Social Media Marketing VS Search Engine Marketing: Which is Better?

Both social media marketing and search engine marketing are important based on the online marketing plan. As web search in general uses social signals, both SMM and SEM  has a dependent relationship. Picking one over the other is a myopic decision. These two digital marketing strategies play as tools for planning and finding where your audience is hanging out. 

As an effective internet marketing is a multi channeled and focus on different methods social network relies on search marketing and vice-versa. Each of these marketing strategies compliments the other.

Search engine marketing drives more traffic surely to your website but increasing popularity through social media will tend people to check the authenticity of the website.

SMM is a process of gaining traffic to a website or popularity through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram and more. Social media is a platform where people can promote their services easily. It is better for awareness and engagement.

SEM incorporates SEO. SEM includes both the paid search results as well as organic search results. It is exclusively mean pay per click advertising. Pay per click advertising includes Google Adwords, Bing Ads. This type of marketing is beneficial for the local advertisers as it enables potential customers to contact for a product directly with one click.

The pros and cons of the both social media marketing and search engine marketing simplify their differences.

Social Media Marketing Pros & Cons:

Pros:

• Gives an opportunity to earn trust and authenticity leading to advocacy by your audience.

• Can increase the popularity of your brand, products, and services.

• Can develop engagement and relationships with customers which leads to loyalty.

• Can keep track of your products and services about what your market is saying good or bad.

• Can get potential new leads.

• It is low-cost service that makes it very appealing for businesses. 

• An opportunity to spark word of mouth.

• Increases traffic to your website.

Cons :

• Takes time for commitment to building trust and respect.

• Can generate negative users includes negative feedback, information leaks or hacking.

• Can lose control of your marketing efforts.

• Hard to define ROI.

• Without plan or strategy, it is expensive and ineffective.

• If you don't be active in social media, you may lose real benefits.

• The risk of unwanted or inappropriate behavior on your business website.

• Sometimes people may think you don't care about them.

Search Engine Marketing Pros and Cons:

Pros :

• Immediately shows up on the first page of search engine.

• Can get instant traffic for your website.

• Can reach out targeted audience.

• Benefits more for local business.

• Can track ROI easily.

Cons :

• Have to compete with competitors.

• Have to spend a lot of money.

• Organizing and strategizing the campaigns takes a lot of time.

Conclusion:

So, both of these marketing methods focus on different aspects. It is rare for a business to run successfully by doing only search engine marketing and by doing only social media marketing.  A good business does with both marketing strategies. 

You must sit down and evaluate your internet marketing goals and build a plan which works for your business.