As marketers, we’re asked almost every day which is better between digital marketing and traditional marketing? This question is normally followed up with a comment along the lines of, “I’ve done Facebook before and it never worked, but when I send out a mailer it always seems to work.”
The reply to this question is, “How did you know the mailer worked?” The typical response is they just felt like it did, or that their business increased a couple of months after they were sent out.
Our line of questions continues with “How many people kept your mailer versus threw it away?” The usual answer to that is I don’t know. Next, we’ll probably ask something like, “Do you keep mailers other businesses send you?” The response to this is, “Normally I throw them in the trash.”
Marketing has come a long way from just “thinking” something is working, or blindly attributing success to something vague. Digital marketing enables us to see actual data on how things are working. It removes any blind guessing and lets us know who sees the ad, engages with the ad, how long they watched the video, and catalogs the data of the whole experience of the individual becoming a new customer. To keep it as simple as possible, having data about when, where, and how someone became a new customer is way better than guessing the when, where, and how.
Why The ROI Is Different
When we hear the following, “Well I’ve done Facebook in the past”, or “I’ve tried digital marketing in the past and the ROI was very low”, our answer to them is simple. The ROI is going to be different from you doing it, versus someone who specializes in it.
For example, we love basketball in our office. We have some individuals that can shoot, pass, and dribble the ball. However, they don’t have an ROI of millions of dollars to show by playing basketball. The ROI of a basketball to LeBron James is a lot higher than the players in our office. Having someone who has dedicated their life to the skill, who practices and improves their talent every day, and understands their craft will always show a higher ROI than those who just try their hand at it.