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Business and marketing always go side by side. You can safely say that marketing is the lifeline of any business, and it is one of the most important factors that keep a business alive. No matter how much investment or number of employees you’ve got, your business will be just a flop if you are not good at marketing.
When we talk about marketing, there are two major types of marketing and that is social media marketing and digital marketing. A lot of people are confused and ask which one is better for their business. In this article, we have dropped a detailed digital marketing VS social media marketing comparison along with all the pros and cons of both. So, grab a cup of coffee and let’s jump into the article.
Are Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing The Same?
This is one of the most asked questions and the answer is, No! Digital marketing and social media marketing are not the same things. There is a basic difference in both. Digital marketing is a superset and social media marketing is a subset of digital marketing.
Digital marketing involves the marketing of a particular product or business by using all digital means. Digital marketing involves the use of online and offline platforms to do marketing a specific product or business. So, in digital marketing, we use the internet, television advertising, mobile phone SMS, radio, and other digital means.
On the other hand, social media marketing is limited to the use of the internet and social media platforms only such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, etc.
To sum up, we can conclude that digital marketing is a wider category and social media marketing falls under it as one of its essential components.
Now, it’s time to discuss each of them one by one in detail:
What is Digital Marketing?
The marketing/promotion of any kind of business, product, or service utilising all digital channels is called digital marketing. Following are the aims of digital marketing:
- Boost your profit and sales.
- Advertise your brand and build relationships with the consumers.
- Increase the awareness of your product or services.
When all of this is done by using digital channels such as the internet, television advertisement, social media platforms, radio, mobile phone SMS, etc then we call it digital marketing because it involves the use of every digital platform.
This definition has beautifully covered the concept of digital marketing.
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
There are dozens of reasons why digital marketing is important for businesses and we have explained the major reasons below:
1. Cost-Effective Solution
These days, traditional marketing is becoming more and more expensive. So, digital marketing provides a cost-effective solution to businesses to market their business more efficiently within their budget.
2. Reach Global Audience
Traditional marketing is limited within the dimensions of time, space, and area whereas digital marketing has no limits. For example, you started billboard advertising for your business in your city, but that billboard will only be visible to a few people present in that area at a specific time. On the other hand, if you run an advertisement campaign on television, Instagram, Facebook, or mobile phone SMS, then you will reach millions of people from every corner of the world and advertise your business more effectively.
3. More Effective & Easy to Monitor
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is more effective and much easy to monitor. There are tons of tools out there that allow you to monitor your advertisement campaign and see the impressions and clicks on your ads. This way you can strategize your advertising campaign accordingly and withdraw the attention of more customer, hence making more profit. This utility is not available in traditional marketing.
What is ROI in Digital Marketing?
ROI in digital marketing stands for Return on Investment.
Now if you are wondering what is the purpose of ROI? Then here’s the thing. ROI in digital marketing is the measure of the total profits and losses made by your business because of your digital marketing campaign and depending on how much money you have invested in the campaign.
In simple words, ROI is a measure of the progress made by your business of your digital marketing campaign. It measures how much profit or loss your business has made in return for your investment in the digital marketing campaign.
What is A/B Testing in Digital Marketing?
In digital marketing, the objective is to create an attractive webpage that draws more conversions. Sometimes, we have two versions of the same webpage, and we want to determine which one would suit the best on our webpage and drive more audience and conversions. At that point, we use the A/B testing system.
In the A/B testing system, we show two different versions of the same webpage to the website visitors and check which version brought more traffic and conversions. This testing system helps us to determine which variant of the webpage is best for business.
What Does CRM Stand for in Digital Marketing?
In digital marketing, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
CRM or Customer Relationship Management plays a very important role in deriving a successful and effective digital marketing strategy. It is a technology that helps you to manage and monitor all your relations and dealing with the customers. It helps you understand the behaviour and psychology of your customer which you can use to strategize your marketing campaign and make more profit.
How to Make a Digital Marketing Plan?
There is no complex science behind creating an effective digital marketing plan. Just follow these simple steps:
1. Defining the Business
The first step is to determine what exactly you are going to promote. Make notes of everything about your business, product, or services. You should know what is so unique about your business that other businesses lack. Why should the customers try your business? What’s so special about it? When you will know the answers to all these questions, you can sell them to your customers and make more profit.
2. Choose Target Audience
Once you know all the characteristics and properties of your business, the next thing is to choose the relevant audience that you will be targeting in your digital marketing campaign. It’s very important because you cannot be marketing professional sports gear to doctors and marketing the medical equipment to professional athletes. There is a specific audience for every product and you must target it accurately.
3. Set Your Goals
The third step is to determine your goals. What do you want to achieve from this entire digital marketing campaign? Do you need more than 6 email subscribers? Do you want to boost your conversions and sales? Goal setting is very important because you won’t be able to effectively implement your digital marketing strategy unless you are sure about what you are going for. Make sure to set easy and practically achievable goals.
4. Select Digital Marketing Method
Digital marketing is very vast and there are a lot of digital channels through which you can market your business. You will have to choose whether you want to run your advertising campaign through television ads, social media platforms, mobile phone SMS, or email marketing. Take your time and consult with experts to determine which medium is the best for you.
