This two terms sound almost the same, but what does it mean the same? If you've heard both, would have been easy to distinguish its meaning. But many people out there, which turned out to exchange these two terms. There’s growing confusion between the decades-old discipline called social marketing and the new concept of social media marketing. Even though to most marketers the difference is quite clear, now and then, many people seem to mistake one for the other. Here are the definitions for both:
Social Marketing
“Social marketing is a process that applies marketing principles and techniques to crate, communicate, and deliver value in order to influence target audience behaviors that benefit society (public health, safety, the environment and communities) as well as the target audience.” –Phillip Kotler, Nancy Lee and Michael Rothschild (2006).
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
“SMM combines the goals of internet marketing with social media sites as Digg, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and many others. The SMM goals will be different for every business or organization, however most will involve some form of viral marketing to build idea or brand awareness, increase visibility, and possibly sell a product or service. SMM may also include online reputation management. Most online communities don’t welcome traditional direct or hard sell techniques so an effective SMM campaign will require more finesse to execute properly. SMM campaigns must be targeted to the community you want to reach with a message that appeals to them. Some common ways of achieving this are with authoritative information, entertainment, humor or controversy.” –Wikipedia 2007
What is the difference?
Blog.social-marketing.com is one of the blogs which record the chaotic use of these two terms in 2006. Because of this confusion, in one of the article they try to explain some differences between the ‘Social Marketing’, with ‘Social Media Marketing’. Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing. Social marketing “products” are big ideas meant to change attitudes or behaviors, such as getting kids to stop smoking, protecting the environment or encouraging condom use. It’s agenda-base marketing often driven by non-profits. It is a recognized marketing discipline that was popularized in the early 1970’s by Phillip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman.
What about Social Media Marketing? Social Media Marketing strongly associated with the internet, through a variety of social networking. SMM is expected to start developing since 2005. It is defined varies, but always related to social networking and how to benefit from gathering of users on the internet. Who benefited from this marketing activity is the brand or company who run it.
SMM is a new flavor of marketing that uses social media such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo groups, etc. to create communities of like-minded interests and, perhaps, interact and converse with customers and potential customers. Social media marketing doesn’t work too well with an agenda, unless it springs from collaborative, grassroots effort from inside the community. It was popularized by bloggers.
How The Two Tie in
Clearly there is a huge opportunity for Social Marketing campaigns to employ Social Media Marketing as a means of reaching niche audiences more effectively significantly reduced costs. When executed properly, SMM can make a tremendous impact on your campaign with much higher Return On Investment (ROI) than traditional marketing promotion (Advertising, Personal Selling, Direct Marketing, etc). From many explanations types of marketing are named for methodology and medium, not for their goal. Direct marketing is marketing directly to individuals. Email marketing is marketing using email for distribution. Television advertising is advertising using television for distribution. Each of these examples shows the adjective preceding marketing to refer to the method or means.This, then, leads me to wonder why the team social marketing was ever used to refer to marketing for the purpose of social good. It is in contrast to the overarching (though unofficial) naming conventions of marketing types. By this convention, ‘guerilla marketing’ would be marketing to or for the benefit of small groups of combatants who like to ambush a lot. Linguistically speaking humans like to keep to set language patterns, even if unconsciously. Just think of the linguistic convention of putting “e” in front of something means it takes place on the internet. If someone told you that eMarketing was something other than online marketing, you would likely be a little confused.
It is for this reason, our collective tendency to adhere to linguistic patterns, that I think the term ‘social marketing’ is quickly moving away from the dogmatic definition prescribe in Wikipedia. An increasing number of people are beginning to use the term to use the term to mean marketing using social methods. Social methods casts a wide net and could encompass everything from street teams to viral marketing. anything where interaction, conversation, and other social elements are at work. It is easy to see how this marketing ideology differs from billboards which shout messages and commercials which are 30-60 second monologues whether you want to see them or not.Personally, I prefer using the term social marketing to encompass various forms of new, conversation-based marketing. It makes sense and it fits the naming pattern that I am used to. I do not deny that the term has been used differently in the past, but I think the times are changing and people who blindly cling to their old definitions will quickly find themselves scrambling to redefine.
Pic:
http://peoplemeetme.com/langkah-cermat-marketing-di-sosial-media.html
Ref:
http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/2006/09/social-marketing-vs-social-marketing.html
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