Social Media Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

This week I want to talk about the benefits of using social media marketing rather than traditional marketing. Social media marketing is all done online, while traditional marketing uses print ads, radio and television ads, and magazine ads. 

Targeting - Traditional marketing is forced on us. Who actually enjoys being interrupted by commercials during their favorite show? Unless it is Super Bowl Sunday, of course. I don’t care to see what deals the local flooring company is offering while I’m trying to watch the Season Premiere of “The Walking Dead” (SPOILER ALERT: Who else is so upset that Glenn died?!). Traditional marketing has a very low response rate being that the majority of the people that see an ad are not necessarily looking for it and, in many cases, are annoyed that they are seeing it! With traditional marketing, you are only able to do location based targeting. Social media marketing is much less invasive. You are able to choose a specific demographic that you want to target. In addition to being able to focus on a specific location, you can also focus on behaviors and context.

Cost - Social media marketing is much more cost effective than any form of traditional marketing. The graph below shows how much money you have to spend to reach 1,000 people. Need I say more?

A chart showing social media as the lowest cost per 1000 people reach

(Source: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/traditional-media-versus-social-media/).

Word-Of-Mouth - Again, word-of-mouth is so powerful! It is easy to “share” a post on Facebook or hashtag a phrase to make it easily accessible. It’s rare that you see a flyer being passed around about a local band playing somewhere and if you do see it there is a high likelihood people will lose it or throw it out. The internet is always there!

Measurability - Sure, you are able to see how many people were tuned into a show, but you can’t get an accurate measurement of how many people you reached by showing your commercial. I don’t watch live television anymore and part of it is because of the commercials, so I can only imagine how many people change the channel while the commercials are on to watch something else for a few minutes. You cannot measure how many people are reached by a mailer that is tucked into your newspaper or how many people actually see your billboard on the expressway. With social media marketing you can get real results and accurate numbers on your reach and can spend as much money as you want while knowing how many people are seeing it.

If this isn't enough to get you to shift from traditional to social media marketing...call us. Or better yet, stop in and say hi and we will be happy to show you the successful work we have done for our clients. Brandmint is your go-to social media marketing agency in Rochester, NY!