Social media evangelist Brian Solis just released a report via Pivot, an upcoming social media conference focused on the rise of the social consumer, in which they compare social advertising (e.g., Facebook ads) to banner ads and other traditional online advertising methods.

As the Pivot research team points out, “For social advertising, the new opportunity for engagement lies in and around the new attention dashboard—the social stream.”

Among the most popular objectives they found for social advertising include:

• Build brand awareness (17%)
• Engage existing customers (13%)
• Increase size of community (friends, fans, followers – 12%)
• Drive traffic to an online destination (12%)

One of the other significant trends noted is that social advertising tends to be ongoing.

What this means for small business owners like you:

At Kono Social, we believe that social marketing is destined to become (if it isn’t already) the most cost effective way to find your existing customers, as well as to reach out to new customers. By targeting the friends and family of your existing customers, and presenting messages that include their friends’ social endorsements (e.g., “YOUR FRIEND likes this.”), you’re able to leverage the power of word of mouth social advertising without even needing to ask the “friend” for their assistance or approval.

Social advertising is a bit different than traditional advertising methods (PPC, print ads, coupons, etc.) that tend to generate instant results (good or bad) and provide a sense of the ROI of an individual campaign. As described above, social advertising provides a lot of indirect benefits (e.g., increase brand awareness, increase the size of a community, etc.) that can’t be measured quite as easily. The key is identify the metrics that are important for each business, and then to measure against those key performance indicators to determine the true ROI of social media.

We always recommend that our clients view social media marketing as a marathon as opposed to a sprint. Being in the place, at the right time, with the right message–consistently–is the key. This is where most small businesses eventually fail, and where Kono can help.

Note: The complete report can be downloaded from the Pivot conference web site, and additional commentary is available on Brian Solis’ blog.