Editor’s note: “Digital Marketing 101” is a periodical column covering everything under the sun about digital marketing. Come up with the hardest question and leave it in the comments section. You might just see our answer in the next #DigitalMarketing101 post!
In this digital age, technology has revolutionised the way businesses reach and interact with their customers. To get their message across to the right customers and to the right channels, business owners have increasingly spent their marketing efforts on Facebook, Instagram, Google, Influencer marketing and more.
Digital and traditional marketing have the same bowl of goals but very different approaches. The latter focuses on making use of tangible items such as billboards, business cards, and print ads in magazines and newspapers. But with Digital marketing, the 5 key differences are:
1. Digital takes advantage of mobile devices
With the power of mobile devices and its apps, it is so much easier to promote greater interaction with your audience through videos on Youtube, creating ads on Facebook that targets people already interested in the topic, and posting high quality visual content on Instagram since humans are visual beings. Over 65% of an interaction with an ad is now on mobile devices! Just imagine, if you do not have a mobile-friendly digital asset, you are literally missing out on 65% of your audience! So if there is one thing that you take away from this post, is that you need to start taking advantage of this growing trend, and ride the wave of growing users taking action on their mobile devices.
2. Digital works with our short attention span
When was the last time you picked up a newspaper? That wall of text and lack of interaction is a huge turn-off for an average audience member today. Digital also plays to an even shorter attention span of younger generations. Passengers no longer watch the view through the car window, they either take a nap or face their phone. Today, people would spend more time checking their social media accounts than watching TV commercials and listening to the radio. It’s time to go bite-sized with digital.
3. Unbounded by geographical limits
Digital follows people everywhere they go (not physically limited to a billboard at a bus stop). By subtly leaving an impression on your audience’s Facebook news feed, Instagram stories, YouTube in-stream video and more, your audience are slowly by surely subconsciously developing trust and rapport with your brand. This is very powerful in the medium- to long-term, as it would evolve into loyal customers generating sales through conversion marketing campaigns.
4. Retargeting has never been more powerful
After warming up your lead with multiple ads on your product & service, retargeting these warm leads will always deliver the best marketing ROI. If it were traditional marketing, you will be unable to pinpoint this group of warm leads and you will not have the analytical tools to accurately calculate your marketing ROI. With proper integration of tracking codes (Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics) digital marketers can now show the same ad (add a promo to entice your audience further!) and increase the chances of converting an already warm lead! With all that data, digital marketing campaigns can now be data driven and based on the assurance that you remain profitable, something that’s almost impossible to do if it a traditional channel (like an ad on television).
5. Go with the trend, not against it
With Digital, the odds are also in your favour. According to statistics, there are 3.16 million users of Facebook in Singapore alone and 2.27 billion monthly active users worldwide, and those figures are only growing every year. By putting your content out on the internet today, you significantly increase your brand reach and awareness to an audience size that traditional marketers could only previously dream of!
Having said that, I’m definitely not shaming or putting down traditional marketing. It is important to consider your business goals, objectives, target audience, and go-to-market strategy. Building a business, and marketing your products & services is never a one-size-fits-all activity. Just remember that at the end of the day, getting people’s attention is always the key. And with that note, I leave you with online marketing rockstar Gary Vaynerchuk’s wise words
“Attention is what we are all trading”
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