Difference Between Social Marketing and Social Media Marketing

5 min readAug 13, 2022

Today we will talk about the Difference Between Social Marketing and Social Media Marketing. Marketing is often related to the success of a business or project.

While we cannot deny this, different marketing strategies tend to produce different results. Identifying the target market and designing a way to communicate the intended message may not be easy for most marketers.

Especially on online platforms, marketers need to be familiar with new trends, jargon, and even new applications. Almost every business is engaged in social media marketing these days, and the few that don’t catch these trends are missing out on many potential customers.

While many businesses market to gain more prospects, others engage in marketing to change aspects of society or to convey basic messages, often referred to as social marketing.

However, what many people may not know is that there is a clear difference between social marketing and social media marketing.

Table of content

What does social marketing mean?
What is social media marketing?
What are the disadvantages of social media marketing
Similarities Between Social Marketing and Social Media Marketing
Difference Between Social Marketing and Social Media Marketing
How to do Social Media marketing more effectively?
One: Social Media Marketing
Two: Social marketing
Summary of Social Marketing and Social Media Marketing

What does social marketing mean?

This is the use of marketing principles and strategies to build awareness of social issues in order to change people’s attitudes and behaviors for the betterment of society. For example, campaigns based on the importance of protective sex, the importance of recycling, the health effects of smoking, and the dangers of drinking and driving are examples of social marketing.

These activities are long-term and carefully planned to change human behavior.

Although anyone can engage in social marketing, they are mostly carried out by nonprofit organizations, governments, professional associations, and corporations.

Social marketing applies the same principles as business marketing.

These include:

Product — Here, a product is a change in attitude or a change in behavior.
Price — This is the cost of changing said behavior.
Location — This is the target population that needs to be reached.
Advocacy — In an effort to change human behavior, advertising strategies such as placing roadside banners to discourage drink-driving are often used.
Policy — Any social marketing must have the intent to promote positive behavior change.

What is social media marketing?

This is using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to reach potential consumers. With the advent of the internet age, social media is not only considered beneficial but also essential for any business looking to tap into a wider market.

Some of the benefits of using social media as a marketing channel include:

Create and increase brand awareness — social media is an effective and fast medium for making your brand known globally
Increase traffic — When people see a product or service on social media, potential customers are likely to reach out to learn about the product and service on offer.
Promotion of products and services — Businesses can easily promote their products and services, leading to more prospects.
Build conversions — Social media marketing helps businesses move leads from the awareness stage to the conversion stage.
Improve engagement and communication with audiences — Social media marketing provides a platform for interaction between brands and consumers

While social media marketing can help drive business growth, it can also fail.

Therefore, brands should implement five core pillars, namely:

Strategy — Before entering the field of social media marketing, businesses should define their strategy. This should be based on business goals and the social media channels that are appropriate for the business. For example, while one brand might be successful on Instagram, another brand will thrive on YouTube but fail on Instagram.
Content — People are often attracted to a brand based on the content posted. Brands should also be consistent in this regard.
Engagement — Potential customers will always find ways to engage with a brand by commenting on posts, sending direct messages, or even sharing posts. It’s important to keep interacting with these people.
Analytics — Businesses should use the information provided by social media platforms to measure the performance of a brand’s social media marketing.
Advertising — To reach a wider audience, brands should implement social advertising and tailor the target audience.

What are the disadvantages of social media marketing

Competition is fierce. Although there are many social media platforms, there are only a few mainstream social media platforms, and there are so many brands that want to market, so the competition is very fierce. If you want to stand out from the many marketing, you must have a novelty idea.

More need to focus on the innovation of content. In the process of social media marketing, if you do not pay attention to the innovation of content, it is easy to be overwhelmed by other massive content, and you need to continuously manage the marketing process in the later stage, so as to pay more attention to interactivity and create higher Quality marketing process.

Similarities Between Social Marketing and Social Media Marketing

Both are designed to convey a message to the target audience