The digital medium has become a center of marketing and promotional activities for all kinds of businesses. There are many ways to market your business digitally. However, the most popular options are email marketing, social media marketing, and paid online advertising through search engines.
Here is a quick comparative overview of these three marketing approaches for businesses new to digital marketing and can’t decide the best route.
By the end of the article, you can decide on your business’s best digital marketing option.
Cost
For many businesses, cost often becomes the single point that decides if they will opt for a particular marketing method or not. Therefore, it is imperative to compare email marketing, social media marketing, and paid online advertising based on cost.
Since the cost of a marketing campaign can vary significantly based on the size of the business and its target market, we will talk about return on investments instead of total marketing costs. ROIs can tell you the most cost-effective marketing method among the three.
- The average ROI of social media marketing is around 97%
- The average ROI of paid online advertising on Google is approximately 200%
- The average ROI of email marketing lingers at about 3800-4000%
Verdict: There is a clear winner (email marketing) regarding the cost of running a marketing campaign.
Outreach
Outreach is another parameter to determine how good or bad a marketing method is. If we talk about the US, 90% of the adult population in the country has active email accounts. Meanwhile, the number of people using different social media platforms lingers at around 67%.
The number of people using search engines to find products, services, and brands has gone down in recent years. The outreach of paid online advertising through Google has been affected of late.
Verdict: In terms of outreach, too, email marketing fares better than the rest of the two.
Response and Engagement
When it comes to response and engagement, paid online advertising and social media marketing works in a hit-and-miss manner. For instance, a user can only see your ad if they search for particular keywords and phrases. Similarly, users can easily miss social media’s promotional posts amid all the hustle and bustle on their timelines and feeds. Also, many people consider promoted SM posts pushy and not good for their customer experience.
In contrast, email marketing offers better response and engagement due to its non-intrusive nature. If done right, a marketing email draws out customer response and get them engaged for future correspondences. This is why you can set up well-thought-out marketing and sales funnel through email marketing compared to the other two digital marketing methods.
Verdict: A good email marketing campaign gets better response and engagement.
Bottom Line
To sum it all up, email marketing is a better option than social media marketing and paid online advertising. However, it doesn’t mean the other two are not effective promotion methods. They also offer great results if you properly go about them.
For any expert help for email marketing, you can get Marketing Results on board. From custom-built email lists to tailored email marketing campaigns, the firm can help you on various email and digital marketing fronts.
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Clifford Woods is the President and Financial Manager of Marketing Results International
