How can you choose between digital and traditional media for advertising?

I believe that traditional media still plays an important and key role. The key is looking for ways to ensure that it is integrated as much as possible. While digital does give us much more insight and detail into 'users' behavior TV, radio, print, outdoor, and direct mail which are integrated well with digital will still provide fantastic insights.

Digital media is like the flashy new kid on the block, constantly plugged in and ready to engage with your audience. It's like having a Swiss army knife of marketing tools at your disposal, with analytics that make Sherlock Holmes jealous. Traditional media, on the other hand, is the wise old sage who's been around forever. It's like the trusty family recipe passed down through generations – you know it's reliable and can still whip up a tasty dish. But here's the punchline: it's like choosing between a smartphone and a vintage record player in today's marketing world. Why not have both? Blend the digital dazzle with the classic charm for a marketing mix that's music to your customers' ears!

Understand the limitations and benefits of both traditional and digital media. If a business is local (like a restaurant) traditional media outlets (radio, television) can be utilized with success, but that local biz can also take advantage of social media outlets and create engaging content. If a company is digitally native, then digital over traditional, but this doesn't hold true for a person creating a blog to cover eating establishments in their city. In this instance creating an old school flyer with a QR code will create the best of both worlds especially if the blog has done a great review of a local establishment and that business is interested in highlighting the review. There is no set path. A/B testing is needed at all times.

Both media have a vital role in the public that uses them, which is why the target to be exposed to has to be extremely clear. Considering that today digital media have more reach due to its easy availability to its niche/users, integration with the still-relevant traditional media outlets can always be a great tool that has to be considered into the strategy.

While many will say the expense of traditional media and/or it’s limitations in providing consumer level data make it less desirable, it is a critical component to creating a full funnel strategy to promote your product or service.

In specific fields the traditional media is losing the battle against the digital channels, failing to match the speed of delivery, the reach, the adaptability and the variants of flashy media that deliver the message to targeted audience in a dynamic yet accountable manner.

The biggest differences is that you are able to measure on another level when it comes to digital media. And that you can your call to action must more efficient.

This is a great definition as to what digital and traditional media is! As a marketer who has ran a media planning and buying department, and having worked with multiple brands worldwide, it’s crucial that brands include a good balance of both digital and traditional media when developing integrated campaigns to reach their target audiences - of course, keeping in mind your budget and goals. Together, they help increase engagement and reach. Two points to remember, digital media is great at providing data in real-time, which allows brands to optimize their campaigns in order to achieve the best results. On another hand, traditional media is still in my opinion a credible avenue amongst many people and communities.

In this era of high technology, traditional media and digital media should go hand in hand. In both cases, you need expertise from people or staff that know how to incorporate both.

Traditional media can be used if you have an excellent budget to diversify the channels. However, we must admit that it is the world of digital media. There is a Turkish cosmetics brand which only markets on digital channels and became one of the top 3 brands in the market, surpassing its global competitors in Turkey. So to me, spending on traditional media is only a side dish / nice to have option.

Additionally, digital media helps to understand the thinking and users' behavior through the user journey online. It is beneficial to measure and monitor the funnel of the users through the pipeline until the campaign or action goal, in order to be able to notice which specific step of the journey is most fragile. That could help marketers or specialists to do little changes in order to improve or test the funnel step. What I've noticed is that sometimes little to no expenses such as minor changes in the funnel step could improve results immensely helping to achieve the desired goal.

Digital media is like a budget-friendly unicorn in the marketing realm. It's cost-effective magic that lets you adjust your spells (budget) in real-time for maximum enchantment (ROI). But wait, there's more! It's also like having X-ray vision for your campaigns. You can see who's looking at your ads, clicking them, and turning into loyal minions (customers). And the pièce de résistance? It's like hosting a virtual circus where your audience watches the show and joins in as clowns, acrobats, and fire-breathers. Your brand becomes the ringmaster, and the crowd can't get enough. In short, digital media isn't just marketing; it's a whimsical, spellbinding, and downright absurd adventure for your brand. 🦄🔮🎪

Additionally, digital media allows for one to take a more agile approach to their campaign using not just real time data but also real world events. For example, when COVID impacted consumers lives, digital media components and content was able to quickly shift messaging to stay relevant with minimal loss of investment. The same cannot be said for traditional media.

The most important consideration is understanding your target audience and how they use digital media. How do they interact with digital media? What types of digital media do they use? Are they engaged actively or passively with digital media? These questions inform the ways that it can be used for each unique campaign. Identify the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) upfront, so that you can reliably measure success. While digital media is extremely ubiquitous, there actually ARE audiences with limited usage of digital media.

