Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

I didn't start out doing any sort of digital marketing or any marketing at all. My initial background was in software engineering and web design. When I launched Softwired 10 years ago that's really all I did but over the years our services grew as the industry changed.

Learning about Inbound Marketing and how it compares to digital marketing vs traditional marketing has been a journey of hard work and exciting possibilities. Working as a Hubspot partner agency has given me so many insights that I don't know if I ever would have had. Looking back it really occurred to me the difference between the old and new ways of marketing.

Traditional Marketing

In the days before the internet (which wasn't that long ago) businesses would advertise via the media which consisted of TV, radio, newspaper etc. These were strong publishing sources and they cost a lot of money to take up space via channels or media source. The concept revolved around disruption or interrupting people to get attention. The more you interrupted, the better your results. You don't have to look far to see examples of great historical campaigns such as the Budweiser beer commercials or Nike's "Just Do It" campaign.

Costs were expensive because there weren't that many options and a lot of monopolies in place. Look at the costs to advertise in TV commercials or on billboards.The media had total control over the public audience.

Digital Marketing

With the evolution of the internet, space is no longer limited.  Businesses no longer need to pay as much for marketing because attention is easily accessible. One tweet can go viral and create an enormous amount of traffic to your website.

So now advertisers compete for attention and people have little or no tolerance for the same kind of interruptions we used to put up with. Now we have to give value to the user experience to engage and attract new customers.

How does it work?

There are many different ways to execute digital marketing strategies. Our way is to use Inbound Marketing to create a holistic approach to getting more customers from the internet.

Start with your blog

This really starts with creating and sharing great content. Just like this blog post I sat down and wrote, it takes time and experience to generate. But that's not enough. We need to make sure our content is distributed through our social networks to amplify our voice. Once an interested reader visits our website we make sure our opportunities to convert those visitors to leads are optimized. Once these leads are entered into our CRM we nurture those leads with more valuable information to close as a customer.

This is a very simplified explanation of a very complex process that happens behind the scenes. Without going into great detail; if it's done right, we will get you more customers. Done wrong, internet marketing can get you banned from search engines or discredited on social media; both scenarios can be disastrous for a brand.

You may be reading this post just to learn more about digital marketing or you may be reading this post to find a digital marketing agency. Either way, you are looking for answers to solve your pain points. Something is driving all of us to learn more about certain things and this is how we get attention from our audience.

So fundamentally the advertising shift has been going away from annoying distractions to providing answers. This is creating a better experience for all of us. Thank Goodness!

Want to know how your internet marketing looks from a high level? We can give you a free report to show where you are.