Search Engine Land posted an interesting article today, on B2B search. They report that in Q206 only 59% of B2B marketers used search marketing. This figure is a bit dated, as we are about to start Q207 next week, but it seems fairly reasonable. The agency I work for, Overdrive, has a large B2B focus. Many of our accounts are B2B, where we focus on lead generation and getting new prospects as opposed to directly generating sales, unlike B2C. We’ve been extremely successful with most of our clients, both through PPC marketing and through SEO.
Search marketing is really cool because 1. it targets prospects when they are specifically looking for what you are selling and 2. because it is measurable. Unlike traditional marketing, where you just throw your message out there in places you hope prospects will look, with search marketing the prospects come to you – they are taking the initiative to search for what you are selling, so they are in a more receptive mode for your pitch. Secondly, when you spend $10,000 on a magazine ad, you have no idea if it actually was directly responsible for bringing you more business or not. With search marketing and online forms, you can track with pretty good accuracy where someone came into your website, and you can directly determine your return on investment from your search marketing efforts.
Quoting the end of the article,
Furthermore, the research firm identifies search marketing as a potential “killer app” for B-to-B customer acquisition efforts. Those of us who have been working on business-oriented search marketing programs for years couldn’t agree more. We have the data and case studies to prove that for many companies search marketing is the most cost-effective method of lead generation and customer acquisition they deploy.
I believe that we are at the beginning of a major and long-lasting growth trend. Early adopters move over: B-to-B search marketing is going mainstream!
I couldn’t agree more.
