Well there is a lot of buzz going around the hot topic of social media marketing vs traditional marketing. It’s true, social media is powerful. Whether it’s influencer marketing, paid facebook and Instagram ads, or actual growth management. You can see brands all over the world trying to hop on this trendy new wave of advertising!
But how effective is social media marketing compared to traditional marketing? Follow along as we dive deep to get a better understanding of social media marketing vs traditional marketing in 2020!
So what is this social media marketing thing everyone is talking about? According to Wikipedia, social media marketing is the use of social platforms to promote a product or service.
Seems simple right? Make a couple posts on facebook and Instagram and watch the money roll in! If only it was that easy!
Social media marketing is a tool that if used correctly, can bring massive results for your business. The key is going about it the right way. Here’s a quick list of the platforms that marketing on social media works best on:
- Facebook – Perfect for massive reach and exposure
- Instagram – The top platform for visually rich content
- Twitter – Built for discussions amongst its users
- YouTube – Video marketing thrives here
- LinkedIn – The best place for business leads
We like to call these The Big Five. A proper social media marketing campaign will target one to all of these platforms to produce great results!
Social Media Marketing Vs Traditional Marketing – A Breakdown
So let’s take a deeper look into which type of marketing works best in 2019! To make this as clear and concise as possible, we’ll break this down into the following sections:
- Reach
- Cost
At the end of this blog post, you should know exactly which type of marketing you will want to use to market your business!
A Marketing Comparison – Reach
The great thing about social media is that the user base is absolutely HUGE! Never has it been easier to reach a large audience to promote and sell your products/services.
In 2019, Facebook currently has over 2.3 billion users. That’s over 30% of the global population on a single app. The possibilities to market your product to a large audience have never been greater.
This isn’t even considering the other popular apps such as Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. A proper social media marketing campaign can undoubtedly reach a larger audience than any traditional campaign.
Just think, how many posters and lawn signs would you need to reach millions of people? My guess is a lot.
A Marketing Comparison – Cost
Keeping costs low is important to any business. You want to be able to stretch those marketing dollars for as long as you can!
So what type of marketing is more budget friendly for the average business? Well it depends on your objectives. Are you after exposure? Leads and sales? What you will learn is that for most of your objectives social media marketing is going to cost you less in the long run. Traditional marketing works great in hyper specific situations, but social media is more versatile it is hard to be beaten.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you own a guitar shop and you want people in your area to know that you are open for business. You can do 2 things:
- Print out posters and hang them up around town
- Run a facebook ad targeting your area
So let’s say you want to reach 1000 people. This would cost you around $20 to get some posters printed to pass around. The traditional marketing way definitely seems promising. However, methods like these are hard to know exactly who and how many people you are reaching.
On the other hand, running a facebook ad to reach 1000 people would cost you roughly 25 cents. That’s right, only 25 cents. Just 25 cents to target 1000 people in your local area. The great thing about social media ads are that you can even target based on interest. This means you could target people in your area who are ALSO interested in music and guitars. This is pretty awesome targeting for a much lower price.
Social Media Vs Traditional – The Verdict
It’s hard not to be biased, but facts don’t lie ladies and gentlemen. It’s 2019, marketing is evolving. If you’re not using some type of social media marketing with your traditional marketing campaigns, you are missing out on some serious revenue.
Now we’re not saying to completely ditch traditional marketing, there is a time and place for everything. However, for the average small business, social media marketing can deliver much more powerful results than traditional advertising. Using both in harmony would achieve fantastic results for a local business.
How To Get Started With Social Media Marketing
We get it, digital marketing can feel overwhelming. There is lot going on in the digital world and it’s best to keep some things to the professionals. Digital ad specialists can save you a lot of money in the long run and produce results you never thought were possible. If you are interested in running a social media marketing campaign and are not sure where to start, feel free to reach out us. We will point you in the right direction and answer any questions you may have!
Until next time!
