While some proclaim traditional marketing is dead, others still hold on to it. So who’s right? Since the mobile marketing vs. traditional marketing debate is still going on, we’re going to weigh in on it.
If you ever wondered what the advantages and disadvantages of each one are, now you’re going to find out. We take an honest look at both traditional and mobile marketing to see which one is better. Based on facts, not wishful thinking.
Traditional Marketing Pros and Cons
Is traditional marketing relevant? Should you still use traditional marketing techniques? What are its benefits? These are all important questions.
Let’s look at traditional marketing pros and cons to see how it stacks up.
Pros
Easy to Understand
One of the biggest advantages of traditional marketing is that people are used to it and understand it easily. Everybody knows what a TV commercial is or how to read a billboard ad. Traditional marketing channels are easy to grasp and deliver the message in a very simple way.
It’s Tangible
Something that mobile marketing lacks is things we can touch, feel, and keep in our homes. Whether it’s a coupon made from actual paper or a newspaper ad you can hold in your hands, traditional marketing is big on tangible objects.
However, it is questionable whether that aspect of traditional marketing is something a significant number of consumers miss.
Face-to-Face
When it comes to sales, an experienced salesman may find it easier to communicate with a potential customer face-to-face or at least by phone. It is a much more direct approach to selling than a social media ad or a text message.
However, direct selling methods don’t allow you to reach enough people. You can reach millions of people with a Google ad almost instantly. How many can you call or talk to in person in one day?
Cons
It Costs a Lot of Money
When you consider how expensive traditional marketing is, you start wondering whether it’s even worth it. For example, Adage reports that the average cost of a 30-second TV commercial was $115,000 in 2020. If you want to place your ad during the Super Bowl, you will pay more about $5.6 million. That’s a lot of money to spend considering less and less people watch TV. On the other hand, the average cost for a PPC Google ad is between $1 and $2 on the Search Network and under $1 on the Display Network (Wordstream).
Does it beg the question is traditional marketing worth the cost? Especially when you consider that the performance of traditional ads is currently questionable. Not to mention very hard to track.
Difficult to Track and Measure Results
When it comes to traditional marketing methods like print or TV ads, it’s very hard to measure the results of a campaign. For example, you spend thousands of dollars on a TV ad but have no way of tracking ROI. How can you know how many people that saw your TV ad liked it and went on to purchase your product? Can you know how many were interested, but didn’t make a purchase? Not really. A lot of it is based on guesswork and estimation.
You could do surveys and ask people, “Hey, how did you hear about our company? Was it our TV ad or our billboards?” But that data may not be complete or correct. Plus, it sounds so outdated when you consider we have access to modern digital marketing.
Less Engaging and Not as Effective
In the age of the Internet and social media, traditional ads are not as engaging as they used to be. It’s hard to draw attention to them. You can make the best billboard ad ever, but what’s the point when most people are not going to notice it because they’re looking at their phones all the time?
Look at direct mail. Do you think people in this day and age even open up their mail unless it’s something really important? Of course, they don’t. They throw it into the recycling bin immediately. We even pay our bills electronically.
It’s Outdated
I’m sorry to break it to you, but traditional marketing is kind of outdated. Yes, it might work in some respects, but let’s be honest, it’s dying out. People’s habits have changed. The way they consume content has changed. Traditional marketing methods don’t have the power to engage the average consumer. People want exciting, eye-catching, and interactive content that will grab their attention. Traditional marketing doesn’t do that for people anymore.
Traditional marketing channels are either disappearing or going online. Just look at newspapers, direct mail, and TV. According to Statista, the United States Newspaper industry shrunk by more than $4.5 billion in the last couple of years.
Companies that still hold on to traditional marketing and refuse to embrace current marketing methods are in big trouble.
When it comes to marketing, one of the most important things is to keep up with the times and embrace current trends. Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of time and money while you slowly disappear and end up forgotten.
Mobile Marketing Pros and Cons
What’s the state of mobile marketing in 2023? What are its main advantages and disadvantages? How does it compare to traditional marketing? Let’s take a look at some mobile marketing pros and cons.
Pros
Many Different Channels to Choose From
There are plenty of mobile marketing channels you can utilize. Your website, social media, email are great starting points. Each of those is effective and current, unlike traditional marketing channels. Plus, mobile marketing trends like voice search, voice-activated ads, AI, and AR are going to rule in 2022 and years to come.
Mobile time is on a constant rise, increasing 20% year on year. In 2022,, an average user spends 4 hours and 10 minutes using mobile devices every day (Datareportal). According to the same source, 92% of this time is spent using some kind of mobile app.
This leads me to two major mobile marketing channels you should utilize: mobile apps and games. The process of putting your ads out there is no rocket science. It works similarly to major social media ad platforms.
To place ads in mobile apps, you have to request ad space from different mobile ad networks. All of them offer different targeting options, campaign types, ad formats, etc.
When it comes to ad formats, it’s very important to choose the right ones for your business. They should help you reach the right audience and get high engagement at the lowest price possible. The four most frequent in-app ad formats are banner ads, interstitial video ads, native ads, and rewarded video ads.