5. Monitor the Results
See the effect of your digital marketing campaign on your business to find out if the marketing campaign is going in the right direction and achieving the goals you have set or not. The results will help you modify and strategize your marketing campaign accordingly.
How Much Does Digital Marketing Costs?
Actually, there’s no fixed cost for digital marketing because there are a lot of factors that influence the total cost of a digital marketing campaign such as your budget and the cost set by other people involved in the campaign. For example, the total cost will depend upon how much the web developer, SEO expert, and other factors cost you.
The price differs because different people have different budgets, and they hire different people for different jobs. Therefore, you must consult a professional that will conclude a final cost for you depending upon your budget.
What Digital Marketing Includes?
Digital marketing is a combination of online and offline digital mediums.
Online Digital Marketing Channels
The online marketing medium includes the use of the internet and different social media platforms for marketing a business. You can advertise on Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and different websites.
Offline Digital Marketing Channels
The offline digital marketing channels include television advertisements and utilising radio, mobile phone SMS system for launching your marketing campaign.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a subset of digital marketing. While digital marketing goes beyond the internet, social media marketing is limited to the use of the internet and social media platforms only.
In social media marketing, we use different social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest, etc.
Why Use Social Media Marketing?
There are several different reasons why you should use social media marketing:
Global Audience & Profitable
The benefit of using social media marketing is that you will reach a huge audience by just spending a small amount of money. Today, almost everyone uses social media, and investing in social media marketing can boost your business promotions and help you generate more revenue.
How Effective Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media is the most powerful thing in today’s era of the internet and technology.
If you want to see how effective social media marketing is, just unlock your phone and see how many social media apps you got installed on your phone. You are probably already on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. Similarly, all your friends and family members are on these social media platforms as well.
Moreover, it’s not only about your friends and family. Today, there are more than 4.20 billion social media users all across the world. From this, you can judge the effectiveness of social media marketing that you can access people from every corner of the world and advertise your business, brand, products, and services wherever you want.
How Much Does Social Media Marketing Costs?
The cost of your social media marketing campaign will depend upon your budget and other factors like how long you want to run the campaign, and what do you want to include in your campaign. Generally, a social media marketing campaign can cost from $200-$300 per day or $4000-$7000 per month.
What Companies Use Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is used by a lot of leading companies in the world. Playstation, Uber, Pizza Hut, Dominos, and almost every other company use social media marketing to promote their business.
How to Use Social Media for Business Marketing?
For using social media for marketing, you need to come up with a plan.
Take your time and define your business. You need to know everything about your business and what you are going to sell to the customers. Next, you need to see which social media platform is ideal for launching a marketing campaign for your business. After that, it’s time to launch the campaign. You can also consult social media marketing experts and they will tell you the best plan which fits your business perfectly.
How to Do Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Here are some tips that will help you use social media for business marketing:
1. Know your Business
First of all, you need to learn everything about your business, brand, services, or products. You should know all relevant key features about your business like what makes it special and unique from other businesses. Then you can use all this data and sell it to your customers.
2. Target Audience
The second thing is to find the relevant audience to target because you won’t be able to sell your product unless you are promoting it in front of the right audience.
3. Set some Goals
You need to be sure about what’s the purpose of launching this social media marketing campaign So, set some clear goals as it will help you to strategize your entire campaign accordingly.
4. Choose a Platform & Start the Campaign
Once you have determined all the key features of your business and your goals, now it’s time to launch the campaign. You should find out which social media platform is ideal for you and then launch the advertising campaign according to the policies and offers of the relevant platform.
5. Monitor the Results
Once the social media marketing campaign is launched, now it’s time to monitor the results. See if the campaign is bringing positive results and achieving the set goals or not and then make necessary changes in your social media marketing campaign accordingly.
Why Digital Marketing & Social Media marketing are all important to Contemporary Business?
There is no doubt that digital marketing and social media marketing are all important to contemporary business.
The reason is that a business is nothing without marketing. For example, you just started a new shoe brand; will you be able to make this brand successful without letting the people know about it? Absolutely not!
You will need to raise awareness about your brand, promote it using social media marketing and digital marketing to tell the people about it. Tell them about what’s so special about your brand and what makes it different from others. Only then you will be able to convince them to purchase your product.
The only way to get all these things done is to launch an effective digital marketing and social media marketing campaign for your business.
Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing – Which one is better?
Actually, digital marketing and social media marketing both have their own characteristics.
Social media marketing is only limited to the internet while digital marketing goes beyond the boundaries of the internet and engages offline digital mediums like television, radio, and mobile phone SMS, etc. They both have their own pros and cons.
The end choice depends upon the type of your business. We have laid out everything about digital marketing and social media marketing in detail. Now, it’s your choice to determine which one is the most feasible for your business because both of them are equally effective.
Report on Digital and Social Media Marketing
To sum up, digital marketing is a wider category (superset) that involves marketing a business, product, or service by utilising every digital channel such as the internet, television, radio, and mobile phone SMS.
On the other hand, social media marketing is a subset of digital marketing and it is limited to the world of the internet only. Social media marketing involves the marketing of a specific product, service, or business, by using different social media platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, etc.
Both are equally effective and provide a great opportunity to promote your business, boost your sales, and make more profit.