One of the dilemmas being faced by companies that are just starting to shift to the online scheme is whether they can survive the competition or not. When we think about the World Wide Web, we imagine a massive, intimidating online marketplace that is saturated with all sorts of businesses. It’s enough to make anyone think that their business will not thrive in such an environment.
Additionally, the number of unfamiliar terms used in online businesses can be overwhelming for starters. Digital marketing, SEO, SEM, social media marketing are just some of the many terms that might confuse you during your first years operating an online business. But don’t give up! We are here to give you a hand on what we love to call a “digital marketing beginner’s survival guide”.
Today, we will share with you the similarities between the traditional marketing you are well accustomed to and the digital marketing in Singapore. This guide will help you understand the concepts using terminologies and situations that are already familiar to you.
What is Marketing?
The American Marketing Association defined marketing as a set of institutions and the process of communicating, creating, delivering and exchanging offers that benefit customers, partnerships, and society as a whole.
From this definition, we can conclude that marketing is not only an individual field but also a tree with many branches. Digital marketing is one of those newly-grown branches. We can further claim that marketing shall have a positive outcome for one or more entities.
For those who practise marketing, including digital marketing agencies, the goal is to bring a product or service closer to people who will benefit from it. This very definition of marketing provides a close resemblance to what digital marketing is.
What is Digital Marketing?
According to Mailchimp, digital marketing is the use of digital communication to promote a product or service. It is a form of marketing that utilises websites, social media platforms, email, and other digital communications for the campaigns. Taking this into account, we can say that digital marketing is the application of traditional marketing over the internet.
Digital marketing is another tree with several branches. For this very reason, we reckon that beginners should understand this trade better when explained through the lens of traditional marketing. The question is, how similar are digital and traditional marketing?
The Similarities Between Traditional and Digital Marketing
Although things can be confusing and overwhelming for you when you start your business online or make your first online campaign, you will understand the trade better after reading through.
Here are some of the points where traditional and digital marketing overlaps.
The two share the same objective.
Traditional and digital marketing share the same objective: to market a brand, a product or a service to the intended audience. The only difference is that in traditional marketing, the campaigns are staged in a physical market or in the stores, malls, streets, and other platforms that you can physically access. On the other hand, digital marketing staged its campaign on the virtual market. While the means vary, the target is the same.
Thus, when you make your online campaign or ask the help of a digital marketing company, you are actually doing the same thing you do with your physical business. For example, you are launching an ecommerce website, which is similar to opening a physical store. You will want the people around your area to know about your shop, the same way that you will want online users to know that your ecommerce website exists. Therefore, you could hire a digital marketing specialist to strategize your campaign.
When marketing specialists do leaf-letting and install colourful and bright displays on your storefront to grab the attention of passers-by, a digital marketing company will apply SEO to bring your website to the first page of search results. This way, your website will be more visible to your target audience.
They both offer various services.
Another similarity between traditional and digital marketing is that both offer a wide range of services for promotional purposes.
For instance, website designing is one of the services offered by top digital marketing agencies. When it comes to website design, exports should design your website to make it aesthetically appealing and user-friendly. The result is a well-organised website with quality images that have decent resolutions that do not negatively affect your website speed. Aside from that, your website should contain readable content and present a layout that will redirect your visitors to where you want them to go, whether it is your product page or contact page. It is very similar to how marketing teams arrange the store’s physical layout and employ attention-grabbing elements to attract potential customers.
They are both measurable.
A similarity between these two practises is that they are measurable. For a businessman that invests money to promote his brand be it on the physical or virtual market, this knowledge is bliss. Since both are measurable, you can tell at some point whether the campaign is going somewhere or a waste of investment. We are probably all aware of how traditional marketing campaigns are being measured. Hence, we will focus on digital marketing’s measurability.
Every campaign under digital marketing has a duration and the campaign’s progress is not being evaluated at the end of the project. However, effectiveness is constantly measured throughout the duration of the online campaign.
Furthermore, there are various online tools being used to assess the effectiveness of the campaign. In digital marketing, the indicators that your campaign is progressing are the volume of visitors, the percentage of these visitors that revisit your page, the rate of visitors clicking on your website but immediately leaving within a few seconds. Your website’s ranking on search engine results is also used.
The Takeaway
Now that you know the similarities between traditional and digital marketing, we assume that it is not too scary for you to seek the help of a reliable agency to help you run your campaigns. The final tip is to look for an award-winning digital marketing agency to cement your chance of succeeding in your online campaigns.