Digital Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing – What’s the Difference?
Digital marketing is a broad term for all marketing purposes on a digital platform. Social media marketing is all about using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for your marketing campaigns.
Digital marketing is a broad term that includes social media marketing as one of its marketing strategies. However, social media marketing opens the doors to new marketing opportunities that set it apart from others.
Key Highlights
- Digital marketing carries social media marketing as one of its branches. However, social media marketing is the most used and latest approach to marketing
- The critical difference between digital marketing and social media marketing include definition, timeline, goals, user experience, conversion rates, quickness to brand awareness, tone of content, classification, and the industries it affects most
- Both digital marketing and social media marketing go hand in hand for the best way to branding.
What is Digital Marketing?
- Digital marketing is inducing the target audience to take a specific action, from subscribing to an email list to buying a home. This entire process is carried out on online platforms.
- One such example of digital marketing is SEO writing. This practice is helpful for a website company to increase the probability of ranking on the top SERP of a search engine like Google.
What is Social Media Marketing?
- Social media marketing means marketing an entity through popular social media platforms and websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Here, the intended content can vary from textual to visual and auditory.
- For example, developing brand awareness for a company is very convenient through Instagram reels, which is one of the most highly engaging content on the second most trendy social media in the world today.
Key Differences – Digital Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing
Definition
- Digital marketing is the overall approach to brand growth or awareness by inducing people to utilize a specific product or service in an economic deal.
- Social media marketing is a branch of digital marketing that sticks with marketing through social media.
Timeline
- The term “digital marketing” is only popularized by the web. However, marketing has been possible through TV and radio sets at home, so digital marketing goes way before the onset of the world wide web, i.e., before the 90s.
- Social media only started in the early 2000s. In 2004, MySpace was the first social media platform with millions of users.
Goals
- Digital marketing aims at mostly common goals amongst all stakeholders.
- For example, digital marketing aims to increase the overall revenue, which includes increasing sales and profits, formulating strategies that will cause customers to seek out the specific brand or service, etc.
- Social media marketing has specific goals such as more post engagement, nailing trendsetting for popularity, etc.
Conversion Rates
- Social media marketing doesn’t account for high conversion rates. You only promote content on a platform owned and operated by someone else and don’t hold significant engagement.
- Digital marketing includes strategies such as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) which bring users to you instead of you reaching them out on social media; this is also known as inbound marketing.
- Inbound marketing is highly effective in growing brand equity and increasing ROI over time.
Quick Brand Awareness
- There’s no faster way to reach out to your audience as a brand than social media marketing.
- Other digital marketing strategies take time; the results are never readily available but accumulate more significant numbers over time.
Classification
- Digital marketing has several channels through which we select what suits our marketing goals and is most effective as a campaign.
- These include Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising, Video Marketing, Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, and Curation, etc.
- Social media marketing varies based on our platform, which includes Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Snapchat, Pinterest, Discord, Tumblr, etc.
User Experience
- Today’s consumer knows that research before pursuit is mandatory, so they would like to know everything about a product or service before buying it from a particular brand.
- A suitable digital marketing channel will help customers with their doubts and would put out an attractive offering in terms of, let’s say pricing or information.
- Social media marketing helps customers build a bond with a certain brand through its ability to portray the brand’s relativity with them.
- A social wall can showcase user-generated content, answer questions through comments and replies, and create a sense of community – all of which can boost audience engagement and trust.
The Tone of Content
- The tone of marketing content in digital marketing generally aims to be informative, consistent, and not too sales oriented.
- But in social media marketing, the tone can be a little informal, thus lively.
Most Affected Industries
- Fields of entertainment and infotainment are the most impacted by social media marketing.
- In a BBC interview, TikTok General Manager Rich Waterworth said that the” #LearnOnTikTok has over 7 billion and counting views”.
- Other industries with incredible potential to create immense magnitude through social media marketing are the legal industry, science, and engineering.
- The top industries to benefit from overall digital marketing are real estate, automobile, and retail.
Comparison of Digital Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing
Final Thoughts
Both social media marketing and digital marketing approaches go hand in hand for any stakeholder in digital marketing in general. There is indeed an interdependency between both forms of marketing to ensure that the brand has conquered fame and sale. However, one thing is certain if you want to target large audiences, then digital marketing is far way better than social media marketing. Hence, analyze your needs and choose the one that suits you better.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. What are the six types of social media marketing?
Answer: We know there are a total of six types of social media marketing. This includes social, bookmarking, networking, media sharing, social news, online forum sites, and microblogging.
Q2. What is the most significant difference between digital marketing and social media marketing?
Answer: To be precise, the success rate of social media marketing lies in creating and updating unique content on social media platforms on a regular basis. It intends to engage the target audience through its content. Whereas the success rate of digital marketing lies solely on using banner advertisements on varied digital platforms.
Q3. Which one is better, digital marketing or social media marketing?
Answer: Both digital marketing and social media marketing have advantages over the other in attaining different business goals. To prioritise brand awareness, a digital marketer must focus on social media marketing. Digital marketing campaigns are the most effective for better conversion rates (from visitor to consumer).
Q4. Is social media marketing part of digital marketing?
Answer: We can consider social media marketing as a branch of digital marketing where marketing is done through various social media platforms. Though both marketing strategies intend to promote brand awareness and gather audiences for the same.
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