Search engine marketing effectiveness for B2B industries

In 2007 SEM and SEO are increasingly being incorporated in mainstream B2C marketing budgets to achieve a number of objectives including delivering cheap targeted traffic, client acquisition, lead generation and branding.

But how does search work for B2B industries? SEM has up until now had a smaller share of B2B marketing budgets with some marketer’s assuming that their audience of business decision makers would have far more sophisticated methods of researching than Google, Yahoo! etc. So how does SEM work for companies marketing B2B goods and services?

Surprisingly search works just as well for B2B industries as it does for B2C businesses. How do we know this? Apart from running a number of different Australian B2B campaigns* and seeing the traffic and conversion data – a US search firm Enquiro recently released a study of B2B consumer behaviour in relation to search engine usage earlier in the year that validates the numbers and trends we are seeing.

Survey results

The survey is interesting and should be a mandatory read for all B2B marketers in Australia. What is apparent when reviewing the data is that search engines are incredibly influential during all phases of the B2B buying cycle with particularly high influence during the awareness and research phases. This data highlights a potential gap between search engine usage and the share of B2B marketing budgets being allocated to SEM activities. A few key highlights of the study include:

“Search was the third most influential source of information during all phases of the B2B buying cycle behind word-of-mouth/recommendation from a colleague with the most influential source of information unsurprisingly being vendor websites.”

Search was one of the top online influences during all phases of the B2B buying cycle. “When asked what the top influences were on the purchase decision, respondents across all phases indicated that the website of the vendor, followed by distributor websites and then search engines were the most important influencers”.

“Search was the second most influential source during the research phase following manufacturer’s websites.”

When asked “how important is online in B2B purchase decisions? And “would purchasers go online?” 85 percent of respondent answered yes.

When respondents were asked “where did you start your online research” 51 percent of respondents started at a search engine with another 25 percent using search as a navigational tool to get to a non search site.

Big spenders

It’s worth noting that Enquiro screen ed participants who were looking to make business purchases over $1000 within the next year, whilst the survey found that 12 percent of the respondents intended to make business purchases greater than $50,000. The future purchases spanned a range of sectors from parts and supplies (motherboards, semi conductors etc), business services (legal, accounting, logistics) through to hardware purchases (enterprise level hardware). It is also worth highlighting that more than 50 percent of respondents noted their education level as university educated, master’s degree or doctorate.

Although the study surveyed American business decision-makers it would not be drawing to long a bow to suggest similar search engine usage patterns in Australia. This confirms that a CTO is just as likely to turn to a search engine when researching a purchase like an enterprise level CRM solution as a consumer is when researching a cheap flight or comparing prices on a new ipod. This research also further confirms that advertising industries that have typically dominated B2B search, like the directory company Sensis, are now fighting a battle for the hearts and minds of B2B decision-makers to be the first port of call when researching. As more B2B marketers grasp the mechanics of PPC marketing and SEO, and that they are only paying for qualified traffic, its likely that niche B2B categories will become as hotly contested as other more established verticals categories such as travel and finance.

*We currently manage B2b campaigns for include industries like OH & S, software design, publishing and commercial furniture.