Are you doubting digital marketing vs social media marketing? Do you want to excel in your career in both fields?

In the age of social media and the digital world, digital marketing and social media marketing are popular terms. We often take digital marketing and social marketing as the same thing. They are different parts of a marketing plan. 

There is a fundamental difference between digital marketing and social media marketing. Social media marketing is a part of the digital marketing umbrella. It mainly means marketing for a product on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

Digital marketing is a vast concept. It includes all forms of marketing in digital mediums. Digital marketing means promoting a brand or product online and offline through digital mediums.

Let us first know in detail about digital marketing and social media marketing. It will help us to understand the difference between digital marketing and social media marketing better.  

Why Digital Marketing vs Social Media Marketing

In a comparison of digital marketing vs social media marketing, you may be rigid to choose any of them. However, I suggest you choose both smartly to establish your full-time digital marketing career. Here I’ll disclose both in brief.

What is Digital Marketing?

The term marketing means promoting products or brands to increase reach and sales. When we add ‘digital’ to marketing, it means using digital media channels for marketing. We use digital marketing to promote products or businesses through various digital mediums.

Digital marketing is building awareness and promoting a brand or product online using all digital channels.

The main components of digital marketing are:

Online Marketing Channels

You can do digital marketing with a website, and SEM (search engine marketing. It includes SEO and Pay per click advertising. Mobile marketing (i.e., Google Play, Apple Store) also comes under digital marketing.

Undoubtedly, in digital marketing vs social media marketing strategies, digital marketing comes ahead because of the multi-channels. Email marketing, online banner advertising, video marketing, and Social Media marketing are online marketing channels of digital marketing.

Offline Digital Channels

Digital marketing uses offline channels like Television, Radio, SMS, and digital billboards. It helps to reach out to the target audience. 

Cable TV commercials and streaming services such as Netflix are other popular ways of digital marketing. 

The Phone marketing services like cold-calling, texting, and in-app ads are a part of offline digital marketing channels.

Email Marketing

It is the art of sending promotional emails to the target audience. It is an excellent part of Outbound Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

In Affiliate marketing, a brand pays third parties a commission to sell and promote their products. Influencers, bloggers, and resellers form major parts of affiliate marketing.

Digital marketing does customize digital media marketing. We do these to get the following results- 

• Digital marketing increases the sales of products. It increases the reach and profits of the business. 
• Digital marketing increases the visibility and engagement of the brand. It helps to make a strong relationship with the customers. 
• It adds value to your business or brand.
• The most important thing is that it promotes your products or business.

There are many more advantages to digital marketing

Includoptionalable digital marketing channels for your marketing campaigns are not necessary. It is not wise and also needs a lot of money. It also may not create the required impact on the audience. 

You can plan according to your marketing strategy and budget. The choice of digital media channels depends on the business industry and target audience. Choose the most appropriate digital marketing channels to fit your business’s target audience. 

You have to test, make changes, retest, and measure the results of your digital marketing campaigns. This way, you can see which digital marketing channels work best for your brand or business. You can easily drop the digital marketing channels failing to give you growth or ROI. 

Digital Marketing Tools

When you are discussing digital marketing vs social media marketing, you may need some tools to check out your day-to-day activities.

Digital marketing people must be active on several social media channels at the same time. The digital marketing industry is a very competitive world. You must update the posts and content daily for your business or brand digital marketing. 

One has to require going through information or data in detail. Digital marketing people can remodel their marketing strategy using various digital marketing tools. It helps to save time and does wonders to attract customers.

Some popular digital marketing tools are-

• Email marketing 
• The paid social media marketing
• Video hosting tools
• various social media channels
• the website analytics tools
• Content creating tools
• SEO tools
• Customer service tools
• Affiliate marketing tools
• Display targeting tools
•  social media organic marketing
• Content curation 
• SEM
• Offline tools like television, radio, promotional videos, SMS

What is Social media marketing:

Social media marketing is another portion of digital marketing. It uses social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Goggle+, Snapchat, etc., to market the products or brand. It aims to increase the engagement of the business on social media.

Social media marketing aims at the target audience, followers, and influencers. It is all about posting new and exciting content on social media. It also includes arranging contests and making attractive content to grab the audience’s attention on social media channels.

Is it essential to include social media Marketers in Digital Marketing Campaigns?

Nowadays, social media has taken over the whole world. Research shows people use 30% of their online time on social media platforms.

So, the best way to promote your business or brand is by using social media marketing. You can increase the reach of your brand globally through social media platforms. 

Social media marketing campaigns respond quicker to business owners than other forms of digital media marketing. Of course, social media marketing can reach all the marketing goals alone.

Businesses and brands should also use other forms of digital marketing. It will help them to get maximum benefits and maximum ROI. How digital marketing vs social media marketing make you decide your need!

Like digital marketing, you only need some social media channels for marketing. Choosing social media platforms that best express your brand voice is wise.

It gives you needed visibility without much stress and money. It also maintains proper engagement with customers. 

Choosing social platforms depends on the target audience of the brand. For example, the audience on Snapchat is different than on Facebook.

