We’re living in the world of technology and social media channels, and both elements connect the whole world. The goal and objectives of every business and company are growth and productivity. However, they promote their businesses through marketing and advertising, and the channel could be online and offline. Today, we’re going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of traditional marketing.
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What is Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing employs offline channels to promote their products/services/business and approach the target audience. Traditional marketing is equally important for the growth and development of your business along with the online marketing channels. In fact, businesses and companies spend a plethora of money, creativity, and resources for running successful marketing campaigns.
It’s no doubt digital advertisement has surpassed traditional approaches in many ways, but it’s still effective for the promotion of your business. Traditional advertisement allows you to reach a much wider audience, where digital media doesn’t have any access. However, some of the main channel categories of traditional marketing are as follows;
- Telemarketing. It comprises of randomly cold calling the customers in the target audience in order to establish a friendly relationship and sell your product/service.
- Broadcast. Broadcasting involves marketing and promotion of your business on channels like on-screen theater, radio, television, and other channels.
- Direct Mail. As the name implies it means mailing printed material directly to the customers in the target market; and it comprises catalogs, postcards, brochures, letters, and fliers.
- Print Media. Here you advertise your product/service on brochure, newspaper, newsletter, magazine, or any other printing publisher or distribution channel.
Advantages of Traditional Marketing
Some of the main advantages of traditional marketing are as follows;
It Connects You with Your Local Audience
When we talk about connecting with the customers at the personal level, then traditional marketing plays a significant role in approaching the local audience. In today’s world of consumerism, establishing a relationship with customers has become more significant than ever. That’s why customers choose such businesses that have a valid interest in the well-being of customers.
Billboards, local TV commercials, and newspapers are some of the main traditional promotional techniques that companies employ to connect with the local community. Approaching customers through traditional ways is a less corporate and more organic method.
Traditional Marketing Builds Credibility
Psychologically speaking, when customers see something physical, then it offers the company more credibility than just an online advertisement. It is no doubt digital media allows you to reach more people in a short time, but people don’t trust the company as well-established and reliable.
People consider print media and printed material more trustworthy than online digital advertisements. One of the main reasons behind this is that companies allocate a much larger budget for the traditional advertisement campaign. However, when you see the ads of a company on radio, TV, magazines, or other commercial platforms; it implies that the company has got a lot of financial resources. It creates the perception that the company is stable, growing, and successful.
Promotional Materials are Reusable and Recyclable
The drawback of digital media is that you have to run advertisement and promotional campaigns in order to retain the attention of customers. In fact, it’s a daily job for them like they have to have to post pictures or videos via email or social media 3 or 4 times a day.
The printed ads leave a much better and longer impression on the minds of target customers. You would receive more mileage from the brochure, business cards, flyers, and TV commercials. You won’t have to develop ads repetitively for the promotion of your business. Most importantly, you can reuse and recycle the hard printed copies for many other purposes.
You Can Appeal to a Diverse Audience
If your brand or business needs to reach a much wider and diverse range of audiences, then targeted and niche marketing of digital media would be useless. The target audience of some businesses is diverse and they need to target all of them for their growth. In such a case, traditional marketing is a very good choice.
Traditional Medium is familiar and Undertakable
It’s such marketing and promotional material that people could easily understand them. They don’t need to acquire any new material or learn it in order to access the material. However, the older people would recognize a marketing message, whenever they receive the pamphlet or flier. Digital marketing and advertisement aren’t easy for them to understand.
Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing
Some of the main disadvantages of traditional marketing are as follows;
Costly as compared to Digital Marketing
When it comes to launching the marketing and advertisement campaign via pamphlet, flier, or newspaper; then you would have to pay for it every time you run it or change your plan. If you have to make any changes, then you won’t have to pay any extra charges.
Along with flexibility and low cost, traditional advertisements require distribution and you have to pay the distributor. Once you publish the on the internet, then it becomes available to the entire world.
Customization is Not Possible
It only allows you to target a diverse audience, you can’t target the specific niche and demographic in the market. For instance, you develop an advertisement for ladies’ handbags and styles and launch it via traditional media. Digital media allows you to check whether people are evaluating your product and suggest a relevant product to them.
Less informative Medium
Traditional marketing doesn’t allow you to offer complicated pricing options of the product to the customers. TV and print media offer you limited time and space to include only limited information about the product and price. However, online and digital media offer you a variety of options.
Traditional marketing is Losing Interest
People have started to lose interest in the traditional media by skipping and not paying attention to the banners, billboards, and newspaper ads. They only show interest when they view something on the digital screen like smartphones or TV.
