By Kevin George
Email marketing and social media both are two most important aspects in digital marketing world. For better marketing results, both are usually used together. Therefore, it is hard to choose which one is superior to the other.
Social media versus email marketing is a never-ending debate. But as a small business marketer, you should always look for opportunities that will help you grow your business and brand.
Social media is the new buzz in the marketing world which makes it important to implement it in the marketing strategy. But if you believe that email marketing is no longer a thing and consider social media everything, then you should stop and give it another thought? Digital marketing started off with email marketing and it is still going as strong as ever.
For best results, it is recommended that you use a combination of both these platforms in your marketing strategies. However, before planning that it is important to understand each channel.
Email Marketing Pros
Wider Reach
When it comes to reaching out to maximum people, email marketing does that job better than any channel. As a small business, you are always looking for ways to grow and email marketing can help you in achieving that goal for you. In email marketing, you can personalize the content based on the individual preferences of your subscriber.
Greater Click Rate
If you want to promote a limited time offer, email is the strongest channel by which you can drive higher engagement. Your social media would have lesser likes or comments than the number of clicks on the email sent.
Therefore, if your brand is less known and you want to build your brand, email marketing is the best bet.
Higher Chances of Conversion
For a small organization that has just started business, email is the best way to increase the conversions. You can send triggered automated emails according to the action taken by the prospect and effectively nurture them to convert.
More Economical
Email marketing is a fairly economical platform when it comes to promoting your products or services. Many email service providers allow you to send free email templates for first month. For example, MailChimp allows you to send free email templates to your first 2,000 subscribers.
For small businesses, this is a great opportunity to reach your audience cost-effectively.
Boost ROI
Small businesses are always looking for better return on investment given the limited resources and funds. It has been found that email marketing is 59% more effective for better ROI results. With email marketing you can capture 30 times more audience than any other channel combined.
Email Marketing Cons
Slower to Start than Other Platforms
Building a sizable email list takes a lot of time and the right list-building tactics. Only when you are targeting the right audience you will be able to get better ROI. It can get really daunting to get subscribers on your list and that’s why it can delay the implementation of email marketing until you get sufficient subscribers.
Higher Spam Rates
One of the hurdles email marketers face is the inbox placement of their email. Emails are at a higher risk of getting marked as spam, and with the increase in the number of emails being sent every day, it has become a more common practice among the subscribers.
Social Media Pros
Much Greater User Engagement
With social media being so easily accessible, it is obvious to have more user engagement than email marketing. Marketers agree that to create buzz around their brand, social media is the most effective channel.
You can link your website, blogs in your social media posts to expect higher user interaction and let your brand outshine the competitors.
The Possibility of Going Viral
Social media posts have higher chances of getting viral if promoted well. The greatest benefit of social media is that your content can get reposted or shared by different users which increases the product visibility as well and its reach. This way you can even reach to the people you have yet not added in your circle.
You can organize contests on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get instant brand visibility and build brand reputation.
Social Media Cons
Reliability Factor
You cannot trust anything that is being surfaced on the social media. The question here is how to trust the brand. With so many spammers and fraudulent incidences, it is very difficult to rely on any new brand or small business so easily.
Lack of Consistency
To maintain consistency with social media is a task. With fluctuation in the social trends, it is hard to say what the users might like. Your social media posts might not always be consistent and in line with the branding guidelines.
Difficulty In Tackling Different Channels
Managing the different social media accounts can be a difficult job, especially when you know that every platform has different best practices to follow.
It can get all the more challenging for small businesses.
Wrapping Up
It is tough to decide which channel is more beneficial from small business point of view, because both have their own positives and negatives. We recommend you combine best of both worlds. For example, social media can help to get more engagement and email get fetch you more conversions.
In order to get organic email subscribers to be able to target the right audience, you can take help of social media. Hence, it would be a nice move if you can combine both in order to grow.
