford the cost or risk now, treat it as a long-term goal to work towards.

An Easy-to-Manage Form of Marketing

Traditional marketing doesn’t need managing and is incredibly time efficient.

Choose a station.
Create an ad.
Book a schedule.
Kick back and relax.

It really is that easy, and you can let it run for months on end without any time required. It's a brilliant marketing option for business owners who are time poor with a bit (or a lot) of cash on hand. Of course, the down side of traditional marketing is the lack of analytics. I'll probably write about how you can measure the return of your marketing in another article, so keep an eye out for that one.

Traditional Marketing is a Fast Way to Reach a lot of People

One of the main perks of traditional strategies is that you can very quickly broadcast a message to a whole lot of people. Keep in mind that it does take a while for the message to sink in. There will be a lot of people listening to your ad, thinking about giving you a call, but haven’t made the first step.

As an anecdotal example, one of our clients called us after a hearing our ad several times. The first time they heard the ad, they weren’t sure if they were ready — this is often the case — but we certainly piqued their interest. The second time, they were in a shopping centre and not in the right frame of mind. The third time, they actually wrote our number on their hand but accidentally washed it off later. Finally, they heard our ad again, and gave us a call on the spot. Success.

The point is, you’re kind of catching people off guard with your ad. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get any calls on day one — because, you probably won’t. You’ll need to stick it out for a couple of months and really let that ad do the talking for a while before your prospective caller takes action.

The upside is, you have a cost-effective way to build a brand through reputation to a very large audience. To give you an idea, in Perth, a community radio station will help you reach 300,000 people in a single month. Some will be in your target audience, some won’t be. It’s a wide net, but hopefully you’ll catch more than a few fish.

In the meantime, I mentioned earlier traditional avenues weren’t right for everyone, so let’s check out the alternative — digital marketing.

What You Need to Know About Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing Has Lower Starting Costs

Okay... If traditional marketing is that crash hot, why even bother with digital marketing? Firstly, it’s not a “OR” situation, it’s an “AND” situation. For the best results, I highly suggest you engage in both traditional and digital marketing.

But, as we’ve talked about above, traditional marketing may be out of reach for you. Digital marketing can definitely support a higher spend, but it also has no minimum spend, making it attractive to the small business market. You can get started on Google ads or Facebook Ads (and others) for a couple hundred bucks. Even better, SEO marketing strategies are totally free.

Back to digital ads though, I would caution you against spending too little on the platforms, even though you technically can. We've seen plenty of digital advertising campaigns never get off the ground due to insufficient budget. Think about spending $500 to $1000 per month as a starting point and scaling it from there.

Digital Advertising Offers In-Depth Analytics

Unlike traditional marketing, digital comes with an abundance of data and information. Your digital advertising campaigns can be continually refined and improved, based on real data — not gut feel. Look at which ads are underperforming, which search terms are a waste of time, which campaigns are bringing in the big bucks.

Spend more on what’s working, spend less on what’s not. Before you know it, you have an effective, converting digital marketing campaign. The trouble is, this is an incredibly time-consuming process and requires an experienced digital skillset to manage it. Speaking of shameless plugs, have you met our clever team of digital professionals here in Perth?

Digital Marketing Can Reach the Right Target Market

We’ve looked at how traditional marketing is a fast way to reach the masses — some will be your target market, most won’t be. Digital efforts can reach lots of people too, but you can narrow in on the target markets that matter to you most. This is achieved through the digital platforms and their targeting tools.

For example, with Google Ads, you can target a specific audience looking to spend with a provider. Hypothetically (but also literally) for Helium, I might want reach anyone Googling “Digital Marketing Agency Perth” so I can specifically target them. Chances are, if someone types that phrase into Google and land on our website, they’re likely to reach out to discuss what we can do for them.

Another example — LinkedIn Ads let you target business professionals based on a range of criteria. Recently, we ran a campaign for ourselves targeting anyone who has “Director” in their title, runs a Perth-based business with 1-10 staff, and operates in the Accounting, Finance, Management, or Technology industries. While we work with all sorts of industries and professionals, we were able to target a campaign specific to this audience showing our successes in these areas.

A Summary of Traditional vs Digital Marketing

If you only remember one thing from this whole article, let it be this: the best marketing strategy incorporates a healthy budget for both traditional and digital marketing. I’ve seen, first-hand, the value this dual strategy creates for Perth businesses, including my own.

However, I realise that it may take time for a business to work up to this level of paid advertising spend, and there are also advantages and disadvantages to both.

To keep it simple, here’s a good way to consider about the differences:

	Traditional Marketing	Digital Marketing
Cost	$$$	$ - $$
Time	None after the initial setup.	Very time intensive to manage effectively
Brand Building	Very powerful	Moderately effective
Reach	Higher per $	More targeted reach