In September, I reported in a blog post about the growing trend of virtual goods, or gifts, used on social media spaces. Businesses are using these gifts as a way to grow brand awareness among consumers and, more importantly, identify brand advocates. Now, a new report by three firms — WPP’s GroupM Search, M80 and comScore — confirms that these so-called advocates are bringing long-term benefits to your company by interacting with you in more ways than you realize. If you’ve been hesitant to jump into the social pool, this new data about the marketing potential of social media might change your mind.

Consumers aren’t just recommending your brand to friends and family. They’re doing more than simply spreading virtual icons of your known products. The aforementioned study shows that consumers “who engage with brands on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube show significantly higher propensity to search for [brands] and then click on those brands’ search ads.” Engaging with a brand can include watching videos or simply becoming a fan, or advocate, of a brand on Facebook. Whatever the social marketing interaction, consumers are 2.8 times more likely “to search for a brand, and click rates rose 50 percent.” Even more, consumers who have been exposed to a brand’s social marketing are also more likely to search online by indicating specific brand names in their queries; in fact, the click-through rates “then increased from 4.5 percent to 11.8 percent.”

While the study does not indicate how sales are affected by the increases in brand-specific queries and click-through rates, it does confirm that social media users “are 1.7 times more likely to use search during product consideration than non-social media users” (they also spend triple the amount of time online). According to our annual local search study for 2009, 71 percent of consumers who use social networking sites make purchases after searching. All in all, having a strong social marketing presence will only improve your chances of generating more sales, as brand advocates will have your brand in mind when they search during the critical moment of purchase selection.

These findings will likely cause more businesses to take notice and begin making room in their budgets for social marketing: “The findings…will ignite discussions over budget choices, with some shift coming from other media, even paid search, to pay for the creation of assets needed in social marketing.”