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Traditional comms vs digital comms - how to choose when it's all gone digital

Strategy: Communication to some is second nature and they don't need to think about what they are doing. But with huge changes to workspaces, going from in-person to digital, you may have to adapt your methods and ways of communication.

With everything seemingly going digital, it’s a fair question to ask whether the old stuff still counts for anything, but first,

What do we mean by traditional and digital communications?

We’re talking about the sum total of offline communication activities which form part of your comms strategy. At the best of times, comms as a discipline gets lost in and amongst the various aspects of internal comms, marketing comms, PR. Comms is wider than marketing, in that the messaging you’re interested in needn’t only relate to your products or services, or to your internal stakeholders. The most important thing with communications is that there is consistency in your messaging. That used to feel easier when you only had print communication to deal with, as the diffusion of your message tended to be quite centralised. Throw digital comms in the mix, and it’s a whole other ball game.

Examples of traditional communications:

  • Face-to-face relationship building (e.g. conferences, workshops, seminars, networking events)
  • Printed materials (e.g. brochures, flyers, printed newsletters)
  • Corporate branding (e.g. signage, logos, interior design)
  • Staff and stakeholder relations
  • Promotional items

Examples of digital communications

It probably feels more obvious these days, but digital communications will include things like:

  • E-mail
  • Text messaging
  • Blogs
  • Social media
  • Live support
  • Virtual tours
  • VR experiences
  • Zoom-style meetings

Do we still need traditional comms?

So when you look at those lists, you might already have a clear idea of what you might want to move away from, e.g. those costly, nightmare-inducing printed brochures and catalogues, and what you want to do more of, e.g. Zoom calls in your pyjama bottoms with the cat warming your feet.

How do you choose what to keep or dump?

I have infuriated plenty of people who’d ask me, as their line manager, to approve a traditional comms expenditure. The conversation would usually go something like:

We’ve run out of XYZ brochure. I’ve got a reprint quote for £5,000 – can I go ahead?”

“Why do we need them?”

“Because people are still asking for them”

“But how are they helping?

If you find yourself in need of radical cost cutting, then you may well be pointing your axe in the direction of traditional comms such as brochures.

But hold on a minute.

If you’re going to be true to what marketing is all about, it’s not your decision to make. Because as we say all the time, it’s not about you.

It’s good and right to forever be scrutinising what you’re spending your marketing money on. But you have to look for return on investment, not just cost.

Furthermore, you have to look at the period of return. Some of the biggest, most memorable face-to-face trad comms events won’t pay back instantly, but the value they add is possibly irreplaceable online.

Like the time we hired out Madame Tussaud’s London for an evening champagne reception. Key stakeholders and collaborators from around the world had a one-off experience which would forever be positively associated with the brand. That sort of event probably has a 5-year value in terms of brand experience, but it probably didn’t bring in a booking the next day.

Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation

The art to getting it right in the choice between traditional and digital comms is to know your market, know your channels and know the needs of your stakeholders better and better.

When we’re helping put together a digital strategy, we dwell quite a bit on segmentation. Sure, you’ve got your demographic, geographic, psychographic segmentation and whatnot, but you can also segment by technological and digital comfort levels.

If you’re dealing with clients and channel distributors like agents on a world basis, there is likely to be a considerable amount of discrepancy around what counts as the most effective comms strategy.

Where you have local distribution support on the ground, best not draw any conclusions until you’ve developed a clear picture of what those local distributors need. If they’re dealing with the local Embassy, it might take a hand-written note on quality paper to connect. A high net worth market may expect an apposite luxury brochure. Just because Gen Zers spend their time glued to mobiles doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate packaged gifts in the post.

So it all depends on who you’re targeting, how they behave, what they expect, what you’re saying to them, how your brand is positioned (relative to where you want it) and how short- or long-term you’re thinking here in terms of your communicative investment.

Use technology

Whether or not your deeper analysis of your market leads you towards or away from traditional communications, use technology to keep tabs. The one thing everyone says about digital is that it allows you to count and measure everything.

Use your digital systems and processes to monitor the effectiveness of your decisions, log preferences and compare the relative merits of different approaches.

Is it more effective to invest an extra £20,000 in your website redevelopment to ensure it positions well online as well as looking great, or is it better to spend the same amount on three more overseas trips to attend international conferences and workshops? You have to know this stuff.

Never, ever forget the value of human contact

This is so important that we’ve written a whole other article on the importance of human contact in a world of digital communications.

People buy people first. Face-to-face interaction, however formal or casual, where you can see the whites of people’s eyes, shake hands, pick up on their energy and gauge the mood in the room are too human and fundamental to let go of, and Covid is only postponing the return to this behaviour.

Revel in your uniqueness

At all costs, try and avoid the massive temptation to do whatever it is that everyone else is doing. Just because ABC organisation is mouthing off that they’ve successfully dumped all printed comms and saved a fortune, doesn’t mean you need to head back to the office to make an identical proclamation. It may not be the right strategy for you. Creating differentiation and buyer preference is about being more you, and less them.

The worst thing right now though, is not knowing. So if you are just doing all forms of comms because you always have, it’s probably time to look at that in a bit more detail.