Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing – Traditional or Modern

Choosing between Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing for building a general marketing strategy for businesses is really not simple. It's like you come to a decision whether to marry a girl or not. Surely you must find out carefully who she is and is it suitable for you? Or simply, you buy something for your beloved home. Of course, you also need to consider all relevant factors such as space, the price of that item, whether it is suitable for your finances, etc. If you are wondering whether to choose digital marketing or traditional marketing for your business. For your career, please follow the following article!

What is digital marketing?

Digital Marketing This is not a strange concept to us in recent years. But you already know about Digital Marketing Not yet? If not, you can refer to the documents available online, both in English and Vietnamese, to get an overview of Digital Marketing What is that.

Actually, Digital Marketing It is still a new discipline with unstructured methodologies and theories. Meanwhile, the growth of Digital Marketing too fast and powerful. So much so that its theory or method has not yet been standardized and has to be changed to match practice.

When there is an understanding of Digital Marketing preliminary, as a business strategist, you should ask yourself many questions to know and measure the relevance; and should you choose? Digital Marketing or not?

1. Who is your business?

Before you can take a big picture outside, you need to understand yourself very well. What industry does the business operate in? What is your main product or service? Which market segment is the business targeting? Who is your target customer and what are their demographics?

In regards to marketing, you need to know how your marketing has been going over the years? How is the efficiency? Is there any part that you have ever used of Digital Marketing unintentionally without your knowledge? Is it effective or not?

The more you question the marketing status of your business; The more data you have to make a choice Digital Marketing or traditional marketing for businesses later.

2. Who are your customers?

Determining who your customers are is key for you to choose Digital Marketing or traditional marketing for businesses.

In fact, understanding customers and understanding their consumer behavior and living habits is one of the first factors for you to win the marketing battle; No matter what form of marketing business it is.

You should have a survey report on your business's target audience. If you are doing business in the Vietnamese market, your target customers are aged between 16-35 years old and are living in big cities; then you definitely MUST use Digital Marketing. Because this is the main audience group that can be reached through digital platforms such as: Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, etc.

But what if your customer is a farmer. Your products have been mainly marketed through traditional distribution channels such as veterinary medicine products, fertilizers etc., then you see that at this point, Digital Marketing not neccessary yet.

Basic information to describe customer insight includes:

• Age
• Place to live
• Income
• Consumer behavior
• Behavior of using communication channels, purpose of use
• Trends in using communication channels of the target customer group

Drawing a typical target customer portrait of your business will help you understand them better. From there, you can offer products, services or means of reaching them and satisfying their needs.

3. Are your competitors using digital marketing or choosing traditional marketing?

"Who know me know. Hundred battles, hundred victories” is one of the famous tactics in the military strategy of Sun Tzu, which has been successfully applied to business for a long time. Now that you know yourself, the next step is to find out who your opponent is. They applied Digital Marketing Not yet ? How is the effect?

How to know? In fact, Internet Marketing is a large part of the "piece of cake". Digital Marketing. Therefore, you can "spy" your opponent in 2 ways. First, do a Google search to see what your competitors are doing on it? Did their name appear in the top of the search engines; when you type keyword – keywords – related to the industry or product group? Is your competitor's website on the top of Google search? Do the search results lead to forums with lots of lively comments related to their brand?

Second, you find the competitor's name with facebook.com. Search this way to see if any campaigns have been used? Have you considered which Fan Page has a competitor's name on Facebook? Through the search information, you can completely self-assess the level of success. On the other hand, you also consider the quality of information about your competitors. More importantly, you should learn from your competitors' successes or mistakes. 

4. In terms of domestic scope, does your field of business appear a lot on search engines?

Maybe your opponent and your opponent, have not had time to learn and catch up with Digital Marketing. So, if you can't find any activity related to Digital Marketing of the opponent; after you have made an effort to search. That doesn't necessarily mean your industry is or will say NO to Digital Marketing.

As was mentioned above, Digital Marketing is a whole new field. Although, the Vietnamese market is currently the fastest growing market and the largest in Southeast Asia in terms of users and services. But it is still quite slow and encounters many inadequacies in applying applications to practice. That's why you need to have a deeper look. But you don't just stop at looking for competitors.

Similar to searching for information about your competitors, you can search for keywords related to your industry on the Internet. If its occurrence is high and the search results are dense; This is definitely a GOLDEN opportunity for you. Chances are your business will be the first to apply Digital Marketing in Vietnam in its industry group. Opportunities abound and it's easy to smile at those who take the lead.

5. What benefits will customers get if you apply Digital Marketing?

Customers are always at the center of any marketing plan of your business. Whether the business applies traditional Marketing or Digital Marketing. If you use a form Digital Marketing without bringing any benefit to the target customer; then there is a high chance that your investment will hardly achieve any results in the long run.

So besides calculating Digital Marketing will help you optimize resources, save costs and catch up with market trends; You also need to consider the interests of the customer.

From there, you can better define the goals of your business when applying Digital Marketing. What do you want your customers to do if you approach them this way. Please answer the following questions for yourself!

Do you just want them to read information about your business or company? Or do you want them to buy products directly on the Website? Do you want them to come to your physical address after searching to buy or sell? Do you want to maintain long-term relationships with customers on social networks or is it just seasonal? All of these questions help you better define your goals and take a more effective approach.

6. Is your business B2B or B2C?

To reach customers better, will you do marketing according to your company's business model B2B or B2C? This is a very important question for yourself. Because many businesses have been confused between strategies for B2B and B2C. This disastrous confusion leads to catastrophic failure for businesses when applying Digital Marketing or even traditional marketing.

And in Digital Marketing, this confusion is even more likely to happen. You know, B2B in Digital Marketing not just a hard problem; but it becomes extremely difficult for the very businesses that are doing consulting services Digital Marketing in the world as well as at encountered when performing.

If you do not have enough insight, a clear head and a clear and specific strategy, there is a high chance that your investment will never hit the target; It's like you're "throwing money out the window".

Example for application Digital Marketing for B2C model for B2B . model

DPS will take an example to make it easier for you to understand! Many Facebook Fan Pages of businesses with B2B models often share content that is only suitable for the masses. That is, people who are not decision makers - decision makers - they are not business owners and do not consume products or services in large quantities.

Maybe that Fan Page has a lot of very high engagement metrics and a lot of shared content. But the target audience is so wrong. Hot news in the press, cheesy "quotes" for tears or for laughs, etc. can cause the number of Page's fans to increase rapidly. However, this number of fans will fall in the age group of 16-24 years old. This is not the right age for a B2B Page; and surely the real target customer group is not receptive to this content and not even interested in that Page.

That is, you must understand yourself, your opponent and choose the right model. Only then can you apply the right strategies and tactics to avoid the wrong, ineffective and wasteful application for your business.

7. How do you define your current internal resources?

As a business leader or the person with the highest marketing responsibility for the company, you always consider and plan thoroughly and comprehensively for your internal resources.

Small and medium sized businesses

If your business is small, your expenses are not enough to set up a professional in-house marketing team; do you rent? digital marketing agency to undertake this.

And if you still decide to set up an in-house team, you must be very careful with the use of in-house personnel. It is not necessary for businesses to build an in-house team. Even if the work you intend to do can be huge. Because managing an in-house marketing team doing both strategy and content is not an easy task. While you are not a person who is really familiar with Digital Marketing. Moreover, the relevant expertise is also a hindrance to you; not to mention the operating costs for the in-house team will be huge.

Therefore, you only need specialized personnel with deep expertise and strategic vision. For other implementations, you should find outsourced sources at a price you can accept.

Large scale enterprise

In case you run a large business. You always need to give Digital Marketing into its long-term strategy. If necessary, you can change the structure to suit the actual situation. An in-house team is great for managing tasks or projects. However, hiring Digital marketing agencies for professional advice and implementation is absolutely necessary. Especially when your business is bigger, the scale of the project is bigger; the more you need parties with deep expertise and broad view to solve your problem.

In addition, regardless of the size of the enterprise, large, medium or small; then you also need to look at the general qualifications of the employees of the whole enterprise. Are their skills and expertise still relevant or do they need to be upgraded or supplemented to perform? Digital Marketing or not. Because there are many marketing communication projects that need to be implemented internally within the business.

8. Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing have can be combined or not?

The answer is definitely yes. In many practical cases, traditional marketing can help Digital Marketing and vice versa. This is applied flexibly in each case and transforms into many different situations.

In fact, active Activation tradition can be known and participated by more people with the support of Digital Marketing. On the contrary, a lot of customer online activities if connected with buying or interacting at the point of sale to create an enjoyable experience for the consumer.

Once you have a good understanding of Digital Marketing. You should patiently put in the time and effort to research and try to apply it. Surely, you will see a lot of interesting things; when you can combine the two traditional marketing and Digital Marketing.

Moreover, the traditional marketing principles are still highly applicable; can say Digital Marketing is a transformation to be more relevant in the age of technology. But in the end, it also comes from the original principle of traditional Marketing. The most important thing is that you have to learn carefully to avoid the application Digital Marketing in the style of traditional marketing. You can totally mix them together, but don't use "new bottles for old wine".