Traditional Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing and the Best Strategies to Move Forward
Between Internet marketers and online brand managers, everybody’s harping on the bells and whistles of the newest kid in the Internet Marketing block. Granted, it isn’t entirely new it’s been with us for the better part of the decade but social media marketing hasn’t really picked up the pace until the Web 2.0 Revolution a few years back.
But how does social media marketing differ from more traditional forms of marketing? Exactly how do you use it to achieve your business goals? How do you make money out of it?
The short answer is you don’t.
Now, for the long answer…
Understanding Traditional Marketing
Anybody who has ever designed it fit to splash their brand names on their local papers or the yellow pages (if you’re under 18 and you’re reading this, go ask your parents about them) will tell you upfront that the costs of traditional marketing are enormous.
For a few square inches of space, you can haggle with your local broadsheets and it’ll cost you somewhere near an arm or a leg. If your ambition revolves around the radio and broadcast persuasion, you can be absolutely sure they’re going to charge you your wives or children.
Still, these big media firms (and the advertising agencies who conveniently occupy the space in between) can guarantee you the results. This is probably one of the biggest advantages of traditional marketing over social media marketing. The sales do happen and they do happen quite quickly.
Equally important, is that when it comes to marketing your brand using traditional media like radio, TV and your local newspapers the interest you generate isn’t likely to dissipate quickly. Depending on who’s working on your branding, there’s a good chance that the logos, jingles and icons you create will stay with your audience for a long time.
Still, traditional marketing (or at least, how it’s gone for the past few decades) has a couple of screamingly huge gaps in its seemingly impregnable armor. First, the approach is linear. There are no reciprocal relationships; there is almost next to no interaction going on. Brand X hawks Product Y to User Z; and that’s it.
Second, the results of traditional marketing methods are vague and abstract. There are no clear-cut ways to measure its effectiveness. At best, we’re left with intelligent estimates or approximations but we’ve no idea where and how we’re winning over the customers and making sales. Some advertising agencies won’t even quote the exact number of viewers in a given location, per a given time slot.
Enter social media marketing.
Looking over Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has taken over as the new word of mouth. And just as we’ve all been taught in business school, there’s no better advert than a kind word from a friend or a good referral from a trusted colleague. Marketing via the social media works in roughly the same manner. Businesses engage users directly. These users, in turn, share your content with their friends or families.
With social media marketing, you’re looking to create a dynamic relationship between your business and your potential customers; here there’s genuine give-and-take of information. Now how many radio ads can say they’re actually interactive?
Now time isn’t something small business owners can spare. These groups of people operate in a world view where time is money they’ll never earn. And from our experiments and our experience, social media marketing is a very time-consuming ordeal.
There are plenty of resources out there to help you pick out the best social media marketing strategies for your brand or business. There are even free books and courses on the matter but then, that’s time you’ll be spending learning the ropes and time away from running your business.
Social media marketing starts at the ridiculously low, low price of free. If you absolutely know what you’re doing, making a sale or at least generating leads isn’t really difficult. It just becomes a question of time.
Still, this approach does come with a fat, yellow warning sticker: The results of your efforts tend to dissipate quite quickly. Just take a look at how quickly your Facebook timeline, your Twitter feed and your Pinterest boards refresh. Your content, unless it’s extremely shareable, will quickly be consigned to the mercy of the refresh button.
However, when you build your brand or business using the social media, the results are measurable. You’ll have access to tools and methods to show you how people are reacting to your business on a very direct and personal level. If you absolutely know what you’re doing, you’ll see where and how the clicks are coming to your website. You’ll know which parts are hot and which aren’t.
You can even measure how you’re doing against your competition, down to the nth decimal place. From there, you can adjust your business accordingly something that’s clearly lacking from traditional marketing methods.
How to Build a Brand, Moving Forward
Theoretically, you can build a brand or business around social media marketing. Our early experiments suggest it’s possible but it’s nowhere near practicable. You see, the social media is a living, breathing organism. It changes by the hour, sometimes by the minute. The trends and patterns do emerge but the social media can’t exist in a vacuum.
Over the years, we’ve had clients who insist on pursuing building a presence online via the social media. These are the people we almost always decline in the long run. That’s because no matter how effective it is as the new word of mouth, social media marketing cannot exist without traditional marketing.
Sure that day will come, but for now traditional marketing still has a lot to teach the new kid on the block. Moving forward, the best way to build a brand is to move from strength to strength. Come up with a strong brick-and-mortar campaign and tie that up with an aggressive presence online.
In fine, here are a few things you need to know about the differences between social media and traditional marketing and the best way to move forward:
1. Traditional marketing is largely hit and miss and it’s extremely expensive when you think of the number of people you reach. However, the results are almost instantaneous. When it rains, it pours.
2. Social media marketing is relatively inexpensive and the cost per million of impressions is a steal. However, you’ll want to put in the time to learn how it’s done and once you’re in, never let your foot off the gas.
3. The social media is a very jealous mistress that can’t exist in a vacuum. She thrives when combined with an equally aggressive brick-and-mortar campaign and sound, sustainable search engine optimization practices. That is how you build a brand, moving forward.
Have I missed anything? Ask your questions or share your experiences in the comments below.
__________________________
About the Author: Between planning weddings and chasing pavements, Shandi Tan works as a Community Manager for Pulyetos.com, the premiere hub for social media marketing strategies in the Philippines. For more practical tips on how you can capitalize on the social media, you’ll want to take a look at this.