Why this idea means business : We explore the differences between traditional vs digital marketing. Learn the pros and cons of each, and how to bring them onto the same timeline. Read this to learn how combining traditional and digital gets you back to a better future.
We recently updated our digital marketing guides. Because the world needs more content about digital marketing, right?
Um, no.
But digital marketing continues to evolve so updates are always needed.
And as we reviewed our digital content, we were thinking about the differences between traditional vs digital marketing.
It often feels like these 2 areas don’t connect well, if at all. Almost like they exist in separate timelines. As if at some point, digital split away from traditional marketing. But the traditional timeline carried on regardless.
But what if that weren’t the case? What if you could pull together this split in the marketing timelines? A bit like a marketing Back To The Future. Where you change just a few things, and suddenly you’re in a marketing world which makes more sense. Where there’s more marketing Martys. And less marketing Biffs.
Let’s start with what traditional and digital marketing are, and why they’re different.
Traditional marketing
Traditional marketing (or classic marketing) has been around in businesses since the 1960s.
It’s a broad subject with many sub-topics. There’s lots to learn. It takes time to get good at it. And it’s evolving all the time.
You have to be able to go from broad market research to specific segmentation research, for example. To switch from brand identity and innovation to specific advertising campaigns.
Traditional marketer leaders like to boast about their marketing skills. But often, it’s as much who they know as what they know that moves them up the career ladder. They’re not always the best people to ask for marketing advice. Too much time on politics and leadership. Not enough time on actual marketing.
But, traditional marketing is where most senior marketers cut their marketing teeth. It’s what they know. It got them where they are now. So they know about qualitative and quantitative research. They’ve been to so many focus groups and creative thinking workshops that they all blur together. And done so much marketing planning, they can do brand essences and activation plans on auto-pilot.
Plus, they’re still scarred by learning all those tough marketing innovation lessons. All those new products which didn’t make it. They believe they’ve earned their spot at the top of the marketing career ladder by working their way up from the traditional marketing trenches.
Digital marketing
Then, along comes digital marketing. It doesn’t care about most of those things. It has a whole new bunch of things to learn.
We’re lucky to have done both traditional and digital marketing. Not many can say that.
For example, we’ve run many digital media campaigns and built many websites.
We’ve worked on marketing technology and data projects that transformed businesses and how they understood customers.
Plus, unlike most marketers, we’ve also launched successful e-commerce stores. That was a big part of our journey into digital.
But the reason these projects succeeded was because we applied what we’d learned from traditional marketing to digital. We applied core marketing principles from before the Internet was even a twinkle in Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s eye.
Like customer understanding. We understood the importance of research and insights.
Like brand building. We understood the value of brand purpose and brand identity.
And like great brand activation. We understood that most of all, it’s about getting stuff done.
The biggest frustration in digital marketing
But to our frustration, we’ve found much of this new generation of digital marketers reject or ignore the past. It’s old, they say. We’re all about the new.
They make it about traditional vs digital marketing when it doesn’t have to be.
They’ve little knowledge or interest in the thoughts, concepts and principles of ‘traditional’ marketing.
They think they can “hack” their way to growth when in fact, they mostly just hack people off.
These digital dunderheads arrogantly dismiss most traditional marketing. It’s “old-school” thinking that doesn’t apply in today’s digital world, they say :-
- Market research? Let’s just read a few social media posts and call it social listening. (See also our marketing generations and social media article).
- Brand building? Get a freelancer on Fiverr to whack up a new logo and we’ll be all good. (Without being clear on what a logo is supposed to do).
- Marketing innovation and new products? Just create prototypes and mock-ups, until something sticks and we can launch it properly.
What traditional marketing offers digital marketing
Probably the most frustrating aspect of digital marketing is it dehumanises the customer.
Yes, in digital marketing you generate loads of data.
Great.
But unless you can turn that data into an engaging experience that impacts a real human being, then your marketing goes nowhere.
