Online Advertising vs Traditional Advertising

Fast becoming the talking point of any business trying to grow; how do you reach those elusive new clients or customers? Online vs. Traditional Advertising? Aside from the BIG and impressive numbers in growth of digital media, where should you place your next campaign?

Digital Advertising

(PPC, SEM, SMM, etc) vs.

Traditional Media

(TVC, Radio, Print, Outdoor); however the new (and old) advertising buzzwords play out, this is becoming a serious line in the sand for our clients. They are asking this us where they should spend and why. To us the line couldn’t be clearer. There is a massive gap  between the results we achieve for our clients online and the return of traditional advertising. We also see brand awareness as a bonus, not the measurable; If your digital campaign isn’t making you a clear ROI, stop! Ensure you’ve addressed your website functionality and product / price offering in the industry first.

Here are 4 quick examples of what we were asked recently:

A BRW listed client

with huge ATL media spend asks us to prove why the digital ad spend is valueable.

A well funded startup

is looking to launch their website and asks us to review their multichannel media and digital spend.

A national SME is looking to maximise conversions for their their suite of services, both B2B and B2C

A Mom and Pop Store

is looking to grow their business with more local traffic.

Which business should employ online advertising? Of course as a digital agency we would say all and as much as possible …but why? To us, digital advertising, setup well (we’ll come back to this), means every click becomes a lead, every lead joins a funnel, every funnel has a conversion rate, and every conversion can be assessed for a bottom line return investment value. To get a click from traditional advertising, sure there are good tricks like QR codes, simple URLs and good old fashioned remembering, but these are massive barriers to actual real-world conversion. We do concede, traditional does have great branding power, however at what cost?

The Ten Thousand Dollar Test

If you were to spend ten thousand dollars on advertising, what can you buy? Think about this, with traditional  can we buy any reasonable air time, newspaper, glossy print, radio or billboards. More importantly;  how do you measure and maximise traditional spend ? Trial and error? Or maybe consult previous campaigns or channel examples based on historical trends? Of course you actually have to commit to the campaign entirely before you know if it will work, or flop!

However with digital, within the first day or two we are already measuring, converting and refining. How much? Well we currently base our worst case testing on $1 per click, and aim to to a lot better than this as the campaign rolls out. For $10,000, you get 10,000 clicks, and our job is to convert the highest possible amount of clicks into real-world measurable outcomes (sales, signups or social engagement). Without going into all the detail, we optimise by keyword strategies, click filtering, AB / multivariate testing, visitor qualifying, unique landing pages, retargeting, digital presence and everything, everything is measured, right back to the ad click. Any ad or platform performing lives, others are killed off very fast, constantly improving the cost per conversion. Darwinian evolution of advertising through fast probability and commercial analysis. Plus every bit of digital spend comes with the bonus brand presence of growing your organic (non-paid) traffic.

So back to our 4 examples; How did they fair with AndMine’s digital advertising department? Our

BRW listed

 client is tracking new sales, brand awareness and obvious digital traffic growth back to individual ad groups. They are buying across multiple online platforms and seeing massive benefits especially from retargeting. Further refining over the coming months will see a shift in a greater percentage of their traditional spend into digital as ROI continually improves with continual optimisation techniques.

The well funded startup

has dropped the traditional ‘shot-gun’ approach as they called it in favour of online advertising. Once we defined for them the best platforms for their industry, we multiplied their buying using a tested viral mechanic (around a user competition) which more than doubled their total conversions.

The SME dominated their keywords on both AdWords and organic traffic, our next goal is to move the digital spend into free organic traffic and grow their business over new services and keywords.

The mom and pop store now wins all the organic traffic for their local area. With smart geo-location advertising we were able to grow their customers across all their services and marry it up with their SEO keyword strategy.

Is Traditional Advertising Extinct?

If not extinct, definitely endangered. We are constantly surprised at the commitment to these mediums considering the difficultly in measurement. Momentum, it is clear in any activity is a powerful thing. However, change is also clear. As digital matures one thing is certain, more companies will be improving conversion KPIs that link directly back to clicks on platforms. Remember to ask the most important question; what is my return?

We believe setup correctly, digital answers this question. Remember, Measure or Die! …Noting the options can boggle the mind; Google Adwords, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, Yelp, Google Ad Network, Banner Advertising, Blogs, Bloggers, Digital Magazines, Sales Websites, Viral Mechanics the list goes on and on. So do the opportunities. With new ideas and platforms evolving daily it is essential your strategy keeps up the pace.

If you have questions about the future of your advertising we’d love to hear them; post them below or contact us.