17 Examples of Traditional Marketing

John Spacey, August 01, 2022

Traditional marketing is promotion of products using long standing ways of messaging to customers, particularly broadcast media. This targets relatively broad audiences and is difficult to directly measure. Tradition marketing can be contrasted with digital marketing that allows for precision targeting of customers and direct measurement of results. The following are common examples of traditional marketing.

Billboards	Direct Mail
Door-to-door	Events & Conferences
Fax	Fliers
Magazines	Newspapers
Outdoor Advertising	Person to Person Sales
Posters	Product Placement in Movies / Television
Radio	Relationship Building
Showrooms	Telephone Marketing / Cold Calling
Television

Historically, broadcast media was used to create brand recognition. This still works, particularly for brands with a broad customer base. This is based on the observation that customers are more likely to trust and buy products based on mere recognition of a brand name, package or logo. As such, traditional marketing may do nothing more than get a name and logo in front of an audience with some positive message that is only designed to attract attention. In other words, the content of a message such as a television commercial may have nothing to do with the product or brand.

Person-to-person sales is still a common practice in many industries but increasingly relies on support from digital marketing such as social media marketing.

Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing
Media	Broadcast Media	Digital Media
Targeting	Contextual	Personalized Contextual Retargeting
Audience	Broad audiences only.	Possible to target highly specific audiences with tailored messages.
Measurement	Relative difficult to measure results with precision. For example, sales at a store may pick up after a television commercial but it is difficult to directly attribute a cause.	Precise measurement