For example, if your product is a mobile game, you should definitely utilize some kind of video ad. This type of ad can help you showcase your game’s best features. Thanks to their dynamic visual content, video ads are also highly engaging and typically come with high CTRs.
Social Media Networks are Optimized for Mobile
Today, all major social media networks are optimized for mobile phones, with the majority of social media traffic coming from mobile.
These facts encourage mobile marketers to paid social media features such as sponsored posts on mobile for even better engagement rates.
All major social media networks also work as mobile ad networks. They come with great targeting options, effective bidding strategies, and a variety of ad formats to choose from.
Moreover, if you are present on different social media platforms, this can even help you rank better in search engine results. If you link your website to your brand’s, for example, Facebook account, it will also appear in search results. Therefore, it should help you boost your SEO rankings.
Reach Your Audience Anywhere and Anytime
There’s no delay in mobile marketing. The messages you want to send to the users are received instantly. That cannot be said for traditional marketing methods. We live in a fast-paced world where information needs to be spread quickly, and mobile marketing is the perfect way to do that.
You’re no longer constrained by the borders of your country, town, or region. You can target anybody who has a mobile device no matter which side of the world they’re on. Btw, that’s 5.2 billion mobile users globally, according to Datareportal.
Better Targeting and Personalization Options
With mobile marketing techniques, you can choose exactly who to target and what message you want to send out.
Besides that, people are on their phones all the time and take them everywhere. For this reason, the information they receive on mobile feels more personal than on desktop. The ability to personalize messages you send out is one of the big advantages of mobile marketing. That result is content and ads that are highly relevant to the users. In fact, according to eMarketer, 35% of users want more personalized content.
It’s Location Specific
The ability to target users by location is one of the biggest benefits of mobile marketing.
This means you can communicate with customers depending on their location. If you do this, you will be able to deliver relevant and timely advertisements.
According to Google, 2/3 of users say they are more likely to buy from businesses with a mobile website or app content tailored to their location.
One specific mile marketing strategy you can utilize is called geofencing. This location-based service allows you to send out notifications, alerts, coupons, or other offers when a device enters a specific location. In other words, you set a virtual fence in a radius around your business.
Here’s another idea – cover your competitors’ locations. This technique is called geoconquesting. With it, you may be able to pull customers away from competitors.
Less Expensive
If you’re smart and effective with your mobile marketing campaign, it will cost you a lot less than a traditional one. You need to have a huge budget to be able to pay for TV commercials, radio ads, and giant billboards. That’s why small businesses struggled in the age of traditional marketing. Mobile marketing, on the other hand, is not as expensive, but equally or more effective.
For example, you need to pay about $10,000 for a full-page newspaper ad. A social media ad that reaches 1000 people will cost you only a few dollars.
Also, you can do social media and content marketing for free in case you have no marketing budget at all, which is not that uncommon for small startups. It’s not only doable but can be quite effective. That’s why mobile marketing, and digital marketing in general, is so exciting for small businesses. It brings them endless possibilities. That’s why the time we live in right now is so exciting. It’s abundant with opportunities.
The Possibility of A/B Testing
Unlike traditional marketing, mobile marketing gives you the ability to A/B test different creatives, copies, CTAs, and targeting options.
When creating an ad, we often have elements we prefer over others.
However, it often turns out that the users prefer something entirely different.
For this reason, it is important to create as many ad variations as possible and analyze their results. Based on that, you can then optimize your mobile marketing campaigns.
Potential
Easier to Track Results
When you create a mobile marketing campaign, you can track all the important metrics that help you see how successful it is. Marketers rely heavily on data, which is why mobile marketing is superior to traditional marketing methods. You can see exactly how many people clicked on your social media ad or how many daily active users your app has. You can find out who those people are and what are their interests and behaviors. All the data is right there.
You can’t do that with traditional marketing. There’s no way of knowing how many people saw your newspaper ad or how people engaged with it. You can only guess, and that’s not what marketing is all about.
Viral Potential
One of the best things about mobile content is how easily you can share it.
This means every single advertising campaign you launch has viral potential. When someone shares something they liked with their friends and family – it can be the beginning of something amazing. Sharing always starts out small but can end up global.
Cons
Privacy Issues
The only concern when it comes to mobile marketing is the various privacy issues that have come up. Users’ mobile data is used for different types of targeted advertising. An example is location-based mobile marketing or sending push notifications. That’s ok, but only if users agree to it and opt-in. Otherwise, it’s spamming. People nowadays are very careful about their data and privacy, which is why we have laws and regulations like GDPR.
So the challenge for mobile marketers is to remain transparent and be ethical at all times.
Mobile Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing: Summary
If we weigh in all the pros and cons it is obvious that mobile marketing wins. I’m not saying that traditional marketing doesn’t have any advantages because it certainly does. However, traditional marketing techniques are outdated. They just make no sense in 2022. We’ve moved on. That’s the cold hard truth about traditional marketing. It concludes the mobile marketing vs. traditional marketing debate well. Businesses that are stuck in their old marketing ways are going to fail miserably. Don’t be one of them and create your mobile marketing strategy ASAP!
Comments