Traditional vs Digital: The Marketing Race

Digital vs Traditional...is one better than the other? Or are there advantages to both that will allow them to always co-exist? Lets take a closer look.

There always changing

Its important to note that both are always evolving and advertising is constantly changing. The way we advertise to consumers changes every decade accordingly to the new technologies. Technology influences how the masses consume advertising. There was a time where people just expected a simple ad on radio or in the newspaper, now 84% of people expect brands to create content, with visual being of the most important.  The feedback loop is malleable, it changes and so does advertising methods. 

Just because a marketing or advertising method is the meta now, it doesn't mean it still will be in a few years from now. 

One of the benefits of capitalism is that it will never let innovation die. Social media is too good of an example to miss, it changed how we live our lives, consume and interact with news. 

Advertising follows the wave and when 45% of the worlds population is on social media  you can expect brands to perhaps put more of their eggs in the digital basket. 

Traditional marketing will still have its cake

It would be ignorant to neglect the fact that marketing to a population over the age of 65 still requires the use of traditional methods. Social media use decreases from the current generation. Whilst 90.4% millennials use social media, it is quite substantial in comparison to baby boomers who sit at 48.2%. Different generational segments simply equates to a difference in how you market. 

You want to reach a mature audience? Your probably more inclined to use traditional methods with newspapers, TV and so on. Traditional methods perhaps have the benefit of targeting groups of people with more purchasing power. 

Older and mature audiences who consumer traditional methods have more ability to spend over younger audiences who predominately consumer digital channels. 

Traditional marketing campaigns can appeal to a different group of people and therefore produce results you may not get exclusively using digital methods. 

So what's better?

Well, like most things...it depends. The devil is in the details. Do you want to target an older mature audience? then traditional methods are probably ideal. Digital methods will target younger audiences more sufficiently. 

It also depends on your strategy. You may want to minimize costs and therefore use only a selection of methods from either traditional or digital channels. 

Perhaps as society progresses we may see more dominance for digital methods and declining use for traditional. Again though and at this current time. It depends on who your audience is and the market itself. 

But for now, we need both. Simply put the market is diversified with so many different niches that its hard to just prioritise one method over the other.

What do you think? Will digital overhaul traditional one day or is it here to stay?