Online vs Traditional Advertising: Two Methods Enter, One Method Leaves

For years, billboards, television commercials and radio ads have ruled the world of local and national business marketing, leaving little room for competition. Until recently, traditional advertising generated the most traffic in the most effective way possible. However, all of that changed with the introduction of online performance marketing, which displays advertisements in a much more targeted and manageable way.

Types of Online Performance Marketing

Although you can purchase an ad placement online for a predetermined amount of money, most online advertising is performance based in some way, which means the price you pay for advertising depends in some way on the performance of your ad on the website you place it on. There are four types of online performance marketing: CPA, CPL, CPC and CPM.

CPA and CPL stand for cost per action and cost per lead. Under both CPA and CPL, you don’t pay for an ad until a website visitor clicks the ad and either completes a lead form or makes a purchase. If you choose to market your business using CPC, or cost per click, you pay a small fee every time someone clicks on one of your ads. Finally, CPM, or cost per thousand, means you pay a predetermined price for every 1,000 views your ad receives.

Online Marketing VS Traditional Marketing

Although online marketing is a growing trend, many businesses still gravitate toward traditional marketing because it seems like a time-tested and financially-proven form of advertisement. Examples of traditional marketing include radio advertisements, mail-out fliers, billboards, television commercials, newspaper ads, phone book ads and other physical advertisements.

However, the problem with traditional marketing is that it is becoming less and less relevant to an increasingly digital world. Fewer and fewer people listen to the radio or watch commercials with digital video recording devices in many homes and satellite radio available in many cars. Furthermore, fewer people are looking to phone books and newspapers for addresses, phone numbers and the news. Instead, search engines are the go-to spot for fast and convenient answers.

With so many people gravitating to Internet services, there is no wonder online advertising is the way of the future. After all, performance based advertising carries many advantages over traditional advertising anyway. Some of the advantages of online advertising include:

• Easier Tracking - Online advertising makes it easy to find out which advertisements are converting the most traffic into customers, and which ones are not working. Whether you choose CPA, CPL, CPC or CPM, there are numerous tools available online for tracking which ads are most effective.
• Targeted Traffic - Never before has it been so easy to target your ads to specific traffic within your customer base. If you are only interested in selling a product to pregnant mothers in Burbank, Calif., you can make sure that those are the individuals most likely to see your ads. No billboard can do that.
• Cost Efficient - Because you aren’t paying for traffic that you don’t need, Internet advertising is generally much more cost efficient than traditional ads are. Furthermore, because there is no physical overhead associated with online ads, starting a new ad campaign is usually affordable, as there are no commercials to record or fliers to print. This can be a savings of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

Although it may seem intimidating if you have never branched out beyond traditional forms of advertising, taking the leap into online performance based marketing could be one of the most financially beneficial steps you ever take for your business. In a world where technology and innovation constantly lead the way, it’s important to evolve and allow your business to adapt to new concepts. The results just may surprise you.