Our agency attended a business convention in Washington. It was a great networking event that allowed us to connect with businesses that had one thing on their mind; Growth.
A mid-sized business owner approached us and asked:
Digital marketing vs social media marketing, which one is better?
We took a little time to gather our thoughts and present them to him, and here’s what they look like.
Digital Marketing is an umbrella term that includes every aspect of marketing that uses the Internet to connect with customers.
What does Digital Marketing include:
Creating and marketing your products or services on social media is what it's about. You can either do this to increase sales or simply because you want your brand to exist in the online world.
Social Media Marketing includes posting on the following platforms:
We considered the following objectives when doing ‘digital marketing vs social media marketing’. This will help business owners make a decision that helps them grow sustainably.
This option is suited for much broader goals like increasing website traffic, generating leads, and making sure that at least 2% convert into customers.
Whereas, a social media marketing campaign can help build brand awareness. You could directly start a conversation with your followers, which could help build a community.
Every business owner uses Google to look for whom they should work with. They will see the results on the first page, open the first three links, and read the relevant content.
But ranking on Google is not an easy feat.
It requires extensive competitor analysis and keyword research (through paid tools such as Ahrefs).
Once this is done, you can use those keywords on your landing pages and blog. This might improve your chances to appear on Google’s first page, but that’s not a guarantee.
Being on Google’s 1st page is important as it will lead to an increase in leads and queries relevant to the services you offer.
More than 5 billion individuals use social media, and it includes decision-makers as well.
For you to be seen on each social media platform mentioned above, create visually appealing images and great content.
Use hashtags to help improve your visibility. You will get views based on the post’s format, such as a reel or an image.
It’s likely that you might even cross more than 100 views on your first reel.
But after that things may go downhill, and you’ll get about the same reviews on each, which is why you would need to run paid ads.
Here’s a detailed cost breakdown for digital marketing:
Here are some tools that we would suggest
Overall, you would need to spare $38,200 to $64,500 to cover the full expenses of a digital marketing campaign.
If you decide to work with a freelancer, here’s how much it would cost you:
Here are the cons of working with a freelancer:
Here’s how much it would cost to hire an in-house social media marketing team:
But if you are looking to increase your reach, run ad campaigns on your specific posts. Here’s what the pricing looks like:
Note: A person who knows how to handle Facebook Marketing doesn't mean that they are well-versed in how to market your brand on TikTok.
So tread carefully when choosing which platform you should market on and the audience niche on the platform.
Hiring a digital agency would mitigate both problems; the cost issue of relying completely on digital marketing for results and throwing arrows in the dark when running social media campaigns.
What’s the Solution?
Hiring a social media agency. Such an agency should have years of experience helping clients from different industries ranging from food and beverage to health and wellness.
This diversity of portfolio showcases that they can handle the client’s needs very well. Instead of throwing arrows in the dark, you’ll get to work with people with expertise to help you grow.
Let’s say that you don’t want to hire anyone and want to go ahead with either digital marketing or social media marketing.
How steep is the learning curve, and can really do it in-house without hiring anyone?
Here’s how much time it would take you to learn digital marketing
Here’s how much time it would take us to learn social media marketing.
Whereas, hiring a Digital Agency would help save you more than 100 hours.
Instead of learning how to do everything, you can focus on what really matters; your company’s growth. If you are investing money in a digital agency, expect a positive ROI and not disappointment.
For ‘Digital Marketing Vs Social Media Marketing’ the verdict depends on your business goals.
If you are looking to build a community and improve brand awareness, social media is the platform for you.
Social media refers to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where people interact, share content, and communicate.
It's a part of digital media, which is a broader term that includes all content delivered through digital devices, such as websites, emails, videos, and online ads. While social media focuses on user interaction and networking, digital media covers any form of content that can be accessed online.
