Remember when your go-to marketing strategy was outbound? TV and newspaper ads, telemarketing calls, and direct and internet mailing lists were all essential tools for business. It was brilliant to advertise new toys during episodes of kids' shows, showcase a restaurant in the local paper, be persuasive over the phone, and sell clothing through catalogues.


All those methods were great -- when they were actually effective. But with the digital age and explosion of social media, people seek quick convenience. Marketers want to pitch offers and receive responses instantly. Consumers want to find and receive things right away. That said...

Today, marketers must learn how to transform and adapt their marketing to gain competitive advantage in their industry. Here five specific reasons why new social technologies have made it so imperative for businesses to take advantage of this shift toward inbound marketing .

1. Netflix and TiVo Have Replaced TV

TV advertisements no longer work because nobody has time to watch TV. Instead, people record only the shows they want to watch and view them later on TiVo, skipping the disruptive commercials. Fact: marketers are shifting their budgets away from "interruption" advertising.

2. Blogs and E-readers Push Print Media Aside

Print ads in newspapers aren't very effective anymore, as bustling commutes and lifestyles direct readers to blogs and the online versions of publications for news. Being online, keywords can be entered into search fields to sort specific stories and articles. Someone who only wants to read the international news will not stumble upon an ad in the local news section for the new shop downtown.

3. Landlines Are Out of Use

Telemarketing calls were a good idea when people had landline phones. But cell phones have taken over. Those who do have landlines most likely have caller ID, allowing them to ignore calls from unrecognized numbers. If a telemarketing call is made to a cell phone, the number won't be listed in the recipient's contacts list, and the call will likely be ignored. Furthermore, in the digital age, a lot of people simply don't like talking on the phone. To make matters even more difficult for telemarketers, we also have "Do Not Call" lists.

4. Consumers Want Things NOW

Physical mail is becoming outdated with time. Who wants to mail in an order, wait a few days for it to arrive, then a few more days to process, then a couple more days on top of that to receive what was ordered? If I want to purchase a dress, I'm going to go to the store now. Or, if there is no brick-and-mortar location, ordering online is still more time-efficient than catalogue ordering. People usually throw away physical mail, anyway.

5. Facebook and Twitter Inboxes Are the New Email

The entire evolution of marketing leaves us with inbound marketing. We're always online, and we mindlessly click Facebook ads and pay more attention to Facebook inbox messages and Twitter Direct Messages than even our own email accounts.

Are you adapting to the social revolution?

To learn more about how you and your business can adapt, join George Hu, vice president of marketing at Salesforce.com, and Brian Halligan, HubSpot’s CEO and co-founder, in a webinar to uncover sales and marketing secrets of connecting with customers in the social marketplace.