I define traditional advertising as an aim wide, hit small type of strategy. It’s the type of advertising that isn’t centered around communication, sharing, or content but only around visibility. Considering these parameters, it’s easy to point out the types of traditional advertising:
- Newspaper Ads
- TV Ads
- Radio Ads
- Billboards
- Junk Mail
- Etc.
Given these examples, an easier way to define traditional advertising is: Traditional advertising is any marketing strategy that focuses on gaining max visibility by any means necessary instead of communication, sharing, and value. The traditional advertising strategy represents a hollow, crumbling shell. It’s the stuff that’s all shiny, inviting, and interesting on the outside with no real substance or value on the inside – and seeing it over and over and over again doesn’t help.
“Pros”
Large viewing audience potential.
Is this such a good thing? The number of ads you see today is far greater than the number of ads you saw ten, even just 5 years ago. Why? This number must increase in order for traditional ads to maintain the same level of conversions, that is, for every person that buys or follows through with an ad’s call-to-action, the number of impressions (people who seen an ad) must increase.
This makes sense when you consider the growth in new technology and the availability value online. Communication potential has increased to a dramatic level where companies and people all around the world can easy influence each others opinions through offered value in the form of social media posts, articles, whitepapers, and other simple online interactions traditional advertising will never be able to replicate.
Repetition Equals Reward
Super Bowl ads can be funny (but lately they’ve been somewhat lame, right?). Every year people look forward to the famous Super Bowl ads, more than the game in some cases. After the 50th time of seeing something that was once hilarious, do you still laugh? Does it even make a positive customer impression the first time? The old strategies of traditional advertising held that repetition led to reward – show an ad enough times to someone they can’t forget the brand.
Large corporations can get away with spending millions to have their ads plastered everywhere, and while this worked in the past, the Internet offers far greater options to help anyone discover their most favorable buying options in any category. Why go to a bookstore when you can see what thousands of people thought about a particular book online? – or shoe, car, trip package, etc. There is no longer reward in repetition.
Cons
Bias.
Before the Internet, people had no where else to turn to for advice on what to purchase and from where – advertising held an audience. Big brands were well known thanks to their marketing campaigns and therefore could be trusted. Personalizing an ad wasn’t necessary, or possible, the only important metric was how many people saw an ad. The more the merrier.
Today is much different, we see hundreds (if not thousands) of ads daily. The amount of knowledge and opinion readily available online easily offsets and attention-getting tactics used by traditional ads. Opinions have always shaped buying habits, now they are readily available.
No offered value.
Traditional ads can never power sharing and therefore have a limited lifespan from the initial ad launch. Value, on the other hand, can “live” forever in cyberspace, bringing in new customers and leads for years after creation.
How are your strategies capturing your target market’s attention? – through value?
