Social Media Marketing vs. Social Commerce - A Quick Side-by-Side Comparison
| Social Media Marketing | Social Commerce | |
| Definition | “Social media marketing consists of the attempt to use social media to persuade consumers that one's company, products and/or services are worthwhile”
(source: About.com) |
“A subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services”
(source: Paul Marsden, SocialCommerceToday.com) |
| Model of Interaction |
Mainly B2C, since it involves businesses pushing out marketing messages, offers, coupons, etc. to consumers in the context of consumer-to-consumer interactions |
Mainly C2C, since it involves consumers helping one another by sharing advice, recommendations, reviews, etc. to make better buying decisions (word-of-mouth marketing) |
| Business Case |
1) Lead generation
2) Provide listening platform 3) Increase awareness/visibility |
1) Sales funnel optimization
2) Onsite engagement 3) Lead generation |
| Modus Operandi | Capturing consumers’ bandwidth and attention in their native space | Unlocking and exploiting social capital built up in existing customers to influence the buying decisions of other consumers |
| Scalability | Requires active, regular, and direct engagement with community for effectiveness, can be time-consuming | Requires optimization of infrastructures and tools that facilitate purchase planning and point-of-sale activities, comparatively scalable |
| ROI | Measurement of impact is difficult, social media presence is decentralized | ROI can be measured, tracked, and optimized as long as social commerce activities are centralized and integrated into the sales funnel |
