Traditional media is the best way to market your product locally and to older target audiences. Hard-copy is easy for people to process, and your audience needs no internet connection. Although traditional marketing reaches a larger audience, you have no way of aiming your advertising at specific markets.
Traditional media is non-internet based media such as billboards, newspaper, radio and magazine advertising. Traditional media is an integral part of advertising your products and services to a broad market. It helps grow your business’s local awareness. The message in advertising is more important than the transmitting medium, but choosing the correct advertising method helps.
Traditional media planning is an essential part of any marketing campaign despite it being more difficult to target audiences and calculate your Return on Investment (ROI). Additionally, traditional media advertising can help marketers understand the target audience and target digital marketing more effectively. The audience’s diversity is an opportunity in researching the target demographic, allowing the marketers to target a more specific audience for other campaigns. For example, florists often target women in their advertising, but men usually buy flowers.
Television is a popular advertising medium, allowing you to transmit your message several times a day, but the local emphasis is low. The initial cost of producing the advertisement is high, but the cost per volume of exposures remains low. Although television messages have a high impact and prestige, the low shelf life of the message and high channel switching by users means that some value is lost.
Newspaper advertising has the highest believability rank of all media, particularly amongst older audiences. Newspaper ads also allow you to target a more local audience regularly. However, the production quality is low, and you have little control over placement in a competitive environment.
Magazines allow advertisers to be more selective of their target audience with high-quality production and high prestige. Magazines also have high readership levels and are often passed from hand to hand. The problem with magazine advertising is that you deliver your message less often, and there is a long lead time. Additionally, like newspapers, you’re advertising in a highly competitive environment.
Radio advertising is an effective way to reach a local, often captive audience. You can also deliver your message several times per day. The disadvantage of radio advertising is that you’re limited to an audio message only. There is also a lot of other clutter to obscure your message.
Outdoor advertising has a high reach compared to other traditional media. You can target your audience on a neighbourhood level. Unfortunately, a billboard restricts you to a short, simple message, and the initial cost is high.
Like TV advertising, cinema advertising has a high impact on audiences. You have both audio and visual aspects to your message. The disadvantage is that you have a low reach for a high initial cost, and your message isn’t repeated regularly to the same audience.
