Traditional Marketing vs Social Media Advertising

Setting up a business and keeping it running is a challenge and no wonder more than 50% of startups crumble within their first five years. You have to create a budget and clear strategies that you should follow. Marketing is an important input for every business irrespective of whether you are starting out or already established. It is through marketing that you market your brand and inform your potential customers what you offer. You can either decide to stick to traditional marketing or move to social media marketing. The following are the main differences between the two.

• Reach

Social media is widely accepted, and Facebook alone has more than 890 million users daily. There are other avenues such as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest as well. You can target a specific group through sponsored Ads and posts in groups. On the other hand, targeting a specific group is hard using traditional marketing. Take for instance when you pay for a TV ad. You are not sure whether potential customers will be watching their TV when the ad plays. It is also hard to target a certain group using billboards and posters.

• Cost

A good business should minimize operating costs to maximize profits. Marketing takes a huge chunk of the budget and thus reduces profits. Paying for a TV ad during prime time news is very expensive. The same applies to a full-page newspaper advertisement. Erecting a billboard and pinning posters can also be costly and not forgetting the negative effect on the environment. However, with social media, you can reach thousands of customers at a fraction of the cost. Most importantly, you can select options where you pay after someone clicks on the Ad.

• Metrics

The essence of marketing is to get more customers to use your products. As such, you should have a way of determining whether a marketing strategy is working out or not. You cannot know whether you have attracted any customers from a newspaper ad. The same applies to billboards and posters. Social media has the perfect tools that you can use to determine conversions. Applications such as HootSuite can generate data on the number of clicks and sales that you make through your ads. With such metrics, you can know the social accounts that bear results and those that do not.

• Interaction

It is worth interacting with customers in this information age. Potential and existing customers need a platform where they can ask questions and seek clarification. Traditional marketing does not offer such a platform. You can only mention your website link or physical address through such marketing. Using social media is totally different. With various social messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Instagram Direct Message, potential clients can chat with you and get instant feedback. Such quick response will quicken decision making and thus registers even quicker sales.

It is quite evident that traditional marketing can limit your business growth due to its shortcomings. You are worried that you do not have what it takes to carry out successful social media campaigns? Do not worry because Delphi Social has got your back!