A Comparison of Traditional and Digital Marketing: Selecting the Best Tactics for Your Brand
Today, INFLUENCE is joined once again by special contributor and digital marketing expert, Erica Brandt. Hear Erica’s thoughts on the comparison of traditional and digital marketing tactics.
Bloggers and brands alike can agree that everyone needs a marketing strategy in 2017. Having a carefully crafted marketing strategy assures your blog or brand will have a presence and stand out against competitors. The current marketing landscape offers a variety of options for promoting your brand or products. In addition to this, marketing spend continues to grow as more and more brands strive to reach their audience through digital and traditional advertising. As cited in an Ad Age article, according to IPG Mediabrands’ Magna, “Digital advertising sales surpassed linear TV ad sales in the U.S. for the first time in 2016, pulling in $70 billion compared with $67 billion for national and local TV.”
With billions of dollars being spent on marketing it can be difficult to determine which marketing tactic is the best for your business and budget. There are traditional marketing tactics such as featuring a print advertisement in a magazine, running an ad on a billboard, or advertising on television or the radio. In addition to traditional marketing tactics, digital marketing tactics can be used to promote your business as well. Digital tactics include influencer marketing and social media marketing. Influencer marketing shows no signs of slowing down with $570 million being spent globally on influencer marketing on Instagram last year according to eMarketer.
While both traditional and digital marketing can be beneficial for your business, this article discusses a few of the ways digital marketing can be beneficial for bloggers and brands.
Using Influencer Marketing as a Digital Tool
Influencer marketing has become a popular digital marketing tactic and is prominent in the blogger community. A variety of brands have formed partnerships with influencers and have created product lines based off of these partnerships. If you are a brand and have selected to work with a blogger as part of your influencer marketing campaign there are a variety of ways you can track and monitor the success of your relationship.
One of the ways to analyze the performance of this tactic is to look at your social media analytics. Did your account receive an increase in followers, likes, and engaging comments? Which posts performed the best? Using analytics to monitor the success of an influencer marketing campaign will help you determine what worked best so you are better prepared for future campaigns.
Another way to track the success of an influencer marketing campaign is to monitor the performance of any discounts or product sales related to the campaign. When using this marketing tactic make sure to track visits, sales, and engagement related to your efforts.
If you are a blogger, you can monitor the success of your partnership by evaluating how many unique visitors are visiting your blog as well as the growth and performance of your social media accounts. You can also monitor feedback from followers and fans in the comments of your social media and video channels.
Ability to Segment Creative Content for Your Audience
Whether you are running a traditional marketing or digital marketing campaign it is important to have creative content to reach your audience. When running an ad in a magazine or another print material, many brands often choose to run one ad. Digital marketing offers the ability to create multiple ads and run them at different times to reach your audience.
One of the benefits of digital marketing is that the ads often take less time to create and can be posted within a matter of minutes. One of the advantages of using multiple ads is that you can create content around particular promotions or offers your blog or brand is featuring. This provides the opportunity to segment your content and feature different ads on your blog, website, and social media channels.
Cost Effective Options for Bloggers and Brands
The explosion of digital marketing has opened the door for bloggers and brands to reach their audience for free. Although paid social media has become more common, there are still free ways to promote your message on social media. In addition to this, public relations and video content are both free ways to communicate with your audience.
Public relations is a traditional marketing tactic that has evolved and can now be used in a digital sense as well. While this tactic has always been a cost effective way to communicate your message, there are now more opportunities than ever before for reaching your audience through public relations. This has opened the door to build a relationship with your fans or customers and discuss your platform without spending a large amount of money.
There are benefits to using both traditional and digital marketing to reach your audience. When determining the best method for your business examine the features and benefits of the tactics mentioned above and invest in what makes the most sense for your blog or brand!
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