fbpx

Finding Synergy Between a Traditional and Digital Marketing Mindset

When you’re in the marketing field, it’s easy to get swept up in the newest digital trends. Many of us are thrilled to leap on the latest social media advertising bandwagon, and for good reason – they’re powerful tools.

On the flip side, some small business marketers are still clinging to the ad strategies they know and love. Traditional marketing methods might be slipping away in some respects, but many marketing teams still see value in time-tested, conventional advertisements.

This brings us to our topic today: finding that crucial synergy between digital and traditional marketing mindsets.

There’s no need to pick a favorite in the battle between digital marketing vs traditional marketing. In fact, some of the most powerful marketing strategies out there are beautiful, cohesive blends of both sides of the coin.

As long as some people still listen to the radio, watch television, or pick up magazines, traditional marketing won’t be dead. So, let’s talk about four great routes to building a bridge between classic ad strategies and revolutionary online tactics.

(1) Focus Heavily on Personalization

One of the key places to mesh traditional and digital marketing: personalizing the customer experience.

Traditional marketing tactics rely heavily on demographic research. When you place an ad on TV or in a newspaper, you’re thinking carefully about who will see it, their age, what their interests are, and why they’re a great customer for your brand. You want your marketing message to have a personal effect on the viewer.

Similarly, digital marketing is all about striking those personal chords with customers – but even more overtly. Modern advertisements are extremely tailored to online users’ activities and personal information, which can make them highly effective.

So, how do we blend these two tactics? By using traditional marketing examples to drive in-person viewers to continue their personalized experiences online.

Take this well-known demonstration from Coca-Cola, which debuted nearly seven years ago but is still remembered by almost anyone you ask.

This commercial (and others like it) was aired on almost every television, and it was paired with billboards, digital ads, and a variety of other digital and traditional ad mediums. It made Coca-Cola, an enormous brand, feel intimate and personal.

Even today, this ad strategy still results in lead generation and sales on the Coca-Cola website, where consumers can go to personalize their own soda bottles. People first encountered the concept of names on Coca-Cola bottles through traditional media, but were then drawn to Coca-Cola’s digital presence to continue their personalization journey with their products.

Using calls to action in traditional marketing to push customers to continue their experiences digitally is an excellent example of the benefits of digital advertising blended with traditional media.

(2) Steer Everything Back to Your Digital Image

According to Statista, TV advertising still accounted for almost a quarter of all total media ad revenue in 2021. Traditional ad spending is falling, but there’s still a place for traditional marketing methods in magazines, billboards, radio shows, and especially television.

However, you’ll notice that pretty much any modern television commercial drives customers straight to the brand’s website. Rather than encouraging customers to “buy,” TV commercials nowadays focus on pushing viewers to their digital presence on social media and on their websites.

Take this traditional TV commercial for the brand BetterHelp. Its only real call to action is to explore their website because that’s where it really makes it sales and hooks customers.

TV commercials aren’t the only traditional marketing tools driving consumers to brand websites and social media pages. You’ll also find newspaper ads, mail-out flyers, radio messages, and other mediums guiding customers to digital spaces.

In a big way, using traditional ads to help your digital marketing strategies is like covering all of your bases at once. You’re ensuring you’re reaching audiences online and offline, but eventually bringing them all together via your main digital lead generation platforms.

TLDR: To achieve a more blended marketing mindset, continuously direct people back to your website or some kind of digital experience, even with traditional ads.

(3) Use Online Information to Direct Your Traditional Sales

We just talked about how traditional advertising can support your digital marketing efforts, but what about the reverse?

Roughly 60% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategies through their sales (Hubspot 2021). If you’re not making sales, then your marketing isn’t working.

However, your business may have tried-and-true conventional marketing strategies that have been working for years. Maybe cold calling works well for your team, or perhaps your target audience responds strongly to mailed-out pamphlets. This could be especially true if your brand targets Baby Boomer or Gen X audiences.

Bringing digital marketing mindsets into the equation could help you strengthen these conventional methods. You’d be surprised by what you can learn about your target audience by engaging with them online.

For instance, advertising through your Google My Business page can tell you a great deal about how people are finding your product and where their direct requests are coming from.

If you were to embrace digital marketing through GMB, you could see that most of your customers are located in X region or that you’re suddenly becoming more popular in a specific city. This, in turn, could direct your traditional marketing strategies like cold calling and mailing information.

Finding and attracting the right leads is hard. Roughly 34% of the people Pipe Drive interviewed in 2020 anticipated prospecting and lead qualification would be the biggest challenge of the entire year.

If you can use digital strategies to better understand and target your customers, that’s a fantastic way to blend old and new advertising to generate more high-quality leads.

(4) Keep Traditional and Digital Marketing Efforts Consistent

How is digital marketing different from traditional marketing? Well, in many ways, it’s not all that different. Digital marketing is essentially traditional marketing, but digitized and more advanced. That’s why we firmly believe both can be tied together seamlessly.

The key word here is seamlessly. If your digital marketing efforts seem disjointed and out of place next to your more traditional strategies, customers won’t like it.

According to the MoEngage Personalization Pulse Check Report 2021, almost a third of the surveyed consumers reported being the most frustrated with inconsistent brand messaging while another near third indicated they are frustrated by irrelevant content or product messages.

In other words, mixed media in marketing is great – but only if it’s cohesively blended.

Image Source

Take Spotify’s marketing, for example. It doesn’t matter if it’s a huge billboard downtown or an online Facebook ad: each media element uses the same font, messaging style, and feel to present a consistent message to consumers.

Across the board, from YouTube and TikTok to ads in the local newspaper, your traditional and digital content marketing strategies need to blend well. When you focus on that, you’ll strengthen both your brand’s image and your lead generation opportunities.

In Conclusion

Diversifying your strategies with traditional and digital marketing mediums is great for long-term growth. If the biggest brands in the world can see the sense in using both forms, then brands of all sizes have the potential to reap the rewards, too.

Digital marketing principles can effectively blend with traditional marketing when you focus on personalization, use different strategies to play off each other, and consistently bring everything back to digital eventually.

The bottom line is that when a company uses every advertising method available to them, they will reach a bigger audience and convert more viewers.

Need help blending your traditional and digital marketing mindsets?

We know it can be challenging, especially if you don’t know where to start. Reach out to the Ayokay team – we’re happy to guide you toward a synergy between your traditional ad methods and your digital marketing strategy. Call 1-833-4-AYOKAY or send us a message online.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *