Have you ever wondered about how many different types of marketing actually exist? To be honest, there are more than a hundred types of marketing available that brands use to promote their product and services to the target audience. Oh wait, don’t get confused.
Let us segregate the types of marketing into two broad types, i.e., traditional and digital marketing, to understand better.
Traditional marketing came into existence long before the internet became a thing and digital marketing came into the picture. It includes anything and everything from billboards, flyers to cold calling and broadcasts that businesses use to target audiences offline.
While on the contrary, digital marketing revolves around the internet. The brand utilises various digital channels such as websites, social media platforms, search engines, emails, and mobile apps to market its products and services.
One of the main differences between traditional and digital marketing is that the former requires more research. Digital marketing works on tried and tested methods to stop your online campaigns any moment you find it is not working. However, this is not the case for traditional marketing, as offline campaigns are pre-planned such as the venues are pre-booked, the radio slots are pre-booked, the flyers are printed beforehand, etc. Also, the campaign results become visible only after the event, so there is no going back.
Keep reading to know about the different types of traditional and digital marketing.
Table of Contents
Five Types of Traditional Marketing
Following are the five most common types of traditional marketing used by businesses.
Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing, also called interruption marketing, is a method of making your brand or product known to people out loud even if they are not potential customers. Billboards, cold calling, spam emails, print ads, radio and television commercials are perfect examples of outbound marketing.
This strategy helps your brand reach out to a larger audience, but the conversion rate is low because most audiences are not interested in the product or the brand. Another major issue with outbound marketing is that the production cost is high, whereas the shelf span is short. Despite that, outbound marketing is still an effective way to target a more extensive set of audiences.
Partner Marketing
Often known as co-marketing, partner marketing is one of the types of marketing strategies where brands collaborate for a marketing campaign or a common cause. It is an eminent way of reaching out to the audiences of their partners and generating great leads.
One of the most successful co-branding partnerships happened between Starbucks and Spotify. Starbucks, a leading premium coffee shop and Spotify, a music streaming platform, collaborated to create a music ecosystem. As a part of the partnership, the Starbucks employees get subscriptions to Spotify premium, with which they can curate excellent playlists to play in their coffee shop all day.
Telemarketing
Have you ever got a call requesting you apply for a lifetime free credit card? Yes? Now that is telemarketing. It involves selling the products and services of the company, generating leads, making appointments, etc., over the telephone.
Small businesses mainly use the telemarketing strategy as it is cost and time-efficient or by companies to target audiences residing in remote areas where no other mode of communication is possible. It is considered an effective way of marketing because the businesses or the companies get an immediate response from the audience.
Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing is one of the most exciting methods of marketing, in which you create brand awareness among large audiences in high traffic locations without actually interrupting them. It is an unconventional marketing strategy used to promote a product or service by invoking a ‘law of surprise’.
One of the best brands to refer to for guerrilla marketing is Red Bull. They aimed to target a young audience, and therefore, as their first move of marketing, they started distributing free drinks in front of colleges. And in no time, Red Bull was able to capture the energy drinks market.
Event Marketing
Event marketing requires the brand or company to plan and organise an event to launch their product and services. The brand can conduct a workshop, trade show, or conference and launch its products live in front of an audience. However, event marketing is also being done online through Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube live.
Event marketing is more common among the car industry, cosmetic brands, publishing companies, etc. Recently, Tata Motors launched its new car Tata Punch which became the second best selling Tata car within 12 days of its launch.
Now that we know a few traditional marketing strategies, let’s talk about digital marketing.
Five Types of Digital Marketing
Mentioned below are the five types of digital marketing used by businesses.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the critical tools of digital marketing, which involves creating and publishing content to target potential customers. It helps businesses or companies provide valuable information that the customers and leads seek. Content marketing builds brand awareness and benefits the business in establishing expertise in their niche.
The data suggests that the brands having blogs drag 67 per cent more traffic than those who don’t, and 47 per cent of buyers go through 3-4 articles before they purchase. Moreover, brands that use content marketing strategies witness 30 per cent higher growth than others.
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is all the digital marketing strategies used to promote a company’s website by ranking it on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). By doing so, the website appears in the top position of the SERP whenever a user searches with any keyword associated with the company or brand.
SEM works in two ways; by using SEO techniques or opting for Google Ads. SEO helps your website to rank organically and therefore takes time to show results but works in the long run. In contrast, Google Ads show your website at the top of the SERP as an ad and drive traffic to your website instantly. The catch is once the ad is stopped or paused, the website traffic may drop.
Social Media Marketing
According to recent data, globally, there are 4.5 billion active social media users. So, social media is exactly where your potential customers are, and therefore, the brands are targeting them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They are running ad campaigns on various social media platforms to generate leads.
Not only this, but they are also engaging with the audience daily by organising contests, giveaways, replying to their comments, etc. Most of them are also taking advantage of influencer marketing by collaborating with various influencers to promote their brand.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a marketing approach in which companies and brands pay affiliate marketers commission to promote their brand and products. In this strategy, the brand does not directly participate in the marketing but allows the affiliate to do it in their way.
The affiliate writes reviews, makes videos or blog posts to recommend the brand or the product. On the other hand, the brand tracks the affiliate link and pays the affiliate for every sale made.
Email Marketing
Brands frequently connect with potential customers via email to generate leads, perform specific CTA, drive traffic to their website or social media, inform about an offer, and many more. Most of them also use emails as a medium to retarget their potential customers.
The brands need to follow specific regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act before targeting customers through email marketing. Some of the principles are that one must send the email only to those who opted for it, people must be able to unsubscribe from the email list quickly, and the brand must be transparent about their identity.
So, after going through the article, you must be thinking about which is the best type of marketing, digital or traditional. Before you hop to any conclusion, let me tell you that both play an essential role in the growth of a business. The key to a great marketing strategy doesn’t lie in choosing a suitable medium based on the needs of your targeted audience.
