Social Media Marketing vs. Text Marketing: The Pros and Cons of Both

Social media and text marketing are powerful ways to reach your target audience. Granted, choosing which one you should focus on can be difficult. After all, each medium has its own set of attributes and disadvantages that serve distinct purposes.

For example, SMS messaging is a more personalized communication method, but social media has the potential to reach a wider audience. So, your choice will largely depend on both what your goals are for your next campaign and what message your branding is attempting to convey.

Let’s break down both to help you determine which channel is best for your next marketing campaign.

When to Use Text Marketing

Text messaging is without a doubt the best way to capture individual attention. Your subscribed customers don’t have to visit your page or log in anywhere to interact with your campaigns because they receive a push notification with your message. This makes text messaging a more assertive form of communication, and preferable when sending out appointment reminders, product alerts, personalized offers, or private information of any kind.

Pros of Text Marketing

• High open and response rates: SMS messages are the most direct way to get in touch with your customers because, unlike other mediums like email or social media marketing, most people open every text that’s sent to them. Also, this more intimate form of communication is more likely to generate interaction.
• Personalization: Modern technologies have enabled personalized marketing. Brands that use customer data to customize messaging are better able to capture their customers’ attention, which can result in a higher campaign ROI.
• Real-time communication: Most of your customers will have their phones on them nearly all the time. They’ll see your message almost immediately and are likely to respond in an instant. This helps you optimize your campaigns quickly because you get customer feedback quickly.

Cons of Text Marketing

• Limited Message Length: SMS messaging isn’t the marketing medium to pick if you’re trying to convey a complex message—remember you’re limited to 160 characters.
• Permission-Based: SMS marketing is entirely permissions-based, meaning that your customers must first give you their number and then permit messaging. They can unsubscribe from your messages whenever they want, so be careful not to send too many.

Source: Shutterstock

When to Use Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is best used in less personalized campaigns that aim to garner a large audience. As text marketing requires your customers to opt-in, it’s largely geared toward customers that already know and like your brand. However, social media can garner new leads—making it the best way to raise brand awareness.

Pros of Social Media Marketing

• Wide Reach: Social media allows you to reach nearly everyone, or so it seems. You’ll find every demographic uses social media, so if you can create compelling content you have the potential to not just reach your target audience, but also find new types of customers.
• Targeted Advertising: Getting a head start on social media is simple. Paid advertising can get your branded content on potential leads’ screens to help you develop a following for your organic content. And you can customize these paid ads to target users that have searched for particular services or products, too.

Cons of Social Media Marketing

• Algorithm Changes: Curating your content to appease ever-changing and fickle algorithms can yield lackluster results. Simply put, while social media posts could generate a potentially massive audience, they also might get lost in the shuffle. Some marketers believe that platforms purposefully drive you to purchase sponsored posts by reducing the reach of your organic content.
• High Competition: Social media is a public medium, meaning your content will be there for all your competitors to see. Copying content is a common issue on these platforms, and it’s likely that other companies might leverage your posts to boost their own pages at some point.

Source: Shutterstock

Which is Better for Your Business?

As you could probably gather by now, it’s not necessarily a matter of social media marketing vs. text marketing. It’s a question of your intended campaign goals. Do you want to send personalized messages to your target audience, or do you want to reach new audiences and create a community around your brand? Well, perhaps you want to do both. These two campaign styles aren’t mutually exclusive, you can run them simultaneously as complementary tools. However, if you must choose between the two then knowing more about the key metrics can help you determine the best channel for your business.

Reach

In terms of potential reach, social media is the better channel. After all, billions of people log in to their accounts every day. Although, if you choose to run a social media campaign, make sure you’re following your audience. If your customers are young, go to TikTok, if they’re professionals go to LinkedIn, or if they’re seniors go to Facebook.

Conversion

Text marketing is a more viable option if your goal is to generate conversions. Texts create a sense of urgency and can target customers with personalized messaging.

Engagement

Both social media and SMS messaging can generate high engagement levels, although in different capacities. Social media is more of a public forum while text messages are more direct and personal.

Retention

Directly sending offers like free gifts or discount codes can add value to your branded text messages. SMS is the best way to keep your customers interested in your products and services.

Remove Landline Numbers From Your Text Marketing List

While it’s always a good idea to diversify, text marketing does boast alluring advantages over social media channels in most ways. Increased conversions, retention rates, and engagement with personal messaging all work to conjure a great ROI for SMS marketing.

However, it’s important to note that landlines can cost you big when running an SMS campaign. That’s why you should always reach out to Landline Remover before you pay to send hundreds of messages to numbers that literally can’t receive them. This simple service can save you just as big by removing the landlines from your list and making respecting regulatory compliance a breeze.

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