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Social Media Marketing vs. Social Marketing: They’re Not the Same!

If you believe that ‘social media marketing’ is the same thing as ‘social marketing,’ you’d be incorrect. Did you know that social marketing has existed since the early 1970s—long before the advent of the Internet?

So many digital marketers, bloggers, and agencies are getting it wrong. They think these two terms are interchangeable. They’re not, and here’s why.

Social Marketing

The American Marketing Association defines SOCIAL MARKETING this way:

“Social marketing is marketing designed to influence the behavior of a target audience in which the benefits of the behavior are intended by the marketer to accrue primarily to the audience or to the society in general and not to the marketer.”

As I wrote in my June 2011 blog post, “What Social Marketing is NOT,” Social Marketing is NOT Social Media Marketing, nor does it have anything to do with using social media channels to promote products, services, brands, businesses or organizations or engage customers. However, one can use social media channels in a social marketing campaign.

Confused?

Here’s another definition by social marketing maven, Nedra Kline Weinreich, author of Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Designing Change for Good:

“Social marketing is the use of commercial marketing principles and techniques to promote the adoption of a behavior that will improve the health or well-being of the target audience or of society as a whole.”

Social marketing has been used primarily by nonprofit organizations and government agencies, as well as universities, private foundations, community coalitions, and corporations. Weinreich’s book includes a list of the issues that social marketing has addressed including: HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, family planning, immunization, nutrition, drug abuse, smoking, child abuse, recycling, voting, and pollution prevention.

Here’s a 30-second social-marketing PSA example from the Ad Council, produced for the State Attorney’s General and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lh5ehPhxHc]

As for Social Media Marketing, I could not find an adequate definition so I’ll take my own stab at it. Social media marketing is marketing using social media channels. It’s that simple, in my opinion.

So, Marketo, Adobe Social, Forbes, Oracle, Social Media Examiner, Business Insider, and the rest of you who are using ‘social marketing’ instead of ‘social media marketing,’ please tell me you’ll revise your content to reflect the difference. Pretty please?

What other companies or sites are making this same error? Share!

This article was originally published by Elaine Fogel

Published: May 19, 2014
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Elaine Fogel

Elaine Fogel is a marketing, branding, and customer experience evangelist, professional speaker, and author of Beyond Your Logo: 7 Brand Ideas That Matter Most For Small Business Success. People in 100+ countries regularly read her blog, Totally Uncorked on Marketing and her articles have appeared in many publications.