When you want to target young users, you should go for Snapchat. While targeting a mature audience, you can leave Snapchat and focus on Facebook. 

It all depends on your social media marketing strategies. Why social media is powerful in digital marketing vs social media marketing? A social media marketing plan generally includes:

• Maintaining a proper customer engagement
• Keeping a follower analytics report
• Making collaborations with social media influencers
• Arranging giveaways and contests to attract an audience
• Creating and posting attention-grabbing content
• Creating organic and paid marketing for reach and sales growth.

Social media marketing creates a huge difference in terms of reach and growth. So, creating a marketing strategy involving social media marketing in the digital marketing plan is very important. 

Advantages of using social media marketing

There are so many advantages to using social media for promoting your brand or business. For long-term benefits, you can trust both without debating on digital marketing vs social media marketing.

A fast way to spread the brand or business

You can tweet or post on Facebook or Twitter, the message instantly reaches thousands of users worldwide. Social media is the fastest way to get many people in a go. Even TV and Radio are behind social media for this.

You can easily reach your brand or business to the audience way quickly with social media marketing. What you choose to increase your brand, digital marketing vs social media marketing?

It is suitable for SEO

Social signals and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are vital for the ranking purposes of the website. Social media marketing also increases your business website’s Google and Bing rankings. It improves the visibility of your brand and business.

Need of the hour and trendy

If you look for trends in digital marketing vs social media marketing, social media is ahead. Social media is a trendy thing in today’s world. You cannot ignore it even if you want to. It is the best way to stay close to your customers. 

You can sync with the latest developments in marketing through social media marketing. You can easily find out what your customers want through social media interactions.

Without the debate on digital marketing vs social media marketing, both are equally effective well. Your customers can show what they like (a product or piece of content) by votes, likes, tweets, comments, and shares.

You can analyze these statistics and learn from customer feedback how to make your products, content, or services better. It helps in increasing sales and growth of your business or brand. You get profit benefits with social media marketing.

Why digital marketing vs social media marketing and What to Choose

Here, we bring you a table to list the major differences between social media marketing and digital marketing. 

Social media marketing	Digital Marketing
Social media marketing includes using various social media platforms to reach the brand or products to the audience. We use Instagram, YouTube and other social media for this.	Digital marketing uses online and offline modes to promote products, brands or businesses.
Social media marketing is a part of digital marketing.	Benefits of digital marketing vs social media marketing, digital marketing includes many forms of marketing platforms. It includes mobile marketing, social media marketing platforms, online marketing, and offline marketing sources ( television, radio)
Social media marketing has a limited reach. Only people on specific social media platforms can know about the products or brands.	Digital marketing uses various forms of marketing strategies and platforms. So, you can reach a wider range of audience through digital marketing.
Attractive content is the key element of social media marketing. You can only attract an audience on social media through interesting and unique content.	Digital marketing mainly depends on banners and video advertisements to grab the attention of the audience. The customers can get an idea about the product or brand through them.
The number of likes, retweets, shares and comments measure the success of a social media marketing campaign. They are the sole judges. You can work on the content and use some social media tools to boost the likes, retweets and comments.	There are no such quick parameters to measure the success of digital marketing campaigns. The results are relatively slower.
This is the era of social media apps. Promoting your business or brand on social media platforms gives you a quicker response than others.	The impact and response to digital marketing on the whole is amazing.
Social media marketing uses social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, YouTube etc.	Digital marketing happens through SMS, MMS, E-mail, television, radio, and banners.
Social media marketing depends on online sources and platforms of social media.	Digital marketing uses online as well as offline mediums to promote products, brands and businesses.
The success of social media marketing depends on attractive and unique content. You have to post fresh, interesting content daily to maintain engagement. Your trendy and catchy content will attract customers and sales.	The success of digital marketing campaigns depends on various mediums. The banners, advertisements, and billboards in various digital platforms add to the reach of the brand or business. Television, the Internet, and SMS all add to the promotion of your brand or business on digital platforms.
You can execute social media marketing planning immediately. It depends on reaching out to social media users. The impact is seen and felt quickly.	Digital marketing planning is a longer process than social media marketing. The strategy to reach across various digital marketing mediums takes a bit of time. It depends on increasing the reach of people on different platforms of digital media.
Social media marketing increases customer engagement and feedback. Social media is ahead of digital marketing vs social media marketing in those cases.	Digital marketing increases brand reach on various media platforms. It also increases traffic on the websites of the brand and business.

Conclusion

Are you confused about digital marketing vs social media marketing? Digital marketing is the future of marketing. It is a big world in itself. It also includes social media marketing, website marketing, mobile marketing, and other marketing mediums. It will get more space in the online and offline marketing world.

Social media is the go-to trend. It is a new way to connect with thousands of people. Social media marketing is part of digital marketing and changes the connection with customers. It promotes your products quickly on a large scale in a short period.

Distinguishing digital marketing vs social media marketing, both are equally essential for many reasons. You get aware and can select the most appropriate tools to use in your marketing campaigns. Social media marketing and digital marketing are integral parts of the marketing world.