Hot Topic: Traditional Media V.S Social Media

Traditional Media

Advantages

Ø  Higher customer involvement

Social media provides higher customer engagement and improves communication channels between the company and their customers. The company will also be able to generate customer feedback and reviews faster.

Ø  Higher conversion ratios

Companies are able to measure online traffic and social media marketing easily and in a timely manner with numerous online tools available such as Google Analytics (Social Media Today, 2012). They are also able to receive higher response rates in providing products and services with lower costs.

Ø  Monitoring competitors

Information about competitors is available in all social media platforms. Companies are able to read first-hand what consumers are saying on competitors’ Facebook pages, Twitter, blogs and etc. With all this information, companies are able to improve on their marketing strategies.

Ø  Market research

Companies are able to conduct market research with their target audiences more efficiently and with various different online resources (Canada Business Network, 2012). They are also able to track trends and identify customer needs using different digital methods more conveniently without high costs.

Ø  Connect and attract new customers globally

The use of social media enables companies to interact with customers from different parts of the world. Using this powerful tool as a way to market to other global consumers will attract and expand new target audiences.

Ø  Word-of-mouth/viral marketing

Social media functions as a spider’s network for company to generate public awareness. Social media is an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy to promote companies with extraordinary spreading speed. Customers have higher trust level on what the comments and feedback given by other customers on social media.

Disadvantages

Ø  High Expense

Traditional forms of media such as television and magazines are costly to companies and their marketers. Television ads can range into the hundreds of thousands of dollars while print ads need to be published numerous times to be effective.

Ø  Lack of Sustainability

Traditional media lacks sustainability as ads are shown for brief periods of times. Companies and marketers must continuously work to develop new ads often of the same brand to hold consumers attention and make the message sustainable.

Ø  Limited Space

Television requires your message to be delivered in 30 seconds or less which leaves customers little time to understand the true meaning of a message. According to contentgroup (2012) companies and marketers who do not have an interesting story to tell should refrain from using traditional media at all. Time and space that is available is in fact rented and not owned (The Content Market Revolution, 2007). This means that they must pay a fee to the advertising agencies to host their ad for a period of 15 to 30 seconds.

Ø  Lack of Target Market Reach

Unfortunately reaching the right target market can be extremely difficult through traditional forms of media. Often time’s messages shown on television, placed in newspapers or heard on the radio are geared towards one particular group. According to Canadian blog site Six Pixels of Separation (2012) only 28% of the audience knows about products and services advertised and the rest seldom pay particular attention to the message.

Ø  Ability to Ignore & Clutter

Finally traditional media can easily be ignored and messages are often cluttered. Mediums such as television and the radio can easily be switched off or changed to another channel. Newspapers and magazines can also be ignored by choice while the same can be said for SkyTrain and bus advertisements.

Social Media

Advantages

Ø  Higher customer involvement

Social media provides higher customer engagement and improves communication channels between the company and their customers. The company will also be able to generate customer feedback and reviews faster.

Ø  Higher conversion ratios

Companies are able to measure online traffic and social media marketing easily and in a timely manner with numerous online tools available such as Google Analytics (Social Media Today, 2012). They are also able to receive higher response rates in providing products and services with lower costs.

Ø  Monitoring competitors

Information about competitors is available in all social media platforms. Companies are able to read first-hand what consumers are saying on competitors’ Facebook pages, Twitter, blogs and etc. With all this information, companies are able to improve on their marketing strategies.

Ø  Connect and attract new customers globally

The use of social media enables companies to interact with customers from different parts of the world. Using this powerful tool as a way to market to other global consumers will attract and expand new target audiences.

Ø  Word-of-mouth/viral marketing

Social media functions as a spider’s network for company to generate public awareness. Social media is an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy to promote companies with extraordinary spreading speed. Customers have higher trust level on what the comments and feedback given by other customers on social media.

Disadvantages

Ø  No face-to-face interaction

Social media lacks the formal face-to-face interaction that can come from one-on-one company and consumer meetings.

Ø  Time commitment and management

Companies will have to commit to maintaining and updating digital/social media networks to provide necessary feedback to customers; these procedures are time consuming for companies.

Ø  Online public complaints and bad reviews

Companies have limited control of the online negative public complaints from customers. According to the Retail Consumer Report, conducted online by Harris Interactive in January 2011 among 1,605 online customers, it showed that 68% of customers having a negative review got a response from the company and 18% of these people ended becoming loyal customers. These negative comments can cause 21% of customers that decided not to buy any products from the website.

Ø  Security issues

In January 12, 2012, Zappo official website got hacked and was stolen 24 million client’s information, including names, address, billing, shipping address, phone number, even the last four digits of credit card and online password. Luckily, Zappo stored this data in a different file. These online companies have caused the security issues that not only can reveal personal information, but also can increase the customers and society chaos.

Recommendation:

Traditional media provides consumers with a better level of trust in what is printed while social media provides the speed and convenience of getting information on the go. There is no right or wrong of each side. To take advantages of each side is depend on the company itself. If the company focus on on-line business, it is unnecessary to go traditional media to promote itself. The most thing important thing for companies is to how to take advantages of the social media and traditional media effectively. Every company needs to find the key promotion selling point by which media is the most effective and is most high targeted.