Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing

Publicity, advertising, research, merchandising and eventually sales are all important to expand a business. This is the process by which we can familiarize consumers with our products and services. Some processes of traditional marketing are telephonic sales, advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and on the radio, (and other media) direct mail and even door-to-door selling.

The advantage of these one-on-one communication processes is the ‘real world’ communication between the consumers and the company. Despite these advantages, there are some drawbacks to these traditional processes. Let’s take a look at the disadvantages of traditional marketing:

Increased Costs
Traditional forms of marketing have proven to be very costly when compared to the newer forms of promotion. Along with paying for the slot for advertising, one also needs to allocate funds to develop your commercials. It’s not enough to get a few slots in order to benefit from them. Onemust get many slots in order for your product to really make an impact on the audience. This again requires more money.

Limited information
The amount of information that can be shared through a traditional form of marketing is limited. All your information has to fit within a few inches of space or for a radio or television ad, a few seconds.Any increase in the size of your advertising column will result in an increase in the cost incurred. In many cases, it so happens that the space available is so small that it’s impossible to show the variations in pricing. The discounts, offers, and other marketing strategies to attract the audience are not given room to be displayed.

Limited field of operation
Traditional marketing has a limit to its area of operation. Since an increase in the area of advertising involves an increase in the cost incurred, it’s generally limited to a particular place. For instance, while advertising through fliers, when we increase the area of delivery, then the costs increase automatically.

Targeting the right customer is not easy
With the newer forms of marketing, we can easily control our audience by targeting potential customers based on the personal information that they have shared online. But, with the traditional forms, it’s not easy to target the right audience. It reaches out to a vast audience which may or may not necessarily include potential customers. Whether it is a magazine or newspaper or radio commercial, there is no guarantee that your marketing will be successful in bringing in more customers.

Difficult to customize
Customizing marketing strategies to different groups of consumers is impossible. The same message or advertisement reaches the entire audience. There is no variation possible in case of traditional marketing.

Forces the viewers
People generally don’t like it when something is forced upon them. Whether an advertisement on the radio or a salesman at their doorstep, they try to avoid and ignore them. A ‘low response rate’ is not profitable to the business.

Modifications take time
With traditional marketing, you cannot modify your advertisements in the nick of time nor incorporate changes easily. It involves many months of preparation to post an advertisement in a traditional forum. Even newspaper or magazines advertisements require a couple of days for printing the advertisement. The message cannot be changed unless you post another advertisement. Modifications also take a toll on the expenses.

Traditional marketing in comparison to newer forms
When we compare the traditional forms with the newer forms of marketing, we realize that it’s not worth the trouble to hold on to it.With traditional forms, businesses choose the appropriate mode of advertising based on their budget. This was a disadvantage to smaller business. But, with newer forms, this type of hierarchal mode is almost nullified and it gives smaller establishments the opportunity to grow. For example, a professional can connect with others just by creating a profile of LinkedIn, and connecting with others on the platform.

Newer forms of marketing are able to reach the audience at a lower cost. At times, this audience can include large populations all over the world whereas traditional forms are limited by a lesser range of impact.

Taking into account the disadvantages of traditional marketing gives us adequate reasons to look for and inculcate newer forms of marketing for our business. If you want your business to survive in this competitive world, you should be sensitive to and quick in making the necessary changes to enhance your chance to flourish.

Author Bio:

Shweta Sharma is a yoga fanatic and enjoys cooking. She blogs at CEO Hangout and Trainer Hangout.

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