From Likes to Links: Decoding the Differences of Social Media and Email Marketing

The easiest way to describe marketing is the process of convincing your ideal customer to purchase your product of service in order to alleviate one of their pain points. For example, you sell an online program to learn basic French in three months. So, your ideal customer would be an American traveling to France in three months and they need to learn basic French in order to be able to communicate during their vacation. In order to market the service (online program) you would ideally have a website, a newsletter platform and social media. Website marketing would fall into SEM (search engine marketing), the newsletter platform would be for email marketing and social media would be for social media marketing (SMM). The reason for different types of marketing platforms would be to cover as many areas that your potential client might be in.  

As a Vacaville, Fairfield, Suisun City, Dixon, Winters or other Solano County small business, marketing is a great investment to help you stand out against the competition. Keep reading to learn more about the differences between social media and email marketing. 

Social Media Marketing For Your Small Business

Social media marketing uses social media platforms, most commonly Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Tik Tok to market your product or service. The most common ways to market on social media is by sharing bite sized content, engaging with your audience and building your brand image. 

Content is shared in either tiles, graphics or videos to educate and entertain your following. This content is ideally going to convert into website visitors, newsletter subscribers and eventually to purchase your service offering. Tiles are static images that contain a fact, opinion or statement. Then the caption would be used to further explain and encourage conversation with the following. Carousels are a couple of static images shared together as a group. These are most commonly used as a way to share larger amounts of information while still making it easily digestible to the viewers. Lastly, videos have become super popular as ways to share content and are the most effective when it comes to content types on social media. Videos expand on the details - Instead of having to imagine what the rest of the picture looks like, you can ACTUALLY see it. They eliminate the need to scroll every 2 seconds and upport all four ways of learning: visual, reader/writer, kinesthetic and auditory.

Email Marketing for Your Small Business 

Email marketing is another form of digital marketing like social media marketing. Email marketing is more commonly used to create email newsletters to keep past or current clients and prospects informed on what is going on for your business. You can also share content, announce sales, showcase products or services, educate and engage. One of the best ways to capitalize when it comes to email marketing is by investing in a good email marketing platform that will help you manage your contact list. 

This can look like a couple of different things: automations, funnels and reminders. 

Email marketing automations can be setup for when someone purchases a product or services, signs up for your newsletter or fill out your contact form. You would be able to customize each of these emails but you can set it up to where after one is email is sent out, the next one is sent out 2 days, 2 weeks or even 2 hours after the first one. You could also add as many emails as you wanted to this automation, making it easier on you to keep this prospect engaged with your brand. Email funnels work in a similar way, but these are more customized and specific to that specific person. For example, if they fill out my contact form, then the next email funnel will be other ways they can reach us such as a phone number, business address or social media channels. If they click on something, we can thank them for their interest by sharing educational content. If they don’t then we can send them a discount code to get them interested in our product or service again. Finally email marketing reminders are perfect for getting someone to book an appointment after x amount of time after they last had an appointment, if they have an appointment coming up or if they missed an appointment. These different email marketing strategies help you keep your prospects engaged and reminded of your brand. However, it is also important to not spam their inboxes and be really cautious with the strategy in order to really stand out from the rest of the emails in their inbox. 

Social Likes or Email Links?

Now that you know the difference between social media marketing and email marketing… which are you going to use for your Solano County small business?

It’s important to note that both of these types of digital marketing are going to be a huge help for your businesses marketing efforts, regardless of which one you choose. However, implementing both types of marketing will scale your businesses growth even faster. However, when it comes down to the decision, the factor that will influence your choice will come from your prospects. You’ll have to do a deep dive on who your ideal customer persona is. Who are they? What do they look like? What do they like? What do they dislike? Why are they buying your service or product? This will then tell you where you can find them. Are they going to be on Facebook or LinkedIn? Maybe on Instagram or Tik Tok? How about email? What about all of the platforms we just mentioned? Once you know who’s buying, you’ll know where to find them and where you should focus your digital marketing efforts. 

If you need help choosing what type of marketing your small business needs, don’t hesitate to reach out! We offer full service social media management, marketing consultations, website optimization and everything in between. 

Book a Consultation Here!