Social Media Marketing & Search Engine Marketing: Two Sides of a Coin?

The traditional strategies of online marketing have given way to newer and more effective methods such as search engine marketing and social media marketing. Some marketers believe that these are two separate processes founded on different principles. Yet we cannot ignore the similarities between these two processes. Both of them strive to popularise your brand on the Internet and attract quality traffic to your website and business.

So, does that mean that social media marketing and search engine marketing are two sides of the same coin? This can be answered once we know the points of distinction and similarities between these two concepts.

The points of difference between social media marketing and search engine marketing-

• Medium – This is a very obvious difference. As the names state, search engine marketing is conducted on various search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc. On the other hand, social media marketing is conducted on popular social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube etc.



• Goals – In search engine marketing, the focus is on gaining top ranking through organic and paid results. While in social media marketing, the entire focus is on engaging users with the brand.


• Methods – Link building, article submission, pay per click advertising are some of the methods used in search engine marketing in order to gain higher visibility and quality traffic to the site. However, when marketing on social media, the approach is different. Marketers build communities and fan pages on different social media sites and engage users with their brand with the help of contests, discussions, and by providing exclusive information to the members.


• Cost – While the cost varies in both these process depending on the size and nature of the business, search engine marketing is less expensive than social media marketing. One reason for this difference in costs is that social media is a relatively new concept and much more brainstorming and efforts are required to achieve success.


• Results – In search engine marketing, results are depicted through higher page ranking on search engines, higher click-throughs, more quality traffic, higher conversion rate and greater sales leads. In social media marketing, though, the results cannot be measured with respect to the number of fans, subscribers or members of your fan page or community. It is not necessary that these fans or members are also purchasing your products. Yet, one can see a significant improvement in their revenue and popularity after investing in social media marketing.

However, despite these differences, smart marketers should not ignore one for the other. Successful search engine marketing helps in social media marketing in the form of keyword research and on-site optimisation. Similarly, successful social media marketing helps search engine marketing through better reputation management and by confirming that the search result is trustworthy.

Thus, a combined approach of search engine marketing blended with social media marketing can yield holistic results and give you a competitive edge over other businesses in the market. If you manage to rule the search engines as well as the social media networks, you can enjoy great returns on your marketing investment.