Digital marketing differs from traditional marketing in a variety of ways, ranging from marketing channels to performance effectiveness metrics. Marketing channels present the most obvious dissimilarity – as the name suggests, marketing via digital mode may involve the use of promotional e-mails, online applications, social media accounts, and pop-up advertisements (Lawrence et al., 2018). In contrast, traditional marketing activities rely on older methods, including TV, radio, billboards, printed flyers, etc. (Bala & Verma, 2018; Lawrence et al., 2018). Digital marketing is unique in terms of performance measurement since the calculations of page views and bounce rates are performed easily when it comes to online ads (Bala & Verma, 2018). This information offers valuable insights into the audience’s engagement, but traditional ads cannot be analyzed in the same manner.
The growth of digital marketing has reduced but not destroyed the importance of traditional marketing. Compared to traditional methods, digital advertising efforts are more cost-effective, allow quicker responses to trends, offer precision in targeting, and provide vast opportunities for tracking target clients’ behaviors (Lawrence et al., 2018). However, they do not replace traditional channels since the latter still offer greater exposure to services/products and can create tangible items that clients look through at a convenient time (Lawrence et al., 2018). In the Share a Coke campaign, Coca-Cola achieved success by using both traditional posters and encouraging clients to personalize their bottles online and create social media content using a corresponding hashtag (Vincent & Kolade, 2019). Another example is the Like a Girl campaign by Always, in which the company combined TV ads, YouTube videos, and social media hashtags (Åkestam et al., 2017). Using them, the company promoted a change in thinking about gender differences while reaffirming its market position. In both campaigns, digital techniques were critical to success since they encouraged the exchange of experiences on social media, thus effectively supplementing traditional methods that would not allow such opportunities.
References
Åkestam, N., Rosengren, S., & Dahlen, M. (2017). Advertising “like a girl”: Toward a better understanding of “femvertising” and its effects.Psychology & Marketing, 34(8), 795-806. Web.
Bala, M., & Verma, D. (2018). A critical review of digital marketing. International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering, 8(10), 321-339.
Lawrence, S., Deshmukh, S., & Navajivan, E. (2018). A comparative study of digital marketing vs. traditional marketing. IIBM’S Journal of Management Research, 3(1-2), 112-121.
Vincent, E., & Kolade, A. (2019). Persuasive communication: Semiotic analysis of “Share-a-coke” advertising campaign. World Journal of Innovative Research, 7(2), 1-6.