As a small business entering into a new year, you are likely setting marketing budgets and evaluating ROI (Return on Investments) and marketing effectiveness from the previous year. Setting a marketing budget is extremely important, but deciding the proper medium to spend it is even more so.
Sitting down with any Digital Marketing Agency can leave you questioning if traditional media is still an important element of your marketing strategy at all. Digital Marketing ROI is extremely measurable, reaches audiences that are actively seeking out your services rather than throwing a message to a mass audience and hoping it reaches someone in the market, and digital marketing stretches your dollar way further than traditional media is able to.
With that said, although digital media has an apparent edge, traditional media has not fully gotten the boot! There are still a significant number of people without access to the internet, who are not tech savvy, or simply prefer the traditional form of transactions. So what do you do?
Before we begin, let’s make sure we are on the same page with the difference between traditional and digital marketing. Traditional marketing encompass all “outbound” efforts, meaning it pushes the message OUT to a large audience.
This includes TV, Radio, Print Media, Direct Mail, Billboards, etc. Your digital marketing includes marketing with the use of digital technologies – Computers, Phones, etc. This includes your website presence, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click), Social Media, etc.
As long as consumers are still getting reached through traditional media, we conclude it is a myth that you no longer need traditional marketing in your overall business marketing strategy. Yes, that’s right – we are a digital marketing agency telling you not to fully give up on traditional marketing just yet!
BUT – one very important catch; there needs to be a conjunctive effort between these two very different forms or marketing. Your traditional marketing should always point back to your digital platform. The two need to work together towards the same goal in order to be effective.
You will likely not even find a traditional marketing company that doesn’t offer some sort of digital element to pair with your traditional media buy. Let’s dig into some ways to effectively accomplish integrating digital into your traditional marketing strategy.
Include a push to your website on every form of traditional marketing.
Your website is the brick and mortar store for the online world. Even if your industry is one where online sales is not quite the norm yet, your website still plays a huge part in closing the deal. For example, in the automotive industry, most transactions are still inside the dealership, but customers only visit an average of 1.5 dealerships prior to making their purchase.
They do all of their research on what type of vehicle they want, then research local dealerships, dealership reviews, search through inventory on dealership websites, etc all before they show up on the lot. By the time they show up, they know what they want and know that you have it.
You should include your website URL in a readable format on all traditional media. If you can get them to your website, you can let your website help sell your product or service and get them one step closer in the purchasing funnel.
Consistent Messaging
Use a consistent message across all platforms, both traditional and digital, when launching a campaign. If you are running a TV commercial, run that same spot on Social media, or Youtube ads and launch them to run the same time period as the TV spots.
Depending on the age of your target market, you may want to also consider using streaming commercials. This allows “Cord Cutters” or people electing not to have cable TV at all to still be reached.
Pair Billboards & Events with Geotargeted Ads
Billboards and Event Marketing can still be an effective form of advertising but do not guarantee each driver passing by or person attending the event will take notice of our brand and turn into a customer.
Consider placing Geotargeted ads around your billboards and events so drivers are notified of the same messaging on their mobile devices when passing by.
For more ideas on how to integrate your traditional and digital marketing into your overall marketing strategy, contact Klout9 for a consultation. While our primary focus is digital, we are seasoned in design and providing creative content that works well for all marketing mediums.