Marketing is such an important part of a business that can never be ignored. A good businessman will always keep a separate budget only for marketing. The main motto of the companies is to reach a large number of audiences and make them buy the services and products. To accomplish this motto, you will have to make use of the most valuable marketing resources and technologies. The Internet can reach a mass audience, which is why digital marketing is preferred by most of the companies today. Digital marketing leads to horizontal communication, which means customers get to interact with brand marketers and provide their feedbacks. It also helps the marketers to know about customer's needs, which enables them to modify the product or the service according to the consumer's requirements. Digital marketing services such as emails, chats, social media, and Websites, etc., help you to promote your business. The main reasons why digital marketing is preferred over traditional marketing are its affordability, its reach to the global audience, quicker publicity, etc. But it does not mean that you should avoid traditional marketing as it is more personal, which targets the local audience as well. In this article, you are provided with the description of what is traditional marketing, what is digital marketing, what are the benefits of digital marketing, and how does it work.

What is traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is a broad category that includes many forms of marketing and advertising. The availability of digital marketing has somehow lowered the importance of traditional marketing, but it has not completely faded yet. There are four categories of traditional marketing services, and those are print, broadcast, direct mail, and telephone.

• Print Marketing: This is the oldest form of traditional marketing. It means advertising in paper form. Since ancient times, businesses have been using this tactic to reach out to the audience.
• Broadcast marketing:Radio and television advertisements are the two components used by Broadcast marketing to gain the attention of the listeners and viewers, respectively. Specific budgets are allocated by the companies for TV and radio advertising.
• Direct mail marketing:In direct mail marketing, businesses send postcards, letters, or other types of promotional materials to the clients or the potential customers so that they get attracted to the product or service.
• Telephone marketing: Telephone marketing is a type of traditional marketing where the clients are contacted using a phone or video conference, and the brand marketer sells products and services on the call itself. It is more engaging and helps marketers to convince the customers easily.

Most of the businesses still prefer to use traditional marketing to promote their products and services because it allows them to reach local audience easily, it's easy to understand, it is more personal and has a high and proven success rate.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a very big term that includes the channels and methods you could use to promote products and services on the Internet. It utilizes multiple channels such as content marketing, SEO, online advertisements, Social media, email marketing, etc. to help brand marketers to connect with their customers.

• Website marketing:Website marketing plays a significant role in digital marketing as a website makes the first impression in the target market. The content, layout, or in short the appearance of the website should be very attractive, and if it is not, people will stop engaging with the website.
• Search engine optimization: Search engine optimization plays a vital role in how digital marketing works. It is the way of optimizing your website's content so that it appeals to the search engines. The target is to rank higher on the results page of the search engine so that it increases the visibility in your target audience.
• Content marketing: It is one of the most important tactics in how digital marketing works. Content marketing is done by businesses to create and promote content assets to attract target customers. There are many reasons to create these content assets, such as to generate brand awareness, increase traffic, etc.
• Social media marketing: Social media marketing is used by the brands to promote their digital marketing campaigns and to increase traffic to their website. It promotes your content using social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
• PPC advertising:PPC (pay per click) means to pay the ad publisher whenever a new lead clicks on your ad. This helps your business to gain new visibility by putting your site at the top of the search engine results page. A wise businessman should never ignore PPC ads.
• Email marketing:Email marketing again plays a fruitful role in the functioning of digital marketing. Branded emails are used by companies to communicate with target customers more quickly and easily. It helps in increasing brand awareness, promoting events, etc. Unlike direct mail marketing, you don't have to know the full address of the person.

One of the best things digital marketing offers is the two-way communication process where the consumers are allowed to provide their feedbacks or raise their queries related to any product or service. The basic difference between digital and traditional marketing is that its campaigns are executed using digital platforms which give marketers more tools, control, and data to analyze the campaign's effectiveness.

How has digital marketing taken over traditional marketing?

Digital marketing, nowadays, has become tremendously popular and is dominating the traditional marketing. It has expanded and enhanced the tactics of traditional marketing using the flexibility and popularity of the internet. Below are some benefits of digital marketing, which will make you understand why it has taken over traditional marketing:

• Reach a huge amount of potential customers: If you use traditional marketing to reach the audience, it will never cover as much audience as digital marketing will. Take an example of a newspaper advertisement, it will not go outside the newspaper's publishing radius, but digital marketing ensures to spread your advertisement throughout the country and even internationally.
• The horizontal flow of communication: When you use traditional marketing, you are forcing your information on people which does not allow them to discuss anything about the product or service. Digital marketing provides you with the two-way communication process, which can be used by the customers to raise their concerns regarding the product or the service.
• More cost-effective: If you make use of traditional marketing services such as radio, newspapers, etc., it will cost you a hefty sum of money. While digital marketing is comparatively way too cheaper and provides you with better results as well, so there is no point in investing such a huge amount of money when cheaper and more effective results can be accessed so easily.
• Track the status of your marketing: When you use traditional marketing to promote your product or service, you don't get to know the feedbacks at all. But when you use digital marketing, you can gather the exact number of people who engaged with your content. It makes it easier for businesses to plan marketing, which leads to the growth of the same.
• Content spreads virally: The content which is uploaded digitally can be easily and widely shared. Facebook shares, saving pins, retweets, etc., are the outlets used to do so. Unlike traditional marketing tactics, you don't have to print thousands of copies and give that information to one individual. In this way, the content is spread widely in very little time.

As the use of mobile has been increasing day by day and access to social media or any other digital platform has become easier, it has opened the doors for marketers to grab the opportunities for promoting their products in such a way that it reaches a global audience by using the digital technologies. Hence, digital marketing has started playing the most important role for any business to grow, and it will create a boom in the coming years.