Digital media enables business be more effective and precise in communication and targeting. One of the positive sides is that during ongoing campaigns, while watching the live results, its easy and flexible to modify or make changes in the placement strategy. As more tools of digital media you use, as more insights and feedbacks you get from end user which eventually affects your business success rate

There are challenges to consider carefully when engaging digital media marketing: over saturation; ad fatigue; privacy concerns; accurate data analysis; inaccurate targeting; diminishing attention spans; constant digital evolution; and heavy platform dependency. But with thoughtful strategies to address these issues, digital marketing still has the potential to reach further and wider relevant audiences than not.

Digital media can be like trying to stand out at a noisy party – crowded and competitive. It's also like solving a complex puzzle with various scattered pieces, and the risk of annoying your audience is ever-present due to ad fatigue, ad blockers, and privacy rules. While digital media offers tremendous opportunities, it comes with hurdles that can make your marketing journey a bit like navigating an obstacle course.

The challenges and drawbacks to digital media is the cost factor, over saturation of a market, ad fatigue and privacy concerns, inaccurate data, ad blockers and many more. The drawbacks are also that targeting could not always be accurate if there is no consumer data to work from. Another drawback is the cost to conversion that needs to be factored when reporting the success of such a form of marketing.

Some target groups will use a lot more time on traditional media than they will use on digital media. You must make a customer journey to solve this.

The biggest benefits are scale and impact. Traditional broadcast media, along with OOH, can provide both scale and impact. And don't forget about print, where you can target people based on their interests and lifestyles. If your strategic research indicates that the target audience consumes print, then identify their lifestyle and interests. There are still viable print vehicles that can be effective at building awareness in a targeted manner. For example, if your audience likes to golf, and is over 45 years old, there's a good chance golf magazines are worth consideration! Magazines also have a lot of information about their readers. Do your homework to find the right titles!

Traditional media also still holds a powerful share of earned media outlets. Earned media is a mention of a product, service, or campaign that you haven’t paid to place. An effective public relations campaign can target traditional print, television, and radio news outlets, which are often still viewed as unbiased third parties. Favorable earned media mentions are harder to get, but can be exponentially more valuable than paid media.

Traditional media is like the veteran of advertising, with the power to reach a diverse audience and leave a lasting impression. It complements digital efforts, allowing large-scale advertising, enhancing brand credibility, and driving traffic to your online platforms. In essence, it's the timeless ally in your marketing toolkit. And some traditional ads are more memorable - look at some of the Barbie campaign ads done in real life. Think of cinema or theatre posters that make you stop for a bit.

I quit my job for a year to start an ice cream brand. I learned more about marketing during that year than in the previous few. Why? Because traditional methods put you in almost direct contact with your ICP! You can learn so much from standing in person in front of someone, about their faces and expressions while testing your product. And is not only for food! you can have a small table outside a mall and get people to spend 3-5 minutes with you listening to your pitch or directly testing your digital product. This is more valuable than sending a $20 amazon card for their time (bribery 😜)

Traditional media has drawbacks, starting with the upfront cost – it's like buying a luxury car. Unlike digital campaigns, once your ads are out, they're hard to change. You also have less control over tracking and rely on estimates. Amid the noise, it's like conversing at a crowded party where people often tune out. Ad skipping and avoidance can further reduce your impact. In a nutshell, while a veteran, traditional media comes with fixed costs, limited flexibility, and less control compared to the digital advertising playground. In the era of split-testing useless small details, checking on your ad spend and having no control over anything in the marketing department, losing even more power is... meh.

In addition to the out-of-pocket cost, lack of timely flexibility, and unique messaging considerations, the difficulty in tracking is the biggest drawback. Careful understanding of your target audience's media consumption is the first priority when determining the media mix. If research indicates that the audience consumes traditional media, and if it matches your objectives (best for awareness), then proceed knowing that it will be very difficult to measure. Brand impact studies can be done, but they are very expensive. It's critical to understand the objectives of the advertising, the audience media consumption, and how it will be measured.

The biggest drawbacks with traditional media is the lack of data you're able to extract from it (unless, of course, you're combining traditional with your digital mix). In a silo, traditional media won't give you the user data you need to inform your overall integrated strategy. But when used together, you can gain awareness in areas that you wouldn't have been able to reach otherwise and drive large amounts of traffic to a designated LP for testing assets/messaging.

It's important to note that classifying mediums as 'traditional' and 'non-traditional' shouldn't distract marketers and lead to the creation of silos within the marketing team. While this does not undermine the need for digital specialists, you just need to define roles appropriately to integrate marketing communication efforts. At the end of the day, it's important to remember that the only medium that matters is what your target audience consumes.

