Digital Marketing vs. Bulk SMS Marketing: What works best in 2023?

Marketing is an important part of any business, as it allows a company to reach out to new customers and generate revenue. It helps an organization create and deliver value to customers.

Marketing can be used in any industry, from fashion to hotels. However, not all marketing strategies are created equal. This article will discuss Digital Marketing vs Bulk SMS Marketing and figure out what works best in 2023. 

Let us begin with: 

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a process used by companies to promote their products or services. It includes all digital media, including social networks, search engines, and mobile devices. 

Digital marketing agencies help businesses reach new customers through digital channels such as websites and e-marketing.

Digital marketing allows you to reach your customers where they are. It’s not just about reaching them online but also in person, through email, and more. With digital marketing, you can tailor your messages to each customer.

The goal is for your ideas to go viral by getting customers excited about your product or service and passing along the message to their friends and family.

Types of digital marketing

1. Search engine optimization

It is a proven marketing strategy that makes websites easy to find through search engines. SEO techniques include writing content for specific search terms, creating a website’s structure and navigation, optimizing images and videos, and more. 

2. Content marketing

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on creating valuable, shareable, and interesting content for your audience. This content should be in (the form of) blogs, videos, eBooks, or any other type of written media.

It can also take the form of data-driven reports or infographics shared with customers through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

3. Social media marketing

It’s a marketing strategy that uses social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok to create awareness of your brand or product. The idea is to make your business more recognizable and increase trust in the name of what you’re selling.

You can also leverage the popularity of social media influencers and use them to promote your products/services to the masses using social media. Since social media encompasses a large group of people and most of them are usually active, which increases the chances of reaching your true potential customers through promotion.

4. Pay-per-click marketing (PPC)

Pay-per-click marketing is a form of Internet advertising that allows companies to pay (only) when people click on their ads. This makes it ideal for businesses that want to reach the widest possible audience but don’t have the budget for traditional online advertising.

5. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a model in which companies pay commissions and bonuses to people who refer customers to the company. It’s one of the most common ways for companies to get people involved in their business.

If you have an audience, you can earn revenue by promoting products or services on your website and social media.

6. Native advertising

Native advertising is a form of marketing that blends traditional advertising practices with editorial content. Native ads often appear in the same format as “traditional” online ads, but a brand does not sponsor them. 

Business can use them to promote a product or service, raise awareness about an event or promotion, and even provide information about a brand or industry.

7. Marketing automation

Marketing automation is an automated process through which marketing campaigns are activated and managed while also measuring the success of each campaign. It allows you to test different types of content to increase your brand’s exposure and reach a larger audience.

8. Email marketing

Email marketing is a way of communicating with your customers and prospects using email. It’s a strategy that involves sending promotional messages to clients, customers, or prospects by email.

It is a great way to build rapport with your customers. When you send them an email, they know it was sent by you and not a spammer or other third party.

What Are The Main Advantages And Disadvantages of Digital Marketing?

Advantages of Digital Marketing:

1. Brand Development

Brand development of your business is one of the best advantages of Digital Marketing.

It is a means to increase the number of connections between your organization and potential customers. Brands can accomplish this by allowing customers to interact with your brand or by allowing them to have an experience that they will remember for years.

2. Personalization

Personalization is a key aspect of digital marketing because it helps you align your content with the interests and needs of individual consumers. This makes it easier for them to find, consume, and share information about your brand.

Personalization also improves the likelihood that the right person will see an ad at the right time. It also allows you to be more relevant to your customers, which increases your conversion rate and leads to better ROI.

3. Wider Reach

Digital Marketing helps your business reach a very wide range of audiences globally.

Digital Marketing has made it easier to reach targeted audiences in a small window regardless of geographical boundaries.

Social media platforms are the best way to promote your brand for free or for a small marketing fee, which helps you find the global market and promote trades.

4. Greater Engagement

As mentioned above, digital marketing helps you reach a wider range of audiences globally, increasing the number of people interacting with your brand, products, and services.

Creative ideas and compelling marketing campaigns draw more potential customers towards your brand, and if you have an exceptional sales team, it becomes easier for your brand to leave a mark on the market.

5. Lower Cost

Digital marketing costs are inexpensive compared to traditional marketing campaigns. It will cost you extremely low if you dig deep and find alternatives to paid marketing.

There are many free marketing sites, social platforms, and other mediums through which you can reduce the cost of marketing.

However, present-day paid marketing campaigns aren’t that expensive and yield a good ROI if carried out properly.  

Disadvantages of Digital Marketing

1. High competition

As digital marketing helps your business reach audiences globally, increasing the number of individuals interacting with your business also reaches a bigger competition pool.

Your business will have to compete with the existing veterans and giants in your niche targeting the same audience.

It may prove frustrating to some businesses if they fail to capture the audience’s attention since the competition is very high.

2. Negative Feedback and Review

Customers have the freedom to leave (any sort of) reviews on products and services online, which is visible to everyone. This can create a negative impact on possible customers.

Modern-day customers hugely rely on existing customers’ opinions on the products and services in them to be invested. They will not invest in your brand if it has plenty of negative reviews.

Negative Feedback and Reviews will drastically impact your brand’s image. Your competitors can use this situation to impair your brand’s status.

3. Dependability on Technology

Digital Marketing is completely based on the internet and digital technology. Instances of technological failures will directly impact the performance of digital marketing.

Digital marketing is abided by the internet. Without the internet, digital marketing is not possible, and the other impacting factor is the devices. Not everyone uses devices that support the internet, especially elderly citizens.

4. Different skills and Training:

Digital marketing is a completely different subject to the internet; people should clearly understand every aspect related to digital marketing to carry out a successful marketing campaign.

Qualified personnel must successfully generate ROI, otherwise, your investments will be water on sand.

