We found that:
- Our market was too niche and local for adwords to be super effective. We basically didn't have enough volume with productive keywords to make it work, and broadening the keywords resulted in alot of spend for junk results. It did pull in some people though.
- Facebook, Instagram and Bing ads were useless.
- Facebook and Instagram content was shared by the community and generated conversions for events. They didn't make a dent in new admissions/tours.
- Many people saw and were were excited by Waze ads, but no new folks were attracted to it, and existing people used it as a lazy way to navigate to school/church. It was interesting though, I literally had people coming up to me to tell me how cool Waze was, which was surprising.
- Newspaper ads were expensive, but generated 5x more response than all of the other channels.
- Signs, lawn-signs and flyers were expensive in terms of labor, but 2x more response than newspaper.
This matches my experience working for small biz owners as well. It's funny, years ago we (techies) all told these business owners what a waste "traditional" advertising was. "Shift your print/radio/tv ad budgets to digital" we said, "it's trackable" we said, and now it's shifting back as digital ads are not returning the same value thanks to ...very accurate tracking. Meanwhile, local radio was destroyed and rebuilt, local print is also currently rebuilding (not quite there yet) and TV is becoming more affordable as they have to now compete with digital.
We (a local micro-business) tried tracking our print adverts by including coupons and found nearly the only people using them were current customers.
Direct word-of-mouth was by far our most successful advertising (either from customers, or staff handing out leaflets in the street).
IMHO the latter. Returns were and are always terrible, with occasional "home runs" that then get parroted by every marketing guru as an example of how powerful social marketing campaigns can be. But of course, your plumbing business, or accounting firm doesn't have the same business model, market or customers as said example.
My point is that social media is no worse, or better than traditional marketing, it's just that, we can prove it's terrible with data. Of course, if everything is "terrible" ... none of it is.
Well, it's just advertising that's terrible. Businesses can spend their money in lots of different ways. If advertising is understood to not be effective, perhaps we'll see more investment in things like wages and product quality, which, unlike advertising, deliver real social value.
On the other hand, my family's bookshop relies a lot on social media to get the word out. I suspect social media is more important for businesses that aren't viewed as necessities or are competing with convenience. (people tend to view wellness, beauty, anti-aging, facials, etc., as necessities if they depend on them regularly even though they aren't true necessities, which is why such industries tend to fare well even during recessions)
This probably isn't all Facebook's doing, but just the changing nature of how people get their information. Before Facebook, it was TV ads and ads in the newspaper, but nobody viewed those platforms as being nefarious. Now people are on the internet and watching cable less and less, so something's got to take the place of TV ads.