It seems like digital advertising is all the rage today with everybody advising businesses to incorporate digital advertising into their advertising plans. That’s because digital advertising is just far too good to pass up and you’d be foolish not to trust in its ability to help your business grow and your brand gets more exposure. Digital advertising offers some serious advantages in terms of its low cost, easy targeting, and vast reach across international borders. With all these benefits, it’s created a situation where digital advertising seems the clear winner in almost every advertising situation, positioning traditional advertising as a lackluster option that few businesses consider in today’s business landscape. Yet, the best combination is to use both digital and traditional advertising.
Connected consumers, a group that grows all the time, often employ multiple screens in conjunction. Thus, they may watch a TV screen while scanning their Facebook feed on a mobile device or even a laptop. See below to learn more about connected consumers.
Thus, traditional advertising never went away and still accounts for up to 50% of all advertising spend in most businesses and still dominates in some industries. Thus, traditional advertising is set to make a surprising comeback; fueled by a global obsession with digital advertising. With so much attention focused on digital promotions and campaigns, traditional advertising found itself a niche that still contributes to long-term success, especially when combining the two channels into a cohesive strategy.
Advertising strategies
Advertising is but one tool available to businesses who want the reach their customers and prospective customers. Advertising drives purchase through a process called AIDA; focusing on driving down customers from awareness to purchase and beyond to become repeat customers.
The old adage that “if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door” is simply hogwash. First, you must tell your market about your wonderful new mousetrap then convince them the product is indeed better than all other mousetraps produced to date. That’s advertising and, whether you use digital or traditional advertising (or some combination, as we suggest), you need to build a sound advertising strategy to be successful.
In the US, yearly expenditures on advertising across all brands were approximately $263 billion last year, with about 54% representing spend on digital advertising.
To effectively market your brand, your advertising must have sufficient reach and frequency. Reach refers to the amount of your target market that you’re able to contact with your messaging. Frequency refers to the average number of times each member of your target market sees your advertising. For effectiveness, you must reach most of your target market at least 5 to 7 times. Lower frequencies are a waste of money, in most cases, and reaching folks who aren’t part of your target market is wasteful, as well.
Combining digital and traditional advertising
Advertising isn’t an either-or option where you have to put all of your money into digital or traditional advertising. Combining digital and traditional advertising may be your best strategy. If you have a small budget, you may have to choose only one strategy as a means to achieve desired frequency levels. That means choosing the option where you can reliably reach your target market.
Using a combination of digital and traditional advertising provides the greatest benefits when you have a sufficiently large budget. Think about all the ways you can reinforce your messaging across the two fundamentally different channels. And if you can’t think of some great ways to combine them, will share some of our best ideas below.
Find ways to integrate digital and traditional advertising
Traditional advertising faces a lot of competition from digital advertising. However, the real winners are the companies that are able to mix both forms of advertising in a seamless fashion; building on the notion of integrated advertising communication. As a company that appeals to a broad audience, it’s essential that you don’t overlook the importance of using both digital and traditional advertising to reach the most people.
A great example of this is adding QR codes to traditional print media. This is quite common now because phones come with built-in QR code scanners that don’t require the user to download another app. QR codes make it very easy for someone to scan a code on a traditional piece of advertising you created, such as a magazine article or brochure, then access your website for more details or even special offers. QR codes mean visitors find landing pages related to your promotion without having to first visit your homepage, resulting in frustration when visitors don’t immediately find your offer.
The advertising strategy can go in the other direction, as well. For instance, you might offer more information in the form of a glossy brochure rather than an email or free trial products via your website. Both require snail mail, part of traditional advertising.
Advertising options such as television still represent great value when used correctly
You might think that TV commercials cost a lot of money, but you can find great packages of TV ads on many cable networks; sometimes as low as $5 per spot. In comparison to expensive sponsorship deals and social media campaigns, you can actually get a great deal if you work with the right video production team and advertisers.
The value of traditional advertising is especially true if you consider your audience. There are some people that are far more likely to see your advertisement on television than on the internet, and some audiences find it easier to remember your brand through television advertisements. Also, if your brand has vast numbers of potential buyers, TV advertising, with its cost per thousand reached of $36, is much less expensive than digital strategies.
It’s always a good idea to consider the benefits of television when it comes to the overall cost of your advertising campaigns. If there are cost-effective traditional advertising options available, you should always give them due consideration. Including traditional advertising is also extremely important if your audience is a little older or less tech-savvy, meaning they’re more likely to see your brand on traditional mediums as opposed to the internet,
Don’t forget that your audience could still rely heavily on traditional advertising
Reliance on traditional advertising depends on the type of business you operate and your target market, but it’s a good idea to remember that there are a large number of people that still rely on traditional advertising as their main form of exposure to different brands. For local businesses, low-cost advertising options reaching local homes are a very cost-effective advertising method when creating awareness. Print advertising is also great when you consider that customers want to bring a coupon with them when shopping in physical stores or getting estimates for home repairs and maintenance.
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