Marketing a brand has evolved extensively worldwide. Initially, marketing started the traditional way through word of mouth. As access to the internet began picking up speed, digital marketing entered and set a lasting impression on consumers. With the rise in social networking, social media marketing has made promoting products easygoing. This article will take you on an informative ride of digital marketing and social media advertising.
What is Digital Marketing?
When a product comes to life, the next step to increasing its life is marketing. Digital marketing (DM) is using offline and online means to promote goods and services. The offline devices include television, radio, billboards, and banners. The online devices include emails, social media, and paid advertisements on apps.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a boon for young generation since they are well-versed with technology. These advantages of digital marketing stated below help to grow your sales.
- Approach toward a large audience
- A good platform to Introduce a product/service
- Varied strategy of marketing (depends on the use of device or platform)
- Preferred by large brands.
- Highly profitable
- Applicable to products and services
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing (SMM) was discovered through entertainment and is a part of digital marketing. Marketing using social media apps is the art of marketing a product while entertaining your audience. The content needs to be eye-catching, unique, and trending to keep your customers engrossed. It is entirely dependent on search engine optimization. The apps used for SMM are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Benefits of SMM
SMM is a tool that supports your marketing journey. It is an area of learning new publicizing techniques. Here are some privileges you will gain during SMM.
- Beneficial for small brands
- Direct customer feedback
- Approach toward the relevant target audience
- Trendy content planning
- Direct interaction with customers
- Quick and user-friendly
- More applicable to products than services
Also read: Social media marketing: An accelerator for small businesses.
Differences and Similarities
Are social media marketing and digital marketing similar or different? This doubt creates confusion among freshers. This segment is here to clear your doubts about their differences and similarities.
Why is Social Media Marketing Different From Digital Marketing?
Although SMM is a part of digital marketing, there are a few variations. Listed below are a range of differences between DM and SMM.
Content Strategy
Marketing done using social media needs planning and a content calendar. The content posted has to be unique, vibrant, and visually appealing. Digital marketing doesn’t require an extensive posting timeline. The same content is posted repetitively. As a result, digital marketing often appears to be spam-like content.
Use of Platforms
SMM is specific to social networking platforms including Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. However, digital marketing is free to utilize offline devices alongside online platforms. This helps businesses gain the necessary attention for their products.
Reach Towards Target Customers
Customer reach depends on relevancy in SMM. The content in SMM is created for a target audience relevant to the product. However, in digital marketing, the customer reach is large and generalized. It is mostly used by big brands and when the customer base is huge.
Customer Engagement
Marketing via social media apps engages with the audience on a large scale through polls, quizzes, and QA sessions. On the other hand, product promotion carried out digitally has less engagement with the customers.
Direct Feedback
Promoting products on social media can get direct customer feedback through DMs. In digital marketing, customer feedback is infamously compared to customer complaints. This is a drawback unless SMM is used along with digital marketing.
Brand Awareness
Small business owners utilize social networking apps to promote their products. The brand awareness is limited only to social media users. Digital marketing increases brand awareness on a massive scale.
Risk of Bad Publicity
The general public controls everything uploaded on social media than the content creator. It creates a risk of bad publicity for a business using social media for marketing. Digital marketing employs repeated content during the marketing process. Therefore, there is less risk of bad publicity.
Similarities Between Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing
Since both components belong to marketing, they have a few similarities. Paid ads are used in both ways of marketing. Digital marketing and SMM strengthen community growth on various platforms. Search engine optimization is pivotal for marketing. Irrespective of promoting products using digital marketing or social media, both are SEO-dependent.
SMM is a part of digital marketing, so it is obvious that the duo needs the internet for its smooth working. Maintaining consistency is essential while using both marketing tools. Therefore, as seen above, the differences weigh more than the similarities. So yes, digital marketing and SMM are different.
When to use SMM?
SMM is more applicable for advertising products than services. Advertising products is quicker and social media users prefer snippets that are relatable and fun. A product is likely to get more attention compared to a service.
For instance, a food delivery company can advertise its service on billboards and banners due to a large customer base. A hair product designed for men only will have a target audience restricted to a gender. So this product is likely to get the required attention on social media.
Wabbithire’s social media marketing course
SMM requires expert knowledge of a variety of marketing characteristics. The social media mentorship program by Wabbithire is a course that will help build a career in social media management. The highlights of this course are as follows:
- 60-day online program
- Eligible for freshers only
- Live+recorded sessions
- Placement drive with 100% guarantee
- Content strategy and portfolio building
- Flexible working hours
Conclusion
In this competitive world, marketing a product or service is tricky. It can be baffling whether social media marketing and digital marketing are the same or not. This confusion arises because it provides the same function; marketing. However, it is distinctive in the way it works. The primary difference is that SMM uses social media while digital marketing prefers digital devices and social media. Both ways of marketing shine in various aspects. Hoping that this article answers your doubts about the differences.
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