How Digital Marketing Becomes Dominant Today

How does digital marketing dominate traditional marketing? Originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

What Is…

Traditional marketing

Traditional marketing channels are what most of us grew up with. Most will probably be familiar to you: billboards, flyers, radio ads, television commercials, newspaper classifieds, and magazine ads. This means that your audience will be more willing to accept advertisements made through this channel. However, as familiar as they are, they have a major drawback of being a one-sided form of communication.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing consists of promotional efforts that take place in the digital world, such as social media ad placements, content marketing, and email marketing. Even ensuring that your website appears on Google’s front page is one form of digital marketing. Audience targeting is customizable, as you can pinpoint the exact demographic you wish to reach. It’s not as intuitive to your audience, but it allows for instant two-way feedback.

Advantages of Digital Marketing:

Cost-efficient

Digital marketing is arguably the best bang for your buck, especially when it comes to allocating your ad spend. In contrast, most traditional marketing channels require substantial funds to get started with. Just how budget-friendly is digital marketing? Well, you instantly apply SEO, email marketing, and content marketing for absolutely free!

Pinpoint targeting

What digital marketing allows you to do is target a specific audience for every campaign. So if you want to show your message to tech enthusiasts who also like entrepreneurship, below 35 years of age, and are based in Malaysia, all it takes is a few clicks and you’re set.

Wider reach

Building on the previous point, you can also reach people outside your immediate locale. This is especially useful for products not bound by physical logistics, such as ebooks or coding expertise.

Two-way communication

How would you know if your billboard ad resonates with your audience? Barring the occasional few who’d write in, there’s no real way to gauge your ad’s appeal. With digital marketing, you’ll always be one click away from feedback. This allows you to interact with your customers, or tweak your campaigns as you go.

Business-friendly

What’s neat about digital marketing is that the costs can be tailored exactly to your budget. This makes it much more accessible to smaller businesses as much as it is available to big corporates. Want to limit yours spend to USD5 per day? You can. Want to go all out and blast various forms of content across all platforms? That’s doable too.

Data-driven

All your campaigns’ metrics can be measured, from the exact links your customers click, to how much time they’re spending on your website. With this information, you’ll be able to make better decisions based on your customers’ habits. This ranges from targeting a more relevant audience, to choosing the best visuals for your ads.

Potential vitality

With digital content, there’s always a possibility of going viral. What better way to market your business than to have the world doing it for you? There’s no exact science to going viral, but keep putting out quality content and one of your campaigns is bound to be a share-fest.

Best of Both Marketing

While some people like to take sides in the traditional marketing versus digital marketing debate, it wouldn’t make sense to choose one over the other. They complement each other perfectly, and learning from both sides will only make you a better marketer.

Contributed by Elliot Brown, Digital Marketer, Fitness Fanatic