Business Marketing Technology

Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing: How to Use Both for Success

Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr
Advertiser Disclosure

This article may contain references to products or services from one or more of our advertisers or partners. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products or services. Nonetheless, our opinions are our own.

The information presented in this article is accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication. However, information is subject to change, and no guarantees are made about the continued accuracy or completeness of this content after its publication date.


Businesses need to have strong marketing plans to do well in today’s fast-paced online world. People often confuse digital marketing and social media marketing, but they are not the same thing. There are a lot of different ways to do digital marketing online. Social media marketing, on the other hand, is all about using social media sites. This focus is important for getting people to know about your brand, connecting with the right people, and reaching your business goals.

Summary hide

Highlights

  • Learn how to nicely mix social media marketing and digital marketing to boost brand awareness and engagement.
  • See how social media and digital marketing work together to make your marketing campaigns more effective.
  • Check out the important tools and resources you need to improve your digital marketing and social media marketing efforts.
  • Find practical steps, like figuring out your target audience and making engaging content, to start your combined marketing strategy.
  • Increase engagement using the best practices in digital marketing and new tricks in social media.
  • Get ideas on how to measure success with key performance indicators (KPIs) for both social media and digital marketing.

Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing

People often mix up the terms “digital marketing” and “social media marketing,” but they are not the same. In other words, social media marketing is a part of digital marketing. But not all of digital marketing is social media marketing.

Everything you do to market online is called digital marketing. But social media marketing is only about marketing on social media sites. It is a key part of your overall digital marketing plan. Each method has its own pros and cons. So, it’s important to know how they work together to get the best results.

Defining Digital Marketing: A Broad Overview

Digital marketing is focused on promoting products and services online. It uses digital channels like search engines, social media, email, and websites to connect with customers who are already buying and those who might buy in the future. Here are some common types of digital marketing:

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This helps improve your online content so your website shows up higher on search engines like Google.
  • Google Ads: This allows you to pay for advertising on a search engine results page. When someone looks for something related to your business, your site will be one of the first they see.
  • Email Marketing: This means sending special messages and offers directly to people on your email lists.
  • Content Marketing: This includes creating and sharing information online. It can be videos, blog posts, and social media posts. This helps answer your audience’s questions, attract leads, and build a community.

Exploring Social Media Marketing: Platforms and Practices

Social media marketing uses different sites and apps to reach your target audience. It helps people connect, build relationships, and learn more about your brand, all of which can lead to more sales. This means making interesting content, talking to your followers, and keeping track of your results. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok are all popular social media sites.

Good social media strategies work when they use content that is natural and fits the features and audience of each platform. Paid ads are also very important. Working with industry influencers is a common part of successful social media marketing. This method helps you reach more people and gain their trust.

You can join important conversations in your field on social media. It shows that you are a leader and an expert in your field. You can get helpful feedback by paying attention to what your audience says on these sites. You can use this feedback to make your products better and come up with better ways to market them.

The Synergy Between Digital and Social Media Marketing

Digital marketing and social media marketing work well together. When you use them together, they work better.

Digital marketing is a great way to build a strong base for a good social media presence. Through content marketing strategies, they created a key place for people to share useful information. Marketing campaigns work better when they are on social media. They bring people to your website, landing pages, and other important online projects.

How Digital Marketing Complements Social Media Efforts

Content creation is one way that digital marketing can help your social media. You can post blog posts, articles, videos, and infographics that you made for your website or email marketing campaigns on social media. This helps get new people to come.

Along with making content, email lists are also very important for your social media plan. Email marketing is a great way to let your subscribers know about new social media events, contests, or campaigns. This can make them more likely to interact with your brand on different platforms. Email marketing can also help you get more followers on social media.

When you use SEO, email marketing, and content marketing together with your social media activities, you create a strong brand experience. This will help you get more of the people you want to reach.

Leveraging Social Media for Broader Digital Marketing Strategies

For your online marketing, social media is very important. It helps you get your content out there. This can bring people to your website and help you get leads.

