
TRADITIONAL MEDIA VS. NEW MEDIA
‘A committed soul will achieve the goal. An indecisive mind will miss the opportunity”, this is the dilemma of the modern marketer. The issue is not about commitment to achieve the desired goals but the issue is dealing with the challenge of paradigm shift from way the age old marketing was strategized and the approach of new age media which is more focused and data centric. Most of the time conflict between these two pillars traditional media and the new age media creates confusion in the minds of marketers as in where the actual investment has to happen with the constrain of budgets. Right planning between these two poles therefore has become one of the most important parameter of success.
Your business relies on a variety of marketing and advertising methods to reach potential customers and leads. Over time, the marketing methods you use have likely evolved, changed, or even been retired and replaced with new ones.
As marketing continues to evolve, new methods—typically referred to as “new media”—have emerged. These methods are mostly said to deliver better results than the methods known by the name “traditional media” (or even “old media”).
If you’ve found great success with traditional media, you’re probably concerned by the idea of abandoning them for new media—even if these new methods promise better results. So the question becomes “which methods are truly worth keeping, and which new methods should I invest in?”
Let’s examine the traditional media vs. new media argument to help you decide exactly which methods will help get your business the highest ROI and the most leads. We’ll start by defining exactly what traditional media encompasses, move onto defining the new and emerging media trends, and then examine multiple new marketing methods so you can evaluate which are the best for you.
What is Considered Traditional Media?
Let’s define what is considered traditional media vs. emerging media. Traditional media methods include mostly non-digital advertising and marketing methods, including:
| Television advertisements | Radio advertising |
| Print advertising | Direct mail advertisements |
| Billboards and off-site signs | Banner ads |
Companies have used these methods for many years to reach consumers and motivate them to make purchases. Up until very recently, these marketing and advertising styles were very effective, and helped businesses just like yours make a profit.
However, as the needs and expectations of consumers evolve, marketing has no choice but to evolve as well. This is what has led to the rise of new media and digital marketing methods—and the decrease in popularity of some of the traditional methods you know well.
If your company is looking to make the switch from traditional marketing to digital marketing, WebpageFX can help the transition go smoothly. We have a team of 130 digital marketing specialists that will work with your company to integrate new marketing strategies. Not to mention, we have over 300 raving fans, and you could be next!
Effect of Traditional and New Media on Consumers
As consumers, we sometimes find ourselves in a conundrum when it comes to how get our information. Now-a-day, more and more consumers use the internet to quickly find information, making new media advertising pertinent for any type of business. However, at the same time, consumers still take a good chunk of time out of their day to use traditional media. On the way to work we have our radios playing, at home we have the television on watching the news, and at the doctor’s office we find ourselves reading the magazine on the end table next to us. Each of these are forms of traditional advertising that we use on a daily basis.
As consumers, we may also find that there are instances when we exposed to multiple media sources each day. Take it from experience, there are many times when I’ll be at home watching television and at the same time I’ll be on my tablet looking up the next vacation I’m going to take. It’s at these times that as an advertiser you need to decide where the best place to put your money which will give you desired results. Is it going to be running an ad on that television show that I’m watching, or is it going to be online while I’m surfing the web? For advertisers, it’s important to find that balancing act and not to strictly choose one over the other, but to weigh all the options, and find a harmonious mix between both traditional and new media.
Finding the Equilibrium
The million dollar question is this – how do we find this equilibrium between a world of traditional and new media? For starters, although traditional advertising is important for businesses to effectively reach mass consumers, It is highly recommended to find a way to inject a type of new media into all media campaigns.
Traditional media tends to be a bit more expensive than new media, but it also has the ability to reach a broad target audience. If the ultimate goal of the business is to reach a broad range of people, this is definitely the way to go. If you want to target a more narrow audience, then new media may be the way to go.
New media is changing the overall media landscape. New media allows businesses to target ads more specifically to consumers based on their age, gender, marital status, etc. It also allows businesses the ability to track what these consumers are doing and how they end up on your website. All of these reasons make new media imperative to any media campaign.
There are ways that traditional media can be tracked, but sometimes we ask ourselves is the ad targeting the people we really should be targeting? New media allows us to get this data and analyze our target audience. From there, we may have a better understanding of where traditional media dollars should be spent. All-in-all, the key to a successful media campaign is to have a well-balanced mix of media that ultimately targets your businesses audience. It’s important to not waste advertising dollars on media that won’t be effective. Therefore its advisable to take time to analyze your business’s marketing plan and target audiences and ask yourself what types of media can be used to reach these consumers. Another key point to this balancing activity between traditional media and new age media is that it’s not that new age media is killing its predecessor , the only think that has happened is that both of them has its own relevance and it has actually given new dimension for the marketer to reach their desired target group.



