Question--As a B2B company, how many of your customers do you think do their purchasing research online?
Answer--Just about all of them.
Profitimo reports that a study of 1500 respondents showed that 93.2% of buyers do their purchase-related research online, with 95.5% saying they would begin their online research by using a search engine.
According to a study of business Internet users, search engines were the number one destination followed by manufacturers’ Web sites. Yet despite this, according to a recent Forrester report only 59% of B2B companies surveyed do search engine marketing. For more insight, read this analysis from Search Engine Land.
B2B firms are noticing these powerful customer trends and spending more aggressively on search engine marketing.
So how do companies usually slice their search engine marketing pie? According to SEMPO’s 2006 report on the state of search marketing, organic search engine optimization tops the list, followed by paid placement. Advertisers who responded to the survey stated that they used search engine marketing first to promote their brand, with driving sales a close second.