The choice comes down to 3 factors.. 1. The product 2. The story you want to communicate 3. The context (medium/format/message) which will make the most impact on consumers What is sometimes missed is that certain combinations of these three factors just don’t work on certain media. TV, Print, OOH, Cinema etc just cannot be ignored for the emotions they can elicit and what that can do for memory structures over the long term. And for all its clutter and ephemerality, sometimes digital just helps you cut right to the point and in some cases a direct sale which traditional media just cannot compete with. So the choice needs to be made accordingly.

The balance between digital and traditional media varies depending on industry, target audience, goals, and budget. Digital media allows more flexible budget adjustments, based on real-time tracking. Develop an integrated media strategy that leverages the strengths of both digital and traditional media. Use traditional media for broad awareness and digital media for targeted engagement and conversion. Continuously monitoring and optimizing the strategy helps maintain an effective balance over time.

The balance is key. It is no longer an either or between traditional and digital media. Digital is good for real time tracking and getting conversions. Traditional media enables better brand building and awareness. Long term impact is more in Traditional media. And of course you need to see different cohorts and what works for whom.

Please forget the "balance" idea. Follow what your audience wants and where you can get the best results. Don't fall into just KPIs, but think about the quality of, let's say, leads. When difficult to measure, asses risks. If you have yet to learn how a Brand Awareness campaign will work on the TV, radio or IG, choose a platform where you have more control and access. Spend less time focusing on what is a traditional media/channel, how conventional or digital it is, but rather focus on the work itself. If your whole marketing department works as one, getting results becomes much more accessible than one team working against the other.

Effective outreach comes down to understanding your target audience. Is the digital infrastructure in place to support online engagement? Consider remote locations where digital infrastructure remains limited. Here, traditional media will be the best avenue to communicate. For those with connectivity, its important to address their digital accessibility needs to ensure your audience can navigate through your messaging and understand it.

To me both can still go together especially in a society where there's no much digital presence. In a third world societies traditional advertising is still the order of the day. Also if digitalisation fails we fall back to the tradition.

People do not live in the matrix, they are exposed to real life all the time. A car ride, a walk, radio, the mall, etc. The same way you look into the digital "journey" of your ICP, look at their real life journey. You do have enough info to figure what they do outside the internet, and many times, traditional marketing can be cheaper than digital campaigns. Create a jingle for your brand. Have a billboard done Do an activation at a mall Create a pop-up store on a busy street. All of these can be easily combined and provide an endless source of content for your digital approach. So instead of creating a "good looking" Canva post for your SoMe, get out on the street, and record people having fun and enjoying what you are selling!!

My biggest advice: Don't focus too much on media naming; focus on the audience and your desired results. The results/type approach allows you to move more freely in marketing. And if you are unsure of your position in the marketing world (or your skills), aim for traditional media projects. It is much more difficult to asses what you have done wrong, how much money you wasted, and how much time went into the wrong bucket.

Other things to consider is the age of your desired target audience and if they are more open to digital or traditional. For example, it does not help having an older target market who isn't using social media and then marketing on social media. It would be better to use traditional media to capture their attention. It is important ever factor of existing target audience data is studied and used when planning which form of media to use.

The split between Digital & Traditional advertising is increasingly an unhelpful one and it doesn't reflect where consumer behaviour, media and effectiveness is going. Digital vs. Traditional is often more useful to budgeting exercises or team building than it is to marketing. The core to modern advertising is to come up with a strategy and direction that follows audience behaviour - which increasingly is a combination of both of these. Everything will be a mix of the type of channels strategically, financially and organizationally available to you. Choosing to only use digital or traditional channels is the wrong decision to make and increasingly limits no matter what you choose.

In addition to my outlined responsibilities, I emphasize fostering innovation. Encouraging open dialogue has led to creative solutions, like a campaign pivot that exceeded expectations. Staying attuned to trends through continuous learning ensures our brand strategies remain relevant. I'm committed to blending structured management with a culture of adaptability and growth.

Now more than ever, these two ways of advertising marry up better than ever. Traditional media can encourage people to visit pages that can then get potential consumers through the funnel by remarketing techniques. Consumers spend more time in the real world as they do in the digital and therefore traditional media can also help provide cohesive brand experience for the consumer. Performance on digital platforms can provide quick feedback that can then be used to adapt the messaging on traditional media. QR codes allow for a seamless transition from traditional to digital platforms. So now you can measure more with traditional media types and merge the immediacy of digital interaction with the tactile engagement of traditional media.