Difference between social media marketing and digital marketing with table
We explain the difference between social media marketing and digital marketing with table. New age marketing is done online and in the online world, there are multiple means by which marketing can be done.
Social media marketing vs digital marketing
The difference between social media marketing and digital marketing is that social media marketing is promotion that is done on online social sites, while digital marketing is promotion that is done with or without the internet. Social media marketing is done through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc., while digital marketing uses e-commerce, email, and content automation or TV, radio, SMS.
Comparison table between social media marketing and digital marketing
| Comparison parameters | Social media marketing | Digital advertising |
| Sense | It makes use of blogs, web forums and social networking sites to create brand awareness and spread the news of its existence to a potential target base. | Digital marketing, on the other hand, involves the use of all digital platforms, that is, the Internet and non-Internet-based channels alike. |
| Purpose | It aims to reveal the finest details about the product. This is to convince the target audience to at least make plans to make a purchase. | Its goal is simply to increase a person’s awareness of the existence of a particular product, promotion, or offer. It doesn’t really require a tangible answer. |
| Tools used | Use paid ads, photos, share links, and other online tools to reach an audience. These are designed to make it easier for the target to respond positively. | It makes use of pop-ups, banners, and click sounds to draw a customer’s attention to a particular product, good, or service. |
| Scope | It makes use of social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to reach a target market. | Use paid ads, banners, emails, search engine results pages, backlinks, hyperlinks, banners, pop-ups, and other offline digital avenues to target a potential buyer. |
| Response rates | Given rich and detailed content, coupled with a less intrusive nature, social media platforms are more likely to evoke quicker and faster responses. | Many people choose to ignore them because they are more intrusive. As such, they evoke limited impressions and lower response rates. |
What is social media marketing?
As noted above, social media marketing refers to the promotion of products and services, usually through social media networks or platforms.
These include YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Instagram, and Twitter. Under this approach, you create shareable content and then sponsor it on the right channels.
It not only serves to inform the prospective buyer of the existence of your product, but it also sheds more light on the product itself.
Therefore, it is a good way to introduce a new product. Also, this avenue is useful when you have to alter the character of your product in some way.
what is the digital marketing?
Digital marketing has a broader reach and reaches when compared to the social media marketing approach. It is the promotion, advertising and marketing of goods and services through the different digital platforms available.
Examples of these are emails, smartphones, digital displays, search engines, and third-party websites. Marketing itself can take the form of banners, pop-ups, ads, share links, hyperlinks, backlinks, and audio prompts.
Unlike the social media marketing approach, this is intended to simply draw the attention of a potential customer to the existence of a particular product, promotion, or offer; nothing else! Subsequently, the texts are shorter and more striking.
Main differences between social media marketing and digital marketing
Scope
Digital marketing is broader than social media marketing. This is because it encompasses all social media platforms, as well as numerous digital platforms and tools.
Therefore, it is capable of impacting areas and aspects of a typical market base that its counterpart cannot.
Content lengths
The lengths of content used by these two marketing platforms differ considerably. As noted, digital marketing approaches aim to simply familiarize the target audience with the existence of a product, promotion, or offer.
Social media marketing, on the other hand, offers detailed explanations. Therefore, the length of your content is longer.
Tools / Methodology
To generate content to publish on these two platforms, great skill and experience is employed. However, the scope and complexity of these skills and experience differ markedly.
Being the more complicated of the two, digital marketing requires higher levels of skill, tools, and approaches.
Reach
This refers to the largest number of people that these networks can affect at any given time. Given the broader outreach options, digital marketing will typically reach a broader potential market base compared to social media marketing.
This is only if many channels and tracks are used at the same time.
Avenues
These are the various means and forms through which advertising and promotional tasks can be carried out. The avenues of digital marketing are more numerous than those of social media marketing approaches.
They include the social media platforms themselves plus web-based ads, mobile apps, radio, television, search engines, foreign websites, etc.
Purpose
By its sheer nature and intent, digital marketing is primarily designed to make a prospective customer aware of the existence of a product, an offer, or a promotion.
As such, it contains little data. However, social media marketing is meant to provide more information about a product.
Impacts
The impacts of these two approaches also vary. Digital marketing primarily plays an important role in attracting customers to your premises.
It does almost nothing to convince them to place an order. Social media marketing, on the other hand, leads to higher conversion rates.
Applicability
You will find that the digital marketing approach is relevant for those circumstances that require you to simply inform a prospect about the products and promotions you offer.
Social media marketing will come in handy when you want to convince a potential buyer to order.
Effectiveness
When viewed from a cost-benefit angle, social media marketing prevails. This is because it costs less but generates higher levels of orders.
Digital marketing is only awesome for getting yourself known to a target audience. However, it is broader in scope and visibility.
Cost implications
Given the need to run your ads across multiple channels at once to generate meaningful visits, digital marketing is the more expensive of the two.
Social media marketing is, however, cheaper as it involves using a limited number of channels at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about social media marketing and digital marketing
What is the role of social media in digital marketing?
Social networks are a good platform to quickly get customers and interested potential customers. Social networks have high traffic, so there are great chances of receiving notifications from customers.
Many brands use social media to reach their customers and also to attract new customers to their products.
What does Social Media Marketing include?
Social Media Marketing includes various activities to get the attention of customers on social networking sites. Some widely used tricks are as follows: –
1) Posting text and images are the most used technique in social media marketing. Ads containing images and text are displayed on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It can be easily viewed on almost all social media sites.
2) Running video ads is the latest method of advertising on social sites today. This includes a video of a few seconds about the product.
How is social media used in marketing?
Social media is an important part of digital marketing. The best social media platforms are Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.
Businesses use these social sites to increase their sales and drive traffic by placing ads on these sites.
What are the types of digital marketing?
The main types of digital marketing are discussed below: –
- Search engine optimization: In this type of digital marketing your digital visibility is increased with the search results of search engines such as Google and Bing. It is a type of free digital marketing.
- Search Engine Marketing: This is the paid type of marketing. The search engine charges a certain amount to the marketer based on clicks on the ads or in other ways.
- Social Media Marketing: This includes posting ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
- Content Marketing: This type of digital marketing provides informative content to the user in the form of blogs and videos to the client to increase their sales.
- Influencer Marketing: As the name suggests, use celebrities or the most followed person on social media to advertise the product.
What is the best form of digital marketing?
Social media marketing is the best form of digital marketing because there is a lot of traffic on social media sites.
It’s easy to get in touch with the customer on social media because most people have an ID on at least one social media site.
Final Thought
We’ve really delved into the fundamental differences between these two often confusing but completely different concepts.
Having done our part to show the inherent differences of these two concepts, is it too much for us to ask that you now go ahead and make proper use of them?