Traditional marketing sucks. Your favorite shows are interrupted by terrible commercials, the mailbox is inundated with useless junk, and your favorite songs on the radio are punctuated by the piercing noise of some second rate movie trailer. Thanks to traditional marketing, quality of life is negatively impacted on a daily basis, and in the vast majority of cases, not  single one of those advertisements will translate into a paying customer.

Why? Businesses aren’t stupid. They know that they face slim odds when their emails reach your inbox, or that their coupons, amongst the many, will be the one to draw you into their store. They mitigate those odds by striving to reach as wide an audience as possible. By casting a wide net, they have a higher probability of raking in more potential customers, even if that translates to a conversion rate of less than 1%. The result? A God-awful ROI for any marketing budget on the business side, and a nauseating inundation of irrelevant interruptions and stresses for the rest of the world.

Before the advent of traditional marketing, businesses drew in new customers through word of mouth. There is no form of marketing that is more effective than word of mouth. In fact, people trust recommendations from friends almost twice as much as any other form of traditional marketing. The advent of Facebook and Twitter has made the magic of personal recommendations both trackable and monetizable. If you are trying to push out a message, be it a product, a brand, or even a cause, you need to be using social media right now. Here’s why;

1. Social media is not limited by physical infrastructure. In fact, the only physical limitations at all is having a device to access the internet. If your motives are financial, the people who don’t have that kind of access are most likely not going to be a potential customer anyway. That means that for all intents and purposes, you essentially have an online infrastructure with every potential paying customer you could ever hope to acquire.

2. There is no financial barrier to entry. Anyone can take advantage of this platform. While traditional marketing shells out big bucks to access the channels of delivering their message to the masses, the most basic channels of social media have zero costs associated with them.

3. It is not a skill specific endeavor. It takes two things to run an effective social media campaign; creativity and time. Its something that can be taken care of by one or two dedicated people, and dismisses the need for costly third party costs involved in traditional marketing, such as brochure designers, photographers, telemarketers, or delivery services.

4. The customer base is in sync and in real time. Any immediate update, discount, alert or message from the business can be conveyed to the customer base with the click of a button. Better yet, followers can give you real time feedback to any announcement you make, or question you pose them. It is the single most direct channel of communication available to customers and businesses.

5. It facilitates incremental evolution. User feedback is playing  a pivotal role in how companies present themselves, their brand, and their product. Making small tweaks in response to what the customer wants has proved to be a far more effective strategy than abruptly introducing change (just look at Netflix’s Epix debacle). Social media facilitates the introduction of small changes and allows room for customer feedback.

6. It provides access to a comprehensive resource for analytics. People are going to be talking about your business. As that conversation migrates to social media (be it negative or positive), businesses have the opportunity to closely gauge what people are saying, and have access to a set of “social” analytics that can be far more insightful than traditional data.

7. Social following equates to credibility and authority. Traditional marketing has rendered “customer satisfaction guarantees” and “industry leader recommendations” utterly useless. Today’s savvy customer finds a concrete social following and relatable endorsements far more compelling than empty claims.

8. It gives you the ability to build hype. Traditionally, hype has been expensive. Whether its a pre-product launch, a major contest, or a publicity stunt for the brand, it is usually something only the well financially endowed have had the privilege of employing. Social media has given rise to elaborate contests, pre-released tidbits, and catalyzed buzz that otherwise would have been impossible for a bootstrapping company to put together.

9. It is a cheap yet effective channel of customer service. It is no secret that superior customer service equates to better customer retention. By using social media to cater to customer service needs, the benefit is threefold; The company can see what issues are most pertinent with their product, the customer is taken care of, and that interaction is showcased for all other customers. A showcased interaction means good publicity for you, and less people coming with the same problem when they see how it has been solved.
   

10. Your customers become your advocates. A happy customer is a company’s biggest asset. Their recommendations will become the driving source of awareness and credibility for new customers, which in turn will give you a greater presence for everyone online. Cue viral growth.