Social Media vs Traditional Media: Transforming into Digital Marketing

"More than 3.96 Billion are active on social media with 376 millions additions annually."

Social media has changed our lives in many ways. We use applications like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn in our daily lives to stay connected with our friends and remain updated with the current happenings. Around 22% of the world's population currently use facebook and 13.15% are active on Instagram. In the past, traditional media advertising was the way to go to promote your business products and services. However, with half the population live on social media, businesses are reconsidering their promotion ways. Here, in this blog, we will be forming a comparison between traditional and social media marketing and discuss which one’s the way to go for your social media business. 

What is Social Media? 

"Social Media is addictive precisely because it gives us something which the real world lacks: immediacy, meaning, & value as an individual"

Social Media are interactive or web-based applications /platform to create and share content with multiple users with one click. Social media successfully connects the world at one place. The recent statistics show that nearly 3.81 billion people use social media daily from around different continents, and as of July 2020, 51% of the total world population uses social media. 

Social Media marketing refers to a type of marketing that businesses use to promote their products and services across different Social Medias where people can discover them. A research shows that 97& marketers use social media and over 78% people using social media for promotion excel over others who don't. Below are some of the major social media benefits that make it a hit marketing channel:

1. Increases web Traffic

Using social media, you can attract people to your website by sharing links to your blogs, or banners and increase your traffic by tenfold. 

2. Connect with your audience

Using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you can become an active listener to people’s problems and provide a solution to all their problems leading to a better consumer experience. This way, you can connect with your audiences better, and generate trusts in their minds regarding your brand. 

3. Creates Brand awareness

73% marketers believe that social media is an effective place for brand promotion. Through social media marketing, you can easily spread awareness about your products & services to people and make them aware of your brand. 

4. Telling your Brand's story

Social media isn't just a place to promote your products. Engage people with interesting, motivating content such as your brand's story, or something that will surely gain people's attention. Social media is a place where you can establish trust in the minds of your audience. 

5. Provide Exceptional Customer Service

Customers now expect companies to provide quick solutions to their queries or they are quick to form an opinion about you. 

Through social media channels, you can regularly conversate with your customers and build meaningful relationships with them. Answer their queries, doubts, and take their feedbacks regularly. Social Media is one of the best places to form meaningful relations with your customers as you can instantly respond to their doubts and provide them with a robust experience. 

6. Cost-Effective

Promoting your brand on social media is extremely cost-effective as social media ads don’t cost much and offer a better Return on Investment (ROI). A report states that for every $1 spent on ads, businesses make twice the profit in terms of business leads. 

Now, let's take a look at traditional media: 

Traditional media refers to the old media sources such as Newspapers, Television, Radio, Billboards etc. Traditional media communication had been the only source of media in the early 20's. Traditional media can be found everywhere you go: from flashy ads to sales heavy copy. However, all such sources of ads cost a lot of money for rented spaces, ad creations, and more. The main question is: Is it worth it anymore?

Advertisements using Traditional media Marketing 

Traditional media advertising focuses on the traditional media strategy or offline method of marketing by print advertising (magazines, billboards, and newspapers), word of mouth marketing, radio marketing, televisions marketing in which ads are created for a specific brand or company. 

Traditional media communication is still popular. However, we tend to gain all the information from one side and the communication isn't easy as compared to the social media. 

Here are a few benefits of Traditional Sources of Marketing:

• Reaching local audiences easy: Through live advertisements on television, radio, etc, potential customers can be reached easily & effectively. Flyers in the mall, broadcasts over billboards, etc are some other ways through which local audiences can know about your brand easily. 

Another advantage of Traditional Marketing is that your target audience can carry the hard copies of your flyers, magazines, etc with them that can make them think about your product & offerings. 

Traditional Media is reachable all across the place without worrying about internet facilities. They are easier to understand as they have been present for quite a long time and people are habitual of them. 

Social media marketing vs Traditional media marketing: 

The aim of marketing focuses on selling or the promotion of services/products. Social media marketing and traditional marketing, both have two common goals.

#Luring the customers

#Creating brand awareness amongst the audience. 

Here's a comparison between social & traditional Marketing 

1. Comparison based on Reach and cost Creating social media accounts on facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram , snapchat are easy. Social media applications like facebook has over 890 million users on a daily basis, which makes it easier to reach specific target audience. Whereas, traditional marketing requires you to approach a publishing agency to advertise.Traditional Marketing poses problems such as higher costs, one-way advertising and many more complexities in comparison to Social Media Marketing. 

2. Social Media is easier to evaluate 

We can easily find out how many times users clicked on the ad, the number of times it was shared, number of impressions it made, the place or the location that has the most viewers, the amount of times the page has been visited etc. Whereas, it's not easy to figure out these details in traditional marketing. We cannot identify/spot the people watching TV , listening to radio or reading magazines/newspapers. 

3. Social media offers direct communication

The customers can reach the brand/company easily and instantly receive answers to their queries, support etc through social media channels. Meanwhile, in traditional marketing one cannot reach them with a click of a button.  

4. Social media posts can be edited/updated

Another major advantage social media marketing has over traditional marketing is that the posts on social media can be easily modified. However, traditional media like newspaper, once published, cannot be changed. 

5. Feedback: Through social media, you can get quick feedback from your customers Social. However, traditional marketing traditional does not offer such easy advantages to their consumers.  

6. Easy to perform: Social media marketing can be done in one click or immediately whenever you want to. Whereas, traditional marketing media delays the process of promotion due to press timings etc. 

Digital Marketing is a digital means of marketing to build brand awareness and promoting their products & services online through different means. Many people believe that by performing social media marketing, they are completely utilizing all aspects of Digital Marketing. However, Social Media Marketing is just one important channel of Digital Marketing. There are many more components of Digital Marketing, about which we will discuss in detail in another blog. 

If you are looking for a Digital marketing agency in Gurgaon for complete marketing and branding solutions, you can consider Uniworld studios marketing. Our Marketing Agency has become one of the fastest growing marketing giants in Delhi. We are one of the best Social media marketing agency having a team of enthusiastic and trained professionals, working day and night to provide you timely results way beyond your expectations. 

Above was an in-depth comparison between traditional and social media marketing. With changing times, people's preferences in marketing are also changing. Slowly, we have started seeing a huge shift towards online marketing from traditional marketing. However, does it mean that traditional marketing will end? Well, that itself isn't possible, as people are never going to stop watching TV, radios, and reading newspapers, and magazines. It's popularity can reduce, but it can never really end. Social Media, on the other hand is gaining more popularity, more audience, and building more opportunities for business day by day. It is slowly changing the world, and we all witnessing it!

So, which source of marketing do you find more relevant? Comment down your views below. If you liked the blog, share it with your friends.