Among the many headlines that emerged from SMB Digital Marketing 2012 (CRM, digital loyalty, performance marketing), one that caught the attention of most in the room was the research return that social ROI is shifting dramatically toward customer acquisition. In fact, BIA/Kelsey’s LCM 16 survey highlights suggest that 42 percent of SMBs now turn to Facebook for acquisition first, retention and brand lift later.

This is big news in a domain where metrics have been mushy, business goals even mushier, and “experimentation” the word du jour for years. Not anymore. Social media energy (nearly half of SMBs have a Facebook Page) has evolved into social media expectation – deliver new customers.

Manta CEO Pamela Springer amplified this theme during her presentation at the conference. The SMB-focused network surveyed its members and found that more than half of small businesses are now spending more than 50 percent of their business networking time in online channels. There’s an opportunity cost for the time spent online and in social channels, and for small merchants, the result they expect to see in return is new customer traffic. In the Manta survey, 35 percent responded that their top benefit from online networking is “being found by new customers.” Another 14 percent voted up the “ability to engage with new prospects online.”

Of course, seeking new customers from social media does not a strategy make. There are still execution challenges aplenty, as the LCM data and Manta survey underscore. Even with the rising ubiquity of Facebook as a business channel, Manta found that 30 percent of SMBs “have a presence but don’t find it valuable.” Here, churn is inevitable, and the potential to upsell the business into a more robust digital portfolio is limited.

The upshot of all this data: more than ever, social conversations with SMBs must center around ROI, and that begins with customer acquisition. Whether it’s exclusive deals and offers, lead-generating content (and content distribution), contests and promotions, or social ad campaigns, the message is clear – move the customer down the funnel.

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Facebook created quite a stir (again) with the recent projection that its global revenues could surpass $4 billion in 2011 … the majority coming from small businesses that are self serving. Now Twitter is abuzz, as eMarketer predicts that top-line income will triple to more than $150 million in 2011, and surge to $250 million in 2012. Considering that the company only began experimenting with advertising platforms last April, then elevated Dick Costolo to CEO in October to hone the network’s business model, the pressing question is “how?”

Twitter has rolled out a series of advertising trials geared to promoted products: accounts, trends and tweets. To date, these have focused almost exclusively on national brands, with the Nissans and Starbucks of the Fortune 500 galaxy grabbing the lion’s share of attention.

Now, there is increasing evidence that Twitter sees advertising scale in automated, self-serve capabilities for clients. Recently, Twitter updated its business center to include an array of educational and commercial tools, including best practices, case studies, analytics and a “get started” dashboard (see picture below).

The interface is rudimentary, asking clients only to provide estimated budget, advertising products they are interested in and contact information. This isn’t a purchase platform just yet, but a vehicle for Twitter to begin generating leads with accompanying data.

The move toward full-purpose self-serve seems natural after the examples set by Google and now Facebook. Interestingly, however, the beginning benchmark for estimated monthly spend is $10,000, a number that would challenge many SMB wallets.

Whether self-serve promoted products can scale down-market at lower price points is wait and see. But if the projections are right, then Facebook is hot on the trail of the local advertising Holy Grail — appealing to small businesses at scale with a self-serve platform that they are willing and able to utilize. If Twitter’s revenue growth is to emulate the Facebook curve, then capturing both sides of this paradigm will be critical.

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The headlines about 2011 being “the year of local” are everywhere, and as the curtain lifted on ILM:10 (with a record 600+ local-focused attendees filling the master ballroom), BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek encouraged the audience that as more media ad spend tilts locally and digitally, “there’s a big prize out there if you get it right.”

BIA/Kelsey’s local media forecast underscores this tectonic shift. By 2014, local online/interactive ad spend is projected to reach $35 billion, or 24 percent of total spend. Traditional dollars, meanwhile, will continue to shrink.

Opportunity breeds challenge, however, as more and more entrants chase local, digital gold. A byproduct is an increasingly complicated and noisy ecosystem. Local businesses are bombarded with more offers than ever, many of which they don’t fully understand and even more of which they can’t fully consider. The key to breaking trough with merchants, Polachek said, is that “SMBs are seeking clarity with offers.”

Creating clarity for these businesses entails presenting them with value that helps them communicate in the new social language that consumer are fluent in. ILM Program Director Matt Booth noted that “conversations are radically changing,” and SMB/customer relationships must recognize how conversations across the open social Web can irrevocably (positively or negatively) affect their brand.

Consequently, BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor Wave XIII survey revealed that in 2009, 32 percent of SMBs intended to build a social network, marking unprecedented SMB channel adoption and a transition away from traditional audience-building channels. Recent BIA/Kelsey data show that 48 percent of SMBs now have Facebook pages.

Trust and 360-degree transparency will be the vanguards of success for SMBs and those who work with them, Polachek said. This is especially true as social networks promote personal recommendation over more generic brand messaging. Trust plays out through customer engagement and loyalty and will largely separate SMB success from failure.

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