Hiring skilled and qualified marketers comes at a cost, and they may not meet your expectations since not the same tactics work for everyone.

5. Time Consuming

Digital marketing is not an instantaneous task, it takes time, and there is no such designated time frame for its peak. You have to have patience with the marketing campaigns that take quite a while to perform.

Marketing can sometimes be frustrating since not everything goes to plan, and you might have to invest more money and time in the project to generate proper ROI.

6. Security and Privacy Issues

We cannot be 100% sure of the security and privacy issues involved in digital marketing. There are loopholes that attackers can easily leverage to complicate your marketing status and even your brand.

Although there are a lot of improvements being made in the security and privacy sector, the attackers are also adapting to the changes and evolving accordingly.

7. Maintenance Cost

Digital marketing isn’t a one-off thing; it requires continuous maintenance and investment to evolve with time and capture audiences on the way. Marketing exists (only) until you invest in them.

Once you stop investment in the marketing sector, it will start its downhill journey and leave a wide-open space for your competitors to compete for that spot you left behind.

Do you ever wonder why giants like Coke and Pepsi still invest hugely in marketing? It is for the same reason stated above.

What is bulk SMS marketing?

Bulk SMS Marketing is a simple term for utilizing the service provider’s API to send SMS to your customers and leads (with their legal consent) in bulk, intending to promote your brand, products, and services.

It is the best way to market your products and service, let alone your brand. Also, there are several SMS marketing software in the market that offers comparatively cheaper services and has a wider and more effective range than various forms of digital marketing.

We shall figure out why Bulk SMS marketing triumphs over Digital Marketing in the sections below.

What are the benefits of bulk SMS marketing?

1. No specific app is required.

Bulk SMS marketing can be carried out using any (type of) mobile phone, whether it be a smartphone or a regular mobile phone.

We all know SMS is a major feature of any kind of mobile phone and some advanced land phones. You do not need to download any (type of) application to carry out bulk SMS marketing; simply use the in-device messaging app.

No further expenses and investments are required to send SMS in bulk.

2. Simplified enrollment

Enrollment in Bulk SMS marketing is fairly a simple task where you need to subscribe to a service from a service provider and confirm your subscription.

You are ready to get going within a few minutes of subscription. Having legal consent from the customers is critical and more important.

3. Achieve massive reach

As mentioned above, you do not need smartphones or advanced devices to carry out SMS Marketing campaigns. You can reach an extensive audience through Bulk SMS marketing since there are 7 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide — about 95.5 percent of the world’s population.

Bulk SMS Marketing has a massive playfield to capitalize on their business plans and strategies.

4. Full Delivery

Since SMS marketing completely depends on the Telephone operator’s services and not the internet, you can expect a complete delivery of your marketing SMS.

You can send SMS to any phone number worldwide, with a 99% delivery rate and no fear of failures, unlike emails (being) marked spam and malicious.

Mobile marketing watch states that 99% of SMS are legitimate, with only 1 % spam.

5. Elevated read and [response] reply rates

SMS has a very high rate of reads and responses from the users of message receivers. A study by Gartner shows that 98% SMSs are read and 45% of them with active user responses. In contrast, emails have only 20% read and 6% response rates.

SMS Marketing has a huge future if marketers can grab on the opportunity and nurture it from the very beginning.

6. Cut costs with an affordable SMS plan

Bulk SMS Marketing has greater scope in marketing than that digital marketing, with significantly less price rates and affordable SMS Plans.

If you compare your digital and SMS marketing investment, you will (definitely) find out that SMS marketing is cheaper by a distance mile and cuts costs drastically. You can utilize the fund for other aspects of business or run bigger and greater bulk SMS marketing to generate better ROI.

On the other hand, you do not require sophisticated devices and computers for effective marketing. A stat suggests 81% of consumers don’t prefer being tied down to receive customer services, and they want it to be dynamic and user-friendly.

7. Personalization

You can obtain personalization in all kinds of marketing with a little practice and, more importantly, user consent. SMS marketing makes great use of personalization to craft compelling campaigns and add personal touches.

Brands will target individual customers or leads with easy automation of text personalization via service provider APIs. Personalized text holds greater value to customers than generally addressed ones.

8. Deliver unbelievable ROI with text messaging

As mentioned in the sections above, Bulk SMS marketing costs significantly less than digital marketing. It also holds greater target audiences and better reads and response rates than digital (email) marketing.

Bulk SMS Marketing metrics show that small investments can rack up large revenues and contribute to unbelievable ROIs with proper planning and execution.

Which Businesses Can Use Bulk SMS Marketing?

A Bulk SMS Marketing is a versatile marketing approach that requires innovative marketing ideas and strategic content planning to allure customers or leads to interact with your business.

Bulk SMS Marketing is a better alternative to digital marketing. Hence, most businesses in the market can use Bulk SMS Marketing. Some major sectors that can use this marketing approach are:

1. Governmental organizations
2. Finance and banking
3. Education
4. Tech and IT
5. Tourism & Entertainment

Digital Marketing vs Bulk SMS Marketing: What works best in 2023?

Digital Marketing vs Bulk SMS Marketing is a dubious subject and completely depends on the user perspectives to decide which approach best suits their businesses.

Both approaches come with their corresponding pros and cons. Still, Bulk SMS marketing covers the various disadvantages of digital marketing, such as investment costs, open and response rates, application requirements, dependent on technologies, etc., which makes it the better alternative for digital marketing.  

Bulk SMS marketing can be very effective if implemented with proper marketing plans and strategically created compelling text content that allure possible customers to your business. Be creative to generate superior revenues and ROIs with comparatively fewer investments in marketing campaigns.

Save your business money and become equally effective in capturing audiences using Bulk SMS Marketing in 2023 and many years to come.