There's an ongoing battle between traditional forms of selling and selling using online social media. Both can be useful, as long as you understand their limitations. Today we're going explore the pros and cons of traditional marketing vs. the pros and cons of social marketing. Who will come out on top?
The Pros and Cons of Traditional Marketing
Promoting and selling products or services in the real world, is an age old practice. Traditional marketing includes radio ads, magazine and newspaper ads, television ads and print advertising - like billboards, pamphlets, catalogs and sales materials.
The Pros
• Real world communication. People can touch, feel, hear and interact with this form of marketing. Plus you can't throw parties or host events to promote a product online like you can in the real world.
• Face to face selling. Unlike social marketing, people have the opportunity to meet their salesman face-to-face. A great salesman can sell a lot of products.
The Cons
• It's forced on you. Traditional marketing is usually forced on the viewer, as they come across it in their daily lives. This means that this old school marketing has a very low response rate.
• Lack of community. People don't share a community with the brand, and as a result, they don't care about its promotions. Advertisers spend millions trying to reach people that just don't care enough to act.
The Pros and Cons of Social Marketing
Social marketing is the latest method of buying and selling online. It solves a lot of the problems that traditional advertising has to deal with. That's why it's growing at an alarming rate, and fast becoming the preferred form of marketing.
The Pros
• Much higher conversion ratios. Because all social marketing can be tracked and adjusted, people respond to it more over time. In other words the return on your investment is huge. More people that like you, means more money!
• Community building. Ask any large business person, and they'll tell you that more than half of their income comes from repeat sales. Social marketing builds communities around brands, which drastically increases repeat sales.
The Cons
• Social marketing relies on customers being highly interactive on the internet. If a customer doesn't use the internet often, or at all - you lose them as a client. That's why a certain balance must be achieved.
Traditional VS Social
In a battle for supremacy, traditional marketing is falling further and further behind. But that doesn't mean that it's down and out. Your business still needs real world promotions to succeed. The trick is to spend more on social marketing, now that it's been proven to be more effective!
Strike a good balance between these two forms. The 80/20 rule can apply here as well. Invest in 80% social marketing, and 20% traditional marketing. Keep things in print though - multimedia like videos, are way more lucrative and effective online.
Do you still rely heavily on traditional marketing? Tell us why, in your community comment below!