Digital Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: What’s the Difference?

Many people use social media marketing and online marketing interchangeably as they think that promoting the brand in various social media networks is what people say online marketing; it is just a branch of it. 

Internet marketing is a broad field that includes all kinds of marketing practices that a business performs via digital devices. Digital marketing involves both offline and online ways to promote a brand via digital channels. 

Oppositely, social media marketing is about marketing on social media networks, be it Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and more. It is one of the important aspects of online marketing. It is not utterly digital marketing on its own. However, it is one of the best ways to promote a brand and build an online presence.

What is Digital Media Marketing?

As per the official definition from the dictionary, marketing is the process of promoting services and products of a brand to make more popular in society and increase sales. When someone puts digital before the term marketing, it means using digital media networks to advertise your services and products. 

Digital marketing is the application of different marketing media sources to obtain the given below goals:

• Develop the sales and revenue of your service and products.
• Build your digital business presence and awareness. 
• Build a relationship with a brand’s target audience and consumers. 
• Advertise a business and its products or services.
• Build and increase value, etc. 

Always bear in mind that it is not mandatory to use or target every single aspect of digital marketing in your strategies to achieve your business goals. Most marketers create a customized digital marketing strategy that involves the most relevant and beneficial aspects of it that fits your business goals. They generally study their business needs, target audience, goals, and budget to create an effective strategy.

So they don’t need to include social media marketing in their campaign as it is possible they don’t need additional promotion on social media networks. Many businesses simply use search engine based advertisements to reach their consumers and increase sales.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Also, another important factor to bear in mind that most people on social media networks have less interest in buying a product or engage in such kind of activities. Instead, they visit on social media sites only for entertainment, communication and to see what their friends are doing in their life. There is very little chance that a user buys a product from an advertisement on social media directly.

Brands use social media marketing for increasing hype for their products and services among their target audience. They might collaborate with social media influencers to advertise their products or use the digital ads provided by the platform such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.

It is used primarily for enhancing users’ engagement with the brand and its services. It is also a great source and platform to build relationships between customers and the brand. Business needs to provide engaging and entertaining content that is relevant to their audience in order to increase their following and other engagement on social media.