Small Business Success: Digital Ads vs Traditional Ads, Which Is Better?

Advertising as a small business is absolutely essential for success. You can’t solely rely on organic reach and word of mouth to grow your business to the levels you dream of. The digital landscape has long been a “pay to play” realm, but how does it stack up against traditional advertising? 

First, let’s define traditional vs digital advertising. Traditional advertising includes all non-digital mediums such as print, newspaper, radio, mailers and television. Digital advertising is PPC (pay per click) search ads or photo and video ads on Google, Meta, and YouTube. Now let’s go into some of the advantages and disadvantages of each over the important categories below. 

Flexibility 

Traditional advertising is limited to one piece of ad creative. You get your placement, and that’s that. As long as that magazine is in circulation, or that billboard is up, or your tv spot runs, that’s the ad you’re using. Without being able to test your creative, you are hamstringing yourself and just hoping that the ad you’re using works well.

Digital placements allow you much more flexibility in ad creative. Run multiple variations to see which performs better. Have both photo and video ads? Try them out side by side. Conversions falling off? Swap out your copy and test that. Test multiple variables all at once and see what works best. 

The ability to make adjustments on the fly, driven by real world results, is simply amazing. It keeps your ad campaigns fresh and quality traffic flowing to your website and business. 

Targeting 

One of the key advantages of digital ads is the ability to deliver your message directly to the ideal customer you are trying to reach. Audience targeting is crucial to the success of a digital campaign, and doing it right keeps costs low and conversions high. Another key targeting tool is the ability to retarget customers based on actions they have taken, such as interactions with your social media or visiting a specific page on your website. 

Targeting with traditional ad buys is limited to the medium you place the ad in. It allows for some flexibility based on publication demographics and topic, but that’s as specific as it gets.

It can not be said enough - correct audience targeting is the most important and valuable aspect of digital advertising.

Reach 

Traditional ads are tied to the supposed total reach of the publication or location you are advertising. X amount of cars drive by this billboard location every day. X number of people are subscribed to this magazine. X viewers tune into this television show every night. However, there are several flaws with that. First, the total number is basically irrelevant. More is better, sure, but out of that total how many are actually going to see and read your ad, much less take action on it? 

With digital ads, you have total visibility with the exact amount of people who have seen your ad. Your reach is tied to your total ad spend, and in almost every single case it will be cheaper than traditional advertising to reach a much broader audience. As mentioned above, you can ensure that that spend is putting your ads in front of the right people, instead of just a random audience.

Digital advertising lets you reach a bigger and better audience than traditional methods, hands down every time. 

Conversion Tracking 

With digital ads, you have complete visibility over the entire process from start to finish. You can see each click and interaction, and with proper setup follow that through the entire process. You are able to see how traffic from ads interacts with your website and make subtle changes to increase conversions and optimize your spend. 

With traditional advertising, it is close to impossible to accurately track results. You can have some success with coupon codes and asking people where they found you, but for easy and accurate reporting, go digital. 

Proper conversion tracking shows you just how powerful digital advertising can be for your business. 

Ad Spend Optimization 

When you buy a magazine ad or billboard, you are quoted a price and that’s what you pay. No chance to haggle it down or get it any lower, that’s just the price. You place your ad, you pay the bill, and that’s that. Maybe people will see it and engage with it, maybe they won’t. Maybe you want to try a couple different variations of ad creative, and run them simultaneously in two publications. Your ad spend is spent and then you sit and wait and hope. 

With digital ads, you can be proactive and responsive to changes in performance and audience engagement. Instead of blowing your entire budget in one go, test several options to see which performs best then dump more money into it and watch it take off. 

Your ad spend will always be better utilized for more results with digital advertising. 

Digital advertising can be overwhelming, especially for small business owners with an already packed schedule. We can help with that. Our methodology has been tested and proven to drive results. Ready to get started? Let’s talk!