Will digital marketing now replace traditional marketing?

Over the past couple of months the world – and South Africa over the last two months – has been faced with a new reality that it has had to adapt to extremely quickly or face the loss of thousands of lives. We have not had the luxury of being able to gradually adapt to this ‘new normal’.

A part of this new normal is the necessity to conduct business, which can be done virtually, online. Owing to this new digital business model, traditional forms of marketing can’t be adopted – they’ve got to be digital.

Is traditional marketing dead?

Over the past two months, we’ve seen two long-standing publishing houses close their doors owing to the added pressures put on them from COVID-19:

• Associated Media Publishing – which published the likes of House & Leisure as well as Cosmopolitan – closed its doors on 1 May.
• Caxton – publishers of titles such as Farmers Weekly and Bona – has decided to close their entire magazine division.

The reasons for these closures, which have been widely cited in the media, are lack of advertiser spend in addition to the prolonged closure of printers and distributors during the hard lockdown which South Africa experienced during April.

Although this closes off a large chunk of one avenue of traditional marketing – in other words, magazine advertising – it must be remembered that there are still other forms of traditional marketing which don’t require advertising spend to keep them afloat.

The traditional marketing types in the list below will carry on:

• Direct sales (although this will probably take place via channels such as Zoom until the threat of COVID-19 has passed),
• Referrals (or word-of-mouth marketing),
• Television, as well as
• Radio

Marketing is both an art and science. There are scientific principles that have been developed by household names in marketing, such as the 4Ps and 3Cs, which are still in use today and are as applicable to digital marketing as they are to traditional marketing. It is an art because it is very dependent on the influences of buyer behaviour and the economic landscape (as we’ve seen with the Coronavirus). As such, in order to develop marketing strategies that work for your business, you need to be very sensitive to these influences.

The other thing that you need to have is a person in your organisation – be it either yourself or an employee – who is an expert in marketing.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you’re looking for a course to teach you all that you need to know about digital marketing, look no further than the Digital School of Marketing’s Advanced Digital Marketing Course. For more information, please follow this link.