A common question in the online marketing space is what is the differences between digital marketing and social media marketing. I think it’s very important to differentiate both so you can understand the big picture of online marketing. The short answer is this, social media marketing is a subfield of digital marketing. If small section of the ocean is social media marketing then the whole sea is digital marketing. The goals for both types remain the same, which is lead generation.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Let’s start off with social media marketing. It’s getting popular these days and most small businesses now have someone that manages their social media at least part time.

To make the definition simple. Social media marketing is basically taking the use of social media to generate leads for a business. If you take a look at it from the funnel perspective however, social media only plays a small but important part of the sales funnel.

If you take a look at a typical AIDA funnel (attention, interest, decision, action) – social media marketing deals with the awareness and interest stage of it.

A person’s job function being in social media marketing may consist of the following:

• Coming up with unique content ideas.
• Building trust with new and existing followers.
• Sketching out a content strategy for a content calendar.
• Brainstorming potentially viral pieces of content that will have enormous reach.
• Tasked with moving current followers to stages down the funnel, e.g. email signups and website sales pages.
• Answering and replying to comments and inquiries that come in.
• Using stories to keep people posted on the company’s latest updates and products.
• Distribution of social media content on various platforms.

The types of social media platforms may vary. But here are the main ones:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Reddit
• Quora
• LINE or messaging apps (in asia)

As you can see from the eight platforms listed, social media is a very big field. A person that is skilled in say growing Facebook pages may do horribly in Instagram and YouTube. A person that is really good in creating a buzz on Twitter or is a whizz in creating YouTube content may not necessarily be good on Reddit or Quora. Just listing some examples here.

That’s why there has been a trend on specializations for each type of social media. A business may also have variations in the platforms they choose to be active in. Even for enterprise companies, it’s nearly impossible to be active in all platforms with equal quality that’s why businesses have chosen to specialize and focus on a few.

Corporate companies for example, are really active on LinkedIn, and Facebook but ignore the rest. But for non-traditional startups, Instagram and Twitter has been their go to place for marketing.

Industries such as manufacturing may also not need a social media presence, while for tech, social media has became non-negotiable.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing encompasses all the activities of the internet which include website, Pay-per-click (PPC), affiliate marketing, email marketing, data analytics and social media.

Here are some examples of digital marketing platforms:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Paid Advertisements
• Affiliate marketing
• Social media marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Viral marketing (overall strategy)
• Mobile advertisements
• Sales funnel strategic planning
• Email marketing
• Programmatic advertisement
• Conversion Rate Optimization

And the list goes on and on and on. As you can see here, digital marketing encompasses the whole marketing activities of those that can be done via the internet. More importantly, digital marketing is all about creating a marketing strategy which involves multiple platforms and executing on that. That’s where digital marketing and social media marketing differ.

A typical sales funnel for a YouTube influencer:

As digital marketing deals with the big picture, data analytics plays a key part. A competent digital marketer will be able to give you measurements in these areas:

1. Return on investment (ROI)
2. Return on ads spend (ROAS)
3. CPA (Cost per acquisition)
4. CTR (Click through rate)

This is so that your business can find out through data, which areas need to be optimized and which areas should be maintained in your marketing funnel.

Digital marketers also have to hire copywriters for each stage or all stages of the funnel to help them in their execution. Therefore, a digital marketer may not necessarily be a competent copywriter. Although the best digital marketers are, it’s not a necessity.  

Who Should I Hire? Social Media Marketer or Digital Marketer?

Enterprises usually will have both a digital marketer and a person handling social media. As digital marketing deals with the big picture strategy while social media only deals with a small (but also crucial) part of the funnel.

That’s why digital marketing and social media marketing must work well together to achieve the desired business outcomes.

The digital marketing person can likely oversee the big picture strategy but may or may not necessarily have the execution mechanisms in place.

E.g. a social media marketer will probably be good in taking photos, writing copy and coming up with useful content but the digital marketer himself will just simply be overseeing the social media marketing manager and how it plays out in conjunction to the whole marketing strategy.

Whereas the social media marketing person is only in charge of a small part of the funnel but will not likely need to encompass themselves to other parts of the business such as direct response sales pages and dealing with affiliates for example.

A digital marketer on the other hand needs to stretch himself to manage all parts of the funnel as a whole.

Our advice on who to hire, is that it depends. If you are a larger company with a marketing budget to spend, taking time to hire in-house or outsource both areas is crucial. If you are a smaller company with limited ad spend, then you want to look for the most skillful out of the two.

In the end of the day, social media marketing and digital marketing’s goal is to generate as many leads as possible, therefor you want to find the most skilled candidate that can help you achieve that goal. It could be the digital marketer, or it could be social media marketer but looking for a track record and commitment in your candidates is a must.

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