Why You Must Integrate Your Digital with a Traditional Marketing Strategy

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital marketing

Traditional marketing is the conventional mode of marketing that has been the choice of marketing and advertisements since ages. This includes:

  • Television.
  • Newspaper.
  • Radio.
  • Flyers and billboards.
  • Ads in weekly magazines/newspapers etc. 

The era of the Internet has its influence in every realm of life including marketing strategies. The use of social media platforms to promote marketing is known as digital marketing.

According to Ad Age, digital advertising will surpass TV advertising in the next couple of years and will represent 36% of all ad spending by 2019. Currently, around 60% of marketers say that they want to restructure the way they do advertising to take advantage of new technologies.

You may be compelled to think whether digital media is the best way to reach consumers. Consider the following facts:

In the past few years, Digital Media Marketing has grown rapidly and present estimation is $186.2 B.

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Image source:  www.webtrainings.in

Today the idea is to create a right balance between traditional and digital marketing strategies for your business in order to create greater impact. Cultivating a strong online marketing presence is vital to stay in the game, but deciding how much or in what ways can present a real challenge.

In order to achieve this target, here are 7 ways your business could consider:

  1. If you’re trying to promote your business, a product or service, you could run a printed ad in a magazine or a direct mailer. Along with this, you can run an email campaign using your existing email database, as well as run a competition on social media. You also need to have a suitable SEO strategy in place, so that your customers can find you via search engines.
  2. Promote your digital marketing channels such as your social media accounts via all your printed collaterals, such as business cards, leaflets, and posters.
  3. Some customers still prefer to buy in-store rather than online. For such customers, you could run geo-targeted paid ads to create awareness about your store. They could avail an offer from you that they can redeem in store. This encourages them to visit your store over a nearby competitor.
  4. Your website may be asking customers who visit you, to fill in simple forms giving certain details. You could make use of this information by asking your sales team to follow up with the customers through a phone call.
  5. Social media is a great platform to keep people updated about a near future physical event that you may be hosting, keeping them up-to-date during the event and can be later on used to keep in touch with all potential customers. Some events even have Twitter walls, which show live tweets associated with the event hashtag, to encourage people to get more involved.
  6. You could ask people to submit their own content for your static billboards. They may opt to receive your email communications later on, or buy online for a special, one-time offer.
  7. Your TV or print ads may engage the customers and guide them to a more elaborate website by incorporating a “call to action” sort of method.

Examples of Digital Marketing Integration  

1) Virtual Merchandising (VM) and Instagram     

Leveraging on the popular Instagram platform, Lifestyle launched a new campaign ‘Insta weaving’ in the year 2015 which highlighted key trends of the season using a hashtag (#) such as InstaGlam, InstaSleek, etc. The company maintained constant communication across all channels — print, digital and in-store — so that customers can connect with these trends both online and offline. The strategy was well represented at their stores, too, through engaging Virtual Merchandising (VM) displays and through strong imagery in traditional and digital media.

Along with Instagram, Lifestyle launched exciting campaigns and promotions on twitter and facebook account. Some of the examples include #PikuMelangeLook, #FarhanforCode, #BestFestiveFashion, #AnushkaforCode, #BestSaleEver, #LifestyleOffSale etc.

Lifestyle also partnered with leading bloggers such as Scherezade Shroff, Style Drive, etc. for their ‘in-store’ activation program; ‘StyleCircle.’ Launched last year, it hosted ten leading bloggers in Lifestyle’s key stores across the country, who gave personalized style advice sessions to customers; helping them put together the looks that were ‘Insta-worthy’ and suited their body type.

2) YouTube and in-store

One of the early adopters of Omnichannel retail, Shoppers Stop has been active in leveraging the potential of digital and social media to market and promote the brand.

Shoppers Stop engages with its Facebook fans by creating unique contests such as ‘Perfect For’ Me that provides suggestions to fans based on their likes, search history etc. The company started a series of fun, instructive, engaging, and youth-centric videos on YouTube channel, that give customers fashion and grooming tips e.g. ‘How to dress for a party’ to ‘How to tie a tie’, to ‘How to apply make-up’ etc.

Customers also get the choice to buy the products showcased in these videos via the e-store.

Thus the utilization of both traditional and digital marketing techniques can lead to extensive reach of a company’s message. Digital marketing may be more appealing to the younger generation who are digitally savvy, at the same time traditional marketing gives an in-store feeling to customers who like to have a feel of the goods or services they intend to buy.