All you’ll have is a big chunky data file in R or a big fancy spreadsheet.
(R is a statistical programming language used in data analysis if you didn’t know. And we love the story of why it’s called R. Gotta love Kiwi creativity sometimes!).
Traditional marketing focuses on actual customers. Real people with real needs. Your brand has to meet those needs. That’s what its real purpose is. It’s to create experiences that feel made for humans.
And yes, digital marketers might call this Customer Experience (CX). But let’s be honest. Most CX terminology has been shamelessly lifted from traditional marketing. Like adoption funnels, for example. CX likes to think of itself as the shiny poster child of modern marketing. But the adoption funnel it uses originated, not in the last century, but the one before. E St Elmo Lewis developed the AIDA model in 1898, for crying out loud.
Funnels - that you click
And yet our social media feed is snarled up every day with some version of a funnel. That you click (No names, but easy to work out the worst offender).
They claim to ‘guarantee’ leads and conversions, just by following their process. Thanks, Mr Digital Evangelist, but no thanks.
These won’t win the hearts and minds of customers. There’s no real insight into what makes people tick. Just an endless barrage of content.
This creates a lot of noise, but also a lot of waste. And contributes to a world where ‘marketing’ isn’t seen as a job to be proud of. We think this is why so many traditional marketers shy away from digital marketing. Like they don’t want to be tainted with that brush. They want to focus on content that serves a purpose. That builds deeper relationships with real customers.
The language of acquisition drives us crazy when it talks about leads and prospects. It’s the opposite of what marketing is about. This throw-shit-at-the-wall approach isn’t the way forward.
It’s the Biff Tannen marketing world of the future. And you know what happens to Biff in those movies.
What digital marketing offers traditional marketing
So if traditional marketing is the wise old (Doc Brown) campaigner of the marketing game, what role does the (Marty McFly) ’rookie’ of digital marketing play?
Well, here’s the thing.
When you apply traditional marketing principles to digital, your digital marketing works better.
In particular, you move much faster. The speed at which digital marketing generates data and insights is way better than the old ways of gathering customer information.
Like brand health equity studies that took weeks to show your brand and campaign performance.
Now, thanks to digital marketing, you can get that type of data in almost real-time. As ‘traditional’ marketers, that’s both exciting and a bit scary.
Marketing technology helps you set up automatic interactions with customers. Contact forms, Chatbots and Check-outs. These are like the hoverboards of marketing. Martech may come with its own challenges for sure. It’s not all rosy. However, there are huge opportunities for savvy marketers.
Look at what customers do online, and you’ll soon find opportunities. Opportunities like digital services, or in communications and social.
So traditional marketing should look at digital marketing as a way to do marketing better. To create better insights, better experiences and happier customers.
Conclusion - traditional vs digital marketing
For us, it’s not traditional vs digital marketing but traditional AND digital marketing coming together.
For example, check out our digital business model guide’s RESTART framework (Reach – Engage – Sell – Technology – Analysis – Resource – Transformation). It shows how you can hit traditional marketing goals using digital tools and techniques.
Or check out our digital media, websites, technology, data and insights guides to see what they do for customers and brands.
We wrote these to show how bring a better digital marketer makes you a better marketer overall.
But to be a better digital marketer, you also have to connect with traditional marketing. And not just live in a digital marketing world.
If you need help splicing together the traditional and digital marketing timelines in your business, we can bring the flux capacitor. Get in touch for a “drive” in our marketing ‘De Lorean’. AKA our coaching and consulting services.
We’ll help you accelerate your marketing up to 88mph and beyond.
Photo credits
DeLorean : Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
Night time billboards : Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
Digital Marketing : Photo by Diggity Marketing on Unsplash
Frustrated Man (adapted) : Photo by Usman Yousaf on Unsplash
Conversation Image : Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash
Angel : Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash
Code : Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Sprint : Photo by Braden Collum on Unsplash
