Both social media and email are perfect to generate leads and some work better than others. Many of my clients have often asked me what’s better at generating leads and I’ll often tell them it depends on your niche. If I had to choose I would say email marketing because of the connection it builds with your audience. Keep in mind that social media can drive enormous relevant traffic to your blog however there is huge competition on some of these networks. Let’s go over some of the benefits of using each and how social or email can work at generating leads. Here’s what I’ll be looking at:
- Audience
- Competition
- Connection
- Visibility
- CTR
We’ll look at how each applies to both email marketing and social platforms. Let’s jump right in:
Audience
In terms of audience and striking it close to them I would say email marketing is the best. Your audience is targeted when they are subscribers and those joining your list are already looking for your content. All that’s left is for you to shoot a quick email and you can drive thousands of people to your page. With social media you have to research #hashtags and platforms where relevant people hang out. Then you have to outperform your competition which I’ll be discussing in the next section.
To resonate with your audience it’s safe to say email marketing is the best because of its direct nature.
Competition
On one hand you have your email list which is dedicated to you and then you have social media. With email marketing you have NO competition because these are people who have joined your list. You can setup a post or landing page then shoot a follow-up message to your list generating enormous conversions. With social media you run into a completely different problem. How?
Social media can generate thousands of leads only if you can stand out compared to your competition. You have to research your niche and then create headlines or images which are better than your competition. You also have to ensure you have the right #hashtags in place so when people search your content will come up. This still doesn’t guarantee a click compared to others so email marketing is better when referring to beating your competition.
Connection
I’ll state quickly that with email marketing you have already build a connection overtime so people will hang on to your words much more. Social media you’ll have to work at building that competition which takes time and effort. ESP’s in email marketing have auto-responders which are awesome at allowing bloggers to automate the entire connection process.
Visibility
Here’s where things change up because with email marketing you are essentially getting your content in front of the same people. With social marketing, if everything has been done properly, you can attract new or unique visitors to your page. This in turn will generate enormous subscribers and leads. The success of social media platforms has everything to do with visibility and growth. They continue to grow at a rapid pace each year and you find people in every niche available. With the right research and headlines you can attract an enormous audience to your website and build loyalty quickly.
CTR
Since you can market directly to your list then the CTR will always be better through email marketing. This doesn’t mean that social media won’t provide conversions, but you’ll have a better chance with email marketing. You have hundreds or thousands of people on your list. You can send them a direct message and most likely they’ll click on the link within the message. This simply increases the entire CTR and is awesome for marketing. With social media it takes a bit more work because you again need to research and attract the right audience. Then fight competition for attention and click through however I’m not saying it’s NOT possible to get a high conversion, but that you’ll have to work harder for it.
As mentioned each niche is different so try what works for you however I have worked with many niches and found email marketing to always be the best option. What do you think?
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