On its own, traditional marketing is powerful. With the advent of digital marketing, however, reach, engagement, and exposure are magnified to an exponential level. It is therefore logical to combine the elements of the two to maximize the outcome of a campaign and define a fresh perspective on what “formula” works.
Small and medium-sized businesses that are not adept at “tradigital” (the effective integration of traditional and digital tools in the marketing and sales process) will find it daunting at first; but executed properly, it is a promising way to come up with effective marketing campaigns.
Traditional and digital marketing are different from each other, but at the same time, they have similar communication principles when coming up with a marketing strategy. We invite you to use this as a guide to create an effective tradigital marketing plan for your budding business.
Establish your Destination
A well-crafted marketing plan must always think about the end goal. Visualize where you want to be at the end of the campaign. Set your objectives. Do you want to create brand awareness, increase Page Likes for your Facebook page, or are you looking at increasing sales figures? Whatever your objectives are, always begin with the end in mind.
It is important to prioritize your goals and objectives at the start of the campaign because this will be the basis of your marketing plan. A clear roadmap will help you see the bigger picture and keep you focused, just like in a traditional marketing plan.
Identify your Audience
Who are you talking to? Are you targeting yuppies, housewives, doctors, teenagers? The answers to these questions define the tone and approach your plan will take.
There are many tools available on the Internet that can help you better define your target audience including their demographic, psychographic, and socio-economic factors. Either that or you can do your own research by crowdsourcing the information within your own organization or even do your own field research. It all depends on the resources you have to acquire this information. Once you know who need to be talking to, you can now devise ways and means to build a relationship with them and provide them with relevant content. Speaking of content, this data will also allow you to distinguish what type of content will spark the interest of your target audience. This may come in the form of informative how-to articles, beautifully designed infographics, or even engaging motion graphics explainer videos. There are plenty of options when it comes to content, but utilizing what engages your audience is key to a successful marketing campaign.
Discover the Channels that Work
Once you’ve established who your audience is, it is now time to discover what platforms would be best to engage them on. For traditional marketing, making use of tri-media (TV, radio, and print) is the usual go-to for companies with adequate marketing budgets. For smaller companies, less expensive marketing tactics such as flyering and joining expositions would be some of the many ways to get visibility.
Since the dawn of the digital age, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, just to name a few, have been disrupting the whole art and discipline of marketing. It has been so disruptive that it has now evolved into its own field. Choosing the right platform to engage your target audience is vital to the effectiveness of any digital marketing campaign. Just like traditional marketing, a seasoned marketer should have keen market insight as to where resources and efforts will reap the best outcome.
Identifying which platforms will work best for your brand, products or services, and audience will increase the likelihood of keeping your brand top-of-mind. This may take some trial and error if you have not had any experience in digital marketing. In which case, it is important to find out as soon as possible whether a strategy is working or not, which takes us to our next point.
Measure your Success
A marketing plan that cannot be quantified is a futile endeavor. From the beginning, set short and long term KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and metrics for every phase of the campaign. This allows you to gauge your performance against your main goal—how many leads are you able to generate from each channel, what is your cost to sales with your digital efforts compared to your traditional efforts, and perhaps most importantly, what is the revenue generated from all these efforts. The list of metrics can go on and on, but the ones to keep an eye out for are the ones aligned with your own objectives.
Setting short term KPIs breaks down the goals into actionable and attainable tasks. This makes it easier for everyone involved in the campaign to achieve the targets per phase.
Traditional and digital marketing have the same ultimate goal – to sell. What makes the two different is the medium being used. Knowing what to use makes a difference in terms of impact and reach. Additionally, each approach requires specific strategies to yield the maximum outcome.