When you advertise on social media, you have a lot of options for targeting. This means you can get your message to the right people. Social media advertising can help you reach more people and have a bigger effect when you launch a new product or invite people to a webinar.

Social media can often help you build a strong brand image. It gets people to talk about your brand. This extra exposure could help you move up in search engine results. When search engines decide how to rank sites, they look at social signals.

Essential Tools and Resources for Marketers

Digital marketing and social media marketing both use great tools. These tools make things easier, help you look at data, and make you work faster. You should learn about tools like content scheduling tools and analytics platforms. You can do better work and have a bigger effect if you know how to use these tools.

It’s helpful to know what each platform is good at and what it’s not. Choosing the right tools can help you do better when you focus on things like SEO, email campaigns, or getting people to interact with you on social media. This decision can also make it more likely that you will succeed.


Voted "Best Overall Budgeting App" by Forbes and WSJ

Monarch Money helps you budget, track spending, set goals, and plan your financial future—all in one app.

Get 50% OFF your first year with code MONARCHVIP


Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools

Businesses can do their marketing tasks better with the help of digital marketing tools. They make the business run better and get a higher return on investment (ROI) on a number of digital channels. Here are some digital marketing tools:

Tool Category Tool Name Description
Analytics Google Analytics Tracks website traffic, user behavior, and conversions, providing insights into audience demographics, interests, and more.
Analytics Adobe Analytics A more robust (and more costly) analytics tool fit for analyzing user data across multiple websites, apps, and other digital touchpoints.
SEO Semrush An all-in-one SEO platform that provides comprehensive keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits, and more.
SEO Ahrefs Also an all-in-one SEO platform, particularly helpful for competitor backlink analysis, rank tracking, and discovering content ideas.
Social Media Hootsuite Allows you to schedule, publish, and analyze content across multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard.
Social Media Sprout Social A social media management and listening platform that helps businesses monitor brand mentions, engage with customers, and analyze social media performance.
Email Marketing Mailchimp Designed for businesses of all sizes to create, send, automate, and analyze email campaigns.
Email Marketing Constant Contact Another email marketing platform offering email deliverability tools to ensure your messages reach your audience.

Essential Social Media Marketing Platforms

Businesses can use social media marketing tools to make their social media presence better. They also help you connect with your target audience and keep track of how well your social media campaigns are doing. Here are some important social media marketing tools:

Tool Category Tool Name Description
Management Buffer A social media management platform designed to schedule and track social media posts across various platforms.
Management Hootsuite Another widely-used social media management platform that also offers social listening and analytics features.
Ads Facebook Ads Facebook Ads Manager is a powerful tool for creating, managing, and tracking paid advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.
Ads Google Ads While not just for social media, you can use Google Ads to run paid campaigns on YouTube.
Content Creation Canva A user-friendly graphic design platform with templates for creating engaging visuals for social media posts, stories, ads, and more.
Content Creation Adobe Creative Cloud For businesses that already use Adobe products or need more advanced design features. Includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and more.

Developing a Cohesive Marketing Strategy

Planning is important for making a good marketing strategy. It should know who its target audience is and what its goals are. You should also use a variety of marketing channels.

This plan will help you make the most of your time and money. It makes sure that every marketing move you make gets you closer to your goals. It also helps everything stay in sync.

Integrating Digital and Social Media Marketing Plans

Your social media marketing plan and digital marketing strategy as a whole should be based on the goals you have for your business. These goals could be to get more leads, make more people aware of your brand, or sell more. You can start making plans to reach these goals once you set them.

Digital marketing and social media marketing go well together. They help each other make a strong plan. Digital marketing is a great way to get people to your site and offers useful content.

Your plan for marketing on social media will make the most of what each platform has to offer. This will help you connect with your target audience, get your brand message out there, and get people more involved. Your content calendar should match up with your marketing campaigns. To make a big impact, it’s important to keep your brand image the same on all online platforms.

