Nowadays, digital marketing has become increasingly popular and is often the go-to for businesses when promoting their products or services. But it is not always the most effective option.
Here we will consider the pros and cons of both digital and print advertising so that you can ensure your business realises an effective marketing campaign.
Print Advertising Pros
Targeted Marketing
Print marketing allows you to target very specific, niche audiences through placing adverts in magazines and other physical media. This is something you simply cannot do with digital advertising, which often caters to a spectrum of consumers.
Raise Brand Awareness and Reputation
If you are able to place an advert in a well respected magazine or newspaper, you are immediately demonstrating to your audience that your business is of a high standard. By instilling this level of trust, customers are more likely to buy from you.
Choice of Scale
Print advertising allows you to choose the exact size of your advert. Depending on your budget, you can take up a double-page spread in a magazine, or simply place a small notice in a newspaper.
Digital Advertising Pros
Cost-effective
Digital marketing is often an extremely cost-effective option and can sometimes even be free if you choose to advertise on your own website.
Exposure
Digital modes of advertising are always available online and can be placed just about anywhere, meaning people are more likely to be exposed to them.
Highly adaptable
Mediums such as digital roadside screens can be easily adapted and changed to conform to an audience. With print advertising, once the advert has gone to print, it can be expensive and time-consuming to alter it.
Print Advertising Cons
Visually uninteresting
The purpose of print advertising is to simply convey information. It is not as visually dynamic as digital marketing, which may be off-putting to consumers.
Inefficient
Print advertising is a far less efficient mode of marketing, especially nowadays. Printing individual promotional pieces can take a lot of time and is often the more expensive option.
Digital Advertising Cons
Intrusive
Many people may think that digital advertisements are annoying and intrusive, especially on a web page or at the start of a video. This may cause customers to become bothered by your business, and therefore not invest in your product or service.
Highly competitive and saturated
With data constantly being uploaded and shared online, your digital advertisement may end up lost in cyberspace. In other words, people may not even see your marketing campaign due to oversaturated markets. This is especially hard to combat when your business has a lot of competition.
What is right for your business?
Whether you use print or digital advertising will be entirely contingent on your business model, and just who you seek to target with your marketing campaign.
Despite many new start-ups opting to utilize digital advertising, as we have seen above there is still a need for physical, printed marketing materials, so they should not be dismissed as they have many advantages over digital media. On the other hand, digital advertising may be seen as a more efficient and cost-effective option and may be more desirable for businesses wishing to further expand their enterprise rather than target a specific demographic.
Jeena Alfredo is a passionate digital marketer at The Business Goals. She is working with other companies to help them manage the relationship with The Business Goals for the publications.
