Introduction

Formerly traditional marketing was used but now digital marketing has taken its. In traditional marketing, conventional means like billboards, ad printings, and direct mailing by sending letters to their customers, etc. 

were used to make them familiar with their products. No doubt traditional marketing is still in use but due to its high cost, digital marketing has replaced it.  Let’s know what digital marketing is.

What is Digital Marketing?

We are living in a digital world where almost everything is done using online platforms. The same is the case with the marketing of products. 

In Digital marketing, various strategies are implied through online means using the internet to enhance the sale of their products.

Digital marketing includes Email marketing, Content Marketing, Search engine optimizations, and Social media marketing. Digital marketing uses all the means mentioned above collectively instead of relying on a single means.

Email marketing

There are several kinds of emails that we receive on a daily basis from different restaurants or clothing brands where either something new is launched or there is a sale offer going on. This is one of the means of digital marketing. 

If we click on the link provided in the email, then we are redirected to their website and this increases the web traffic.

Content Marketing

Content marketing involves using articles and media like images or videos related to the product to gather the attention of the audience. Its aim is to encourage the target audience to visit the company’s website to increase website traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO involves optimizing the technical setup of a website to make its pages more discoverable and popular in search engine results leading to the high ranking of the website in search engine results pages. SEO comprises 3 types: on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.

On-page SEO is the process in which we optimize a web page to rank high on search engines for specific search queries. This involves activities like keyword optimization in content creation by keeping in mind Google algorithms.

Off-page SEO is a link-building technique that is used to enhance a website's reputation by connecting it to other reputable sites. This helps search engines trust your content, boosting your website's credibility and visibility.

Technical SEO involves making sure that a website meets the technical standards of current search engines in order to enhance organic rankings. 

Key aspects of technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and website structure. 

Technical SEO is significant as it leads search engines to comprehend and index your website more efficiently, resulting in improved rankings of search engines, and increased traffic to websites, which means more conversions and returns.

Social media marketing (SMM)

Today while I was watching a video on Facebook, a social media platform, an advertisement came in between that video. It was of a famous clothing brand which showed its new collection. 

Out of curiosity to check the mentioned collection, I clicked on that ad and was redirected to their website where I liked an item and I bought that. 

This is how social media marketing (SMM) works. Even if I had not bought that item, I had contributed to an increase in website traffic by going to its website.

SMM involves making content for various social media platforms according to their respective users, interacting with their clients, and making themselves available online on the SMM platform.

Impact of Social Media:

In current times social media has a powerful impact on digital marketing. Social media grabs users' attention and focus more effectively. 

Social media marketing involves using different social media sites like Facebook, X formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc. to promote a business or a brand.

Social media sites all have a bulk of users on them and the number is increasing continuously with each passing day.

For example, the numbers of users of social media sites in the USA in 2020 were 292.51 million while now in 2024 there are 320.6 million and these are estimated to grow 339.38 million in 2028. This enormous increase in users shows the power of social media.

Different requirements of different social media platforms

Different social media platforms have different set of requirements. The things that work on one platform may not work for the other, for example, a blog will be used on one while a simple picture will work for the other. 

A different type of strategy is applied to each social media platform. Commonly used social media strategies for digital marketing include social media advertising, community building by creating pages for getting followers, content creation, and hiring social media influencers.

Why is Social Media a Better Option?

Of all the means of digital marketing, social media is found to be the best means as it has a high reach. For example, an ad posted on social media reaches the target audience within seconds. Here are some benefits of social media in digital marketing:

Increase Awareness

The visual presence of the audience increases the awareness of different businesses or brands. Most people don’t like to receive emails from different brands and businesses because they consider email as an official or work-related formal means of communication. 

They don’t want their important emails to get lost in commercial emails. However, they prefer social media for reading about different business’s campaigns.

More engagement

In addition to creating brand awareness, social media also lets businesses engage with their customers, share their content with them, and follow up with the ones who are not satisfied. 

It makes it easy for them to take the opinions of their clients and hence they enhance their capabilities in the clients’ direction.

Boost website traffic

Social media users are mostly active on their smartphones. They option their social sites more frequently to have a glance at different posts. 

Hence it is more likely for them to encounter advertisements and most people open the links given to check the further details of the brand which increases the website traffic.

Target Different audiences

Social media marketing has another benefit in that at different platforms you can target different audiences with different content in contrast to reaching all people with the same content. This offers more engagement to the brands.

Improvement in Search engine ranking

Most likely you are already trying hard to enhance your search engine optimizations. However, it is important to note that search engines are actually considering your social media activity when determining rankings. 

Brands that excel in having a healthy social media presence indicate to search engines that your brand is more reputable. So in rankings, active social media profiles are likely to benefit your SEO plans.

The Differences between Social Media Marketing and Other Digital Marketing Means

From the above-mentioned benefits of social media marketing, it is clear that the main focus of social media is communication and brand awareness, while other digital marketing procedures focus on driving traffic and increasing sales. 

But now different platforms of social media have features that take the clients to direct sales, such as Instagram's product tagging and selling capabilities.

Social media marketing utilizes various platforms to share content and engage with others. In contrast, other digital marketing channels like blogs, Google Ads, forums, apps, and YouTube are the means where users come and search for their interests.

What should be more focused on?

This is a world of social media now. The impact that social media has on digital marketing cannot be ignored, but we also cannot ignore the other means of digital marketing as these are the ones that give road maps to different marketing channels. 

However, in selecting a digital marketing channel the audience is the deciding factor that influences which one is to be given priority. So if you are going to start your business, you should give social media prime importance.