Setting Realistic Goals and Objectives

You need clear goals to know if your marketing is working. These goals should be clear, measurable, doable, important, and set a deadline. People often call this SMART. Set clear goals instead of saying something vague like “improve online presence.” You could, for instance, set a goal to “get 50 new leads through social media by the end of the month” or “increase website traffic by 20% in the next quarter.”

Performance indicators, or KPIs, are important tools to track your progress and see how well you are doing in social media and digital marketing campaigns. Some KPIs include:

  • Engagement rate: Shows how much people interact with your social media content. This includes likes, comments, and shares compared to how many people see it.
  • Conversion rate: Measures how many users do what you want them to do. This could mean buying something or filling out a form after clicking on an ad or visiting your website.
  • Follower growth rate: Tells you how fast your social media following is growing over time.

You can find places that need work by checking these measurements on a regular basis. This will help you change your plans. Because of this, your work will pay off more.

Beginner’s Guide to Combining Digital and Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing can be a little scary if you’ve never done it before. You have a lot of options when it comes to channels and strategies. This can make things seem unclear.

Start by making a strong base. First, get to know your audience well. Next, make content that is useful to them. Keep an eye on how things are going. Use what you learn to change your plans. Don’t be afraid to try new things to find out what works best for your business.

What You Need to Get Started

Digital and social media marketing can be overwhelming for business owners and marketers who are new to it. But remember that even small steps can have big effects. The most important thing is to know who your audience is and how they act online. Find out what kinds of content they like and what digital channels they use.

It takes time and effort to build a strong online presence. Start by making profiles on the right social media sites. After that, keep sharing interesting content and talking to your audience. Creating content that is useful and easy to share is very important. Your target customers should be able to relate to this content, which should be about what they need and care about.

It’s important to always remember to be patient and consistent. It takes time to get people to trust you and have a strong online presence. You should check on your social media work every so often. If you need to, make changes. Keep up with the latest trends and the best ways to do things.

Step 1: Identifying Your Target Audience

It is important to do good market research before you start any digital marketing campaigns. You need to know who your target audience is. Who are the best customers for you? What do they want and need? You can make messages and content when you know who they are and how they act online. You can also pick the best channels to reach them.

Tools that let you listen to social media can give you useful information. They help you keep track of what people are saying about your brand and what they think about your field. You can also look at how people feel about your brand and your competitors. Use this information to learn what customers have trouble with. After that, you can look into how to come up with new product ideas and change your marketing messages to fit.

It’s very important to talk to your audience directly. You can talk to them through polls, surveys, and question-and-answer sessions. This habit helps you get useful information. Always ask customers what they think. Pay attention to what they say and what they want. You will get useful information from these talks. You can use this information to make your marketing plans better and meet the needs of your target market more effectively.

Step 2: Creating Engaging Content

Good content is the key to a successful digital marketing plan. This content should be interesting to your target audience and give them something useful. Make sure to take your time and make content that is high-quality, useful, and easy to share. You can do this by writing blog posts, articles, making videos, making infographics, or making quizzes that people can take.

Your audience will stay interested if you change up your content. It meets the needs of people who learn in different ways. Long blog posts are a good way to share a lot of information. On the other hand, short, eye-catching posts on social media with interesting pictures or videos can quickly get people’s attention and get their point across.

Make sure your content fits the audience and style of each platform. Make sure your brand voice and message are clear. Try out different kinds of content. Find out what works best for your audience and gets them to interact.

Step 3: Optimizing for Each Platform

You should know that each social media site is different. They all have their own features and target audiences. This means that you can’t use the same plan on all platforms. To reach the right people on each social media site, you should change your message, format, and tone.

When you post interesting pictures, fun videos, and short text on sites like Instagram and TikTok, they work well. LinkedIn and Twitter, on the other hand, are better for sharing news, articles, and expert opinions about your field. Check that your website and content are easy to read on phones and tablets. Because of mobile marketing, a lot of people read on their phones now.

Finally, don’t forget to include important keywords in your website’s content, meta descriptions, and posts on social media. This makes it easier for people to find you. It can also help your results in search engines.

Step 4: Analyzing and Adjusting Strategies

You can get a lot of information from digital and social media marketing. You can find useful information in this data if you look at it closely. These tips can help you make better plans and get more money back. Google Analytics is a great tool for this. It tells you how many people come to your website, what they do there, and how many of them become customers. This helps you figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Look at your social media analytics often. This shows how interested your audience is. You can see how many people read your posts and what kinds of posts they like best. You can find out which social media sites are best for you by doing this a lot. This practice can help you post at better times and come up with better content strategies.

Good digital marketers and marketing managers know that marketing plans are never set in stone. They need to keep watching and thinking. They also need to change their plans. It’s important to stay on top of how quickly things change in the digital world and how people act.

Enhancing Engagement Through Effective Tactics

It’s important to get your audience involved in today’s digital world. People see a lot of content every day. So, it’s important to come up with new ideas. You have to get their attention. You should also make real connections to make your relationships stronger.

Users can really help by making great stories and content. You need to know what your audience wants and likes in order to get more people interested. You should also know how they behave online. You can make your online presence better and make it work better by using this information in your plan.

Best Practices for Digital Marketing

The key to good digital marketing is to make sure users have a great time. This includes your email marketing and website. Your website should be easy to use, look good, and load quickly, especially on mobile devices. You should also make sure that every page has clear calls to action. This will make it easier for people to sign up for your newsletter, download something, or buy something.

Email marketing is a great way to get in touch with people and make more sales. You can split your email list into groups based on age, interests, or past purchases. This lets you send messages that are right for each subscriber. Use subject lines that catch people’s attention to get them to open your emails. Also, to make your campaigns better over time, change different parts of your emails.

If you use paid ads, make sure to create separate landing pages for them. This will help you get people who come to your site to buy something. People who click on your ad will have a better experience if the landing page matches what it says. This can make it more likely that you will get more conversions.

Innovative Social Media Marketing Techniques

In today’s fast-paced world of social media, it’s not enough to just be there. You need to find ways to get people’s attention and stand out. Using Instagram Reels is a great way to do this. You can show off the fun side of your brand with short videos on this platform. You can also connect with people by using things like polls and Q&A sessions.

Advertising on social media is very helpful. It lets you focus on specific groups of people. You can use information about their age, interests, and what they do online. This helps make sure that the right people see your ads.

Influencer marketing is another great way to do it. You can reach people who are already interested in your area by working with social media influencers who share your beliefs. This helps people trust you more and makes your brand seem more real.

Measuring Success in Digital and Social Media Marketing

Having a plan is not enough for social media marketing. You also need to check to see how well it works. You can see how well your hard work is paying off by knowing the key performance indicators (KPIs) for each channel. You can make better choices about how to improve your social media strategies with this information.

Check these numbers often. This practice helps you figure out what works. It also shows you how to improve. It also makes sure that your campaigns are in line with your business goals.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Digital Marketing

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are very important for digital marketing. They keep track of important things like how many people convert, how many people interact with their posts, and how many new followers they get. These KPIs help you see how well marketing campaigns work on different digital channels. Marketing managers get useful information by looking at things like share of voice, landing page performance, and the number of unique users. This helps them make their marketing plans better. Digital marketers can tell how well their digital marketing is working and if it meets business goals by keeping an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are also useful for judging social media marketing and making overall digital marketing plans better.

Social Media Metrics Worth Monitoring

You can use social media sites to get useful information about your campaigns. Finding the right metrics to measure success is important. Reach is an important measure. Reach is how many different people have seen your content. This number tells you how many people could see your brand’s message. But if you only look at reach, you won’t see the whole picture. Not every view means real interaction.

The engagement rate is an important number. It shows how well your content resonates with your audience. To get this rate, you add up all the comments and likes on your posts. After that, you divide that number by the number of people who follow you. This is a good way to find out how much people like your content.

You can tell which social media sites get the most attention and interaction by looking at these numbers on different sites. This helps marketers make good use of their resources. They can make content for certain platforms and change their plans based on how their audience reacts.

Navigating Challenges in Digital and Social Media Marketing

There are a lot of chances and problems that come with using social media and marketing on social media. Marketers have a hard time keeping up with algorithms that change. They also have to deal with more expensive ads and the job of keeping their online reputation in check. They need to be smart and flexible to do well.

People need to stay up to date on industry news to fix these problems. They should keep an eye on new tools and technology. They also need to change their plans to fit with what consumers want and the best ways to do things.

Overcoming Common Obstacles

There are a lot of problems that come with doing digital and social media marketing well. These problems could hurt your campaign’s success and the amount of money you make from it. Managing your online reputation and dealing with bad reviews or comments is a big problem. It’s important to think about your answer and respond quickly. This method helps limit damage and shows that you care about providing good service to customers.

Staying up to date in a digital world that is always changing is another big problem. The way people act, the algorithms that search engines use, and the features of social media sites are always changing. This means that digital marketing campaigns need to be able to change in order to stay interesting and visible. To keep your strategies up to date and working, read industry news, join online groups, and look for ways to learn more.

It’s not always easy to figure out ROI in digital marketing. It can be hard to keep track of traditional ads. Digital platforms do, however, offer useful analytics tools. Setting clear goals is important if you want to connect your marketing efforts to real business results. You also need to keep a close eye on important numbers. To link success to specific digital marketing campaigns, conversion tracking is very important.

Staying Ahead in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape

The world of technology is always changing. To keep up, marketers need to be quick and adaptable. Things that work today might not work tomorrow. It’s important to keep up with the latest social media trends, algorithm changes, and new technologies.

It’s a good idea to try out new marketing ideas to stay ahead. You can try out new platforms and different types of content. You can also use data to make your customers feel like they are having a personal experience.

Today, it’s very important to build a group of loyal brand supporters. These are people who are happy to tell others about your brand. Word-of-mouth advertising works very well in the online world. It’s important to really connect with your followers. Tell them to share what they make. Always try to do better than what they expect. Customers who are loyal can become strong supporters of your brand. They can naturally spread your message and help you grow over time.

Case Studies: Successful Digital and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Successful social media marketing campaigns can teach us a lot. We can learn what people like by looking at these examples from real life. They also show us how important it is to have a good plan. We can also see how social media can help businesses get real results.

It’s important to use stories made by users or tell emotional stories. You can be inspired by these examples. They can also help you plan your marketing campaigns.

Lessons Learned from Leading Brands

A lot of well-known brands use social media and digital marketing to build their brand. They connect with their target audience and get great results. These success stories show how important it is to make real connections with customers. You need to know what they want and need. It’s important to give people something useful, not just sell them things.

One important thing to learn from these brands is that their messages and images need to be the same all the time. A strong brand identity that works well on many social media sites helps people remember the brand. This makes people trust you more and helps them remember you.

One important thing to learn from successful brands is that they need to be able to change and get better. These brands can quickly change how they do things when social media trends, audience behavior, and platform algorithms change. They show that a good digital marketing plan is necessary for long-term success.

Analyzing What Works and Why

To be successful, digital and marketing strategies need to know what makes them work. The ability to make people feel things is a big part of campaigns that connect with people. This can be a feeling of belonging, joy, humor, or inspiration. When brands focus on personal values, they make connections that go beyond just buying and selling.

Looking at how other brands find success can give you new ideas and help you create your plan. You won’t get the same results if you just copy what they do without knowing what they are trying to say. To learn from their successes, look at their campaigns. Find out what attracts the audience, how the brand gets its message across, and what decisions it made to become successful.

You need to know who your audience is if you want to do well on social media. It’s important to give people something of value and be able to change quickly in the digital world. You can grow your brand for long-term success in digital marketing by seeing what works, being open to new ideas, and making your methods better.

Conclusion

To sum up, digital marketing and social media marketing are very important for success these days. This mix makes your brand more visible and gets people interested. Combining digital strategies with social media actions makes a strong marketing plan that gets to the people you want to reach.

Make your goals clear. Check the important numbers and change your plans based on what you find. Be open to new ideas and really connect with the people you are talking to. When things get tough, be ready to change. Look for ways to improve your methods so that you can get better results. Learn from campaigns that worked. Working together on social media and in social media marketing is the key to success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Often Should I Post on Social Media?

There are a few things that affect how often you should post on social media. These things are the social media platforms you use, the people you want to reach, and the strategies you use on social media. But being consistent is more important than how often you post. It’s better to post regularly, even if you don’t do it as often, than to post a lot at once and then stop. Make an effort to stick to a schedule. This helps you stay busy and keep your followers interested without making them angry. In the end, the strength of social media lies in its ability to connect people. Being there a lot is important for making those connections.

Can Digital Marketing Work Without Social Media?

It’s not necessary to use social media for your digital marketing strategy to work, but it can help. A lot of businesses use other kinds of digital marketing, such as SEO, email marketing, and content marketing, to reach their goals. They do this even though they don’t have a lot of followers on social media. The most important thing is to choose the type of digital marketing that works with your budget, your target audience, and your marketing goals.

What Are the First Steps in Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Doing good keyword research is the first step in making a strong digital marketing plan. This helps you figure out what people in your target market are looking for online. Then, make content that meets those needs. You should also get your website ready for search engine optimization (SEO). To get leads and increase conversions, you should make landing pages. Lastly, don’t forget to listen to what your customers have to say. Using real insights will help you improve your plans.

How Do I Measure ROI for Social Media Marketing?

It’s important to know how much money you make from social media marketing. You should look at a few important social media metrics. This includes checking how many people visit your website because of your social media campaigns, how many leads you get, how many sales you make, and how many people you convert. Don’t just look at vanity metrics like the rate of engagement and the rate of follower growth. These are useful, but they don’t tell you how well your business is doing. Instead, focus on metrics that are directly related to your goals. Check out the number of leads, sales, and website conversions. If you are using ads on social media, keep an eye on how well they are doing. This will help you get the most out of the money you spend on ads.


Join a vibrant community with the sole mission to achieve financial independence.



Trusted, Edited and Reviewed Original Source Content. Secured by FangWallet

Reviewed and edited by Albert Fang.

See a typo or want to suggest an edit/revision to the content? Use the contact us form to provide feedback.

At FangWallet, we value editorial integrity and open collaboration in curating quality content for readers to enjoy. Much appreciated for the assist.


Did you like our article and find it insightful? We encourage sharing the article link with family and friends to benefit as well - better yet, sharing on social media. Thank you for the support! 🍉

Article Title: Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing: How to Use Both for Success

https://fangwallet.com/2025/08/08/digital-marketing-and-social-media-marketing-how-to-use-both-for-success/


The FangWallet Promise

FangWallet is an editorially independent resource - founded on breaking down challenging financial concepts for anyone to understand since 2014. While we adhere to editorial integrity, note that this post may contain references to products from our partners.

The FangWallet promise is always to have your best interest in mind and be transparent and honest about the financial picture.



Become an Insider

FangWallet's Verified Budget Planner Template Printable

Subscribe to get a free daily budget planner printable to help get your money on track!

Make passive money the right way. No spam.

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp


Editorial Disclaimer: The editorial content on this page is not provided by any of the companies mentioned. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone.

The content of this website is for informational purposes only and does not represent investment advice, or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security, investment, or product. Investors are encouraged to do their own due diligence, and, if necessary, consult professional advising before making any investment decisions. Investing involves a high degree of risk, and financial losses may occur including the potential loss of principal.


Write for Us


Source Citation References:

+ Inspo

There are no additional citations or references to note for this article at this time.


Mei Ling is an award-winning personal finance author whose work has inspired countless individuals to take charge of their financial health. Their expertise spans diverse areas, including passive income generation, real estate investment, and optimizing retirement portfolios.

Pin It