Really, the answer is that you should be using both.  Traditional marketing in the form of adverts in magazines and newspapers, on the local radio, printed material dropped through letterboxes and so on, is still a very valid form of advertising to reach customers.  How about appearing at trade shows or even local fairs?  All very valid ways of marketing.  However, social marketing is the new little brother (or sister) of traditional marketing and they can work very well together.

Traditional marketing – perhaps a TV advert or a mass leaflet drop – can reach an extremely large range of people.  This might be what you want at that particular moment.  Perhaps you are concentrating on spreading the name of your brand and you want to reach as many households as possible.  Also remember some people are still not using social media so if you did not use traditional marketing at all, you would lose out on these potential customers.

So while traditional marketing definitely still has its place, if you want to reach a certain type of person then social media marketing can work very well for that.  For example, using Facebook, you can create an ad campaign that targets people in specific age groups and / or in specific locations.  You can certainly target specific locations with traditional marketing as well, but how about locking it down even more?  With our FB advert example, you can set the criteria even further – perhaps choose to only target single people, or people that are parents.  If you were launching a new product that happened to be aimed at young children then targeting parents would be a good move.

You can also use the two hand in hand – perhaps use traditional marketing to drive people to your website or social media page.  Invite people to “like” your page for more information or to sign up to your website to be entered into a draw.

Of course, the basics still apply.  When you are embarking on a new advertising campaign, ask yourself who you are targeting and what you are trying to achieve – brand awareness, increased sales from existing customers, new sales from new customers, product feedback – and then step back and think carefully about which medium/s you should use to best achieve your goals.

So if you are still asking yourself which is the better marketing medium, and which you should invest in over the other, the answer is neither.

The best marketing strategy is one that implements both mediums in such a way that they complement each other.

For help with your social marketing needs get in touch with web design Costa Blanca today.