Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing vs Direct Marketing
Similar but with subtle, and important, differences, do you know what kind of marketing approach gets the best results?
Closely related, these two terms refer to similar methods of achieving greater brand awareness and delivering more customers but there some subtle differences.
We take a quick look at what separates these two advertising techniques and find out some of the benefits that digital marketing has over a more traditional approach.
What is Direct Marketing?
Also known as direct response marketing, direct marketing is a method for advertising in which the customer is communicated with directly. Usually this is via targeted television adverts, text messaging, cold-calling or through mailshot promotions.
Advertising agencies can also use traditional print media in newspapers and magazines or display advertising such as posters, banners etc.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to the practice of using any form of marketing in which the principle media is digital. Primarily, this relates to online marketing using the internet but can also incorporate mobile phones and other formats.
Digital marketing can take the form of targeted (and direct) marketing through the use of geo-targeting for display adverts, pop-ups and campaign advertising.
Digital marketing also covers the very specific methods of capturing traffic through search engine optimisation and content marketing as well as social media marketing and social media optimisation.
Digital marketing is a powerful and instantaneous way to reach your audience.
Benefits of Digital Marketing over Direct Marketing
Digital marketing offers businesses and organisations a fast and effective way to reach large audiences. Not only that but the success (or failures) of any digital marketing is far easier to quantify using powerful analytics to accurately measure performance.
Digital marketing not only offers the traditional benefits of increasing brand visibility, generating additional customers and creating loyalty and trust but it can also help you to:
- Engage directly with your audience and develop relationships.
- Help build credibility within your industry.
- Keep your customers informed.
- Provide extra value to your customers.
The reporting that comes along with digital marketing is also exceptionally powerful to be able to keep track of your performance with the competition. Together with other management reporting, these insights can inform critical decisions that could gain you a significant advantage in the marketplace.
Digital Marketing: A Strategy for Success
Delivering a powerful and impactful digital marketing strategy is all about research and planning.
The first thing that your business must do is to identify the objectives you want to achieve and establish some KPIs by which you can monitor the progress of your campaigns.
Next, you will need to take stock of any existing data you have on previous campaigns and marketing exercise so you can learn from your successes and avoid making any of the same mistakes again (if there were any!)..
Get your message heard by more people using digital marketing.
Now for the important part; identifying your audience and understanding what they want. Market analysis is a vital step in achieving the highest levels of success for your digital marketing campaign. Those businesses that remember the customer is at the heart of what they do will fare far better than those that forget this rule.
Then comes the nitty gritty stage; how much money and time you can commit to your endeavours and where this will be spent. Forming the meat on the bones of your strategy will take some specialist knowledge from a digital marketing agency with expertise in:
- On Page and Off Page SEO
- Content Marketing
- PPC & Paid Advertising
- Local SEO
- Inbound Marketing
- PR and Blogger Outreach
- Multimedia Marketing such as YouTube, Infographics etc.
Finally, once you have your plan in place, be prepared not to stick to it. One of the key ingredients to success in this fields is being adaptive and responsive to change.
Opace and Digital Marketing
A specialist agency based in Birmingham, Opace works with clients to ensure that their digital strategy is delivering results. From content creation and SEO consultancy to design and marketing, we offer some of the most effective services to guarantee your business an online boost.
To find out more about how we can deliver more traffic, engage users and increase visibility contact us today.
Image credits: Pixabay/typography images, Pexels, and Mohamed_Hassan/